Square for Restaurants: How do I create house accounts?

[alittleoffbase]

I am in my trial period for square resturaunt and so far my main concern is that I do not see anywhere to create house accounts.  I typically allow my loyal customers and employees to run ongoing house accounts.  I notice some of the questions on here have mentioned this since early 2018....any idea on an eta for this option?

[#2]

I have house charge accounts for my employees & their balance is deducted from their paycheck. I have my staff pay as an “other” tender with a description that includes the employees name and HCA. From the dashboard you can view the transactions. I use QuickBooks online & enter the transactions as invoices on a their customer account. So, it’s all handled by the accounting software. I’d like to see house charge accounts handles like gift card accounts. The employee or customer basically gets a card and pays with it. There’s a running balance, accessible from the POS, dashboard, & a dedicated landing page. Then invoices could be sent directly from Square or sent to payroll as a deduction. Just a thought…

[sromano]

My business is a combination hotel and restaurant.  I want to create house accounts for my customers so they will be charged for everything only once upon their departure.  It is necessary for the system to produce a restaurant bill(s) so the customer can sign and give the tip then, but not actually charge the customer's credit card at that time.  It doesn't look like you offer this option.  Am I correct?  

[isabelle]

Hey @sromano!

We have saved tickets, so the bill is ready, but they wouldn't be able to sign and tip without actually charging the card. Sorry about that. This is an interesting feature request though. If you want to add anymore detail to what you have in mind, please feel free to reply in this thread. 

[manousheh]

Seriously, such a simple feature not sure why it can't get implemented.  They already have Tenders, all they need to do is allow us to create our own tender types.  Its a simple change in the database to allow custom creations in that table, and such a powerful feature.  I wonder why after all these years they still don't have it?

[manousheh]

I know that Square does not have or plan on implementing House Accounts in POS, and it doesn't even seem likely in Retail or Restaurants either.  So instead of asking the same question that has been asked plenty of times and have Square still ignore it, I would rather see how some of the community have worked around this?

Gift cards, comps, and Dining Options are not acceptable solutions.  Nor is a customer, since the whole point of a house account is to bill later for multiple invoices.  

Just in case Square does read this though, people have many uses for creating their own tenders, or accounts.  Here are some examples whereby orders must be entered into the POS, and the order must be charged to an account, but is not actually paid yet.

1) A catering account that is billed monthly.  The customer will want to receive one invoice for all the orders they placed in that month.

2) Third party orders.  Some people work with companies that provide orders, but pay for them after a week.  The POS should still register the order at the time it goes out, and tender it for that day, but the balance will not be paid until a week from then.  For accounting purposes, we need to balance that account.  Simply using the "Other Payment Types" is insufficient unless you only work with one third party.

[AshleyK]

Hey there! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. As @rsklar states, there is a workaround you can use, which will be to create a customer for each of your locations, or house accounts, that you need. Say, location 1, location 2, and location 3. Anytime your employees on that location make a purchase that is able to be credited, say a meal, they will tag their purchase under the "Location 1" customer and then possibly give the sale a 100% discount to make it free. Then, you can track all payments and credits involved for that house account, it will just be under a "customer" instead of a separate account.

The other option, since I know you all want to pay monthly, would be to have an open ticket that all items are added to, then charged at the end of the month, or you can utilize the invoicing feature, and have the invoice for that "house account customer" be billed at the end of the month as well.

I hope this helps a little, but do know we are tracking each feature request that comes in. Unfortunately, we don't have the bandwidth to reach every single feature request from every seller (we wish that was possible!), but we do read each one and work diligently to release as many as possible each year. As that stands, it does just take time. We will be sure to release any updates in this thread when we can!

[AshleyK]

Hi again! Just wanted to touch base to let you know I've merged your post with the existing thread dealing with this topic. Any new post in that thread will help bump it to the top so other sellers can read it and chime in. 

Some great sellers I know that may have helpful workarounds will be @pessosices and @VanKalkerFarms

Thanks again!

[pessosices]

@AshleyK - I don't have too much experience on this front, so your workarounds sounds better than anything that I could come up with!

Otherwise, drafting an Invoice for each account for each month and continuing to add to it with every sale.

Or not doing monthly billing and doing a Card on File for them instead?

[manousheh]

Yes, but as I stated before, that is not a work around.  100% comping an order means there was no charge, so $0 will go into my accounting software saying I'm not owed anything.  An open ticket also does not work because it is assuming that the order will be paid via Square.  The payment is most likely taking place outside of Square.  A POS should account for all orders, whether the orders are paid for in Square, or outside.  Just as you accept cash orders, and have a "Other Payment Type", you should also accept Custom Tenders (House Accounts).  I'm surprised after 10 years this is not implemented, I get there are other feature requests but this is a simple feature to implement that adds a lot of value.

[CharlesC]

The work-around I developed is this:

We have cafes in office buildings and there are several companies that want the convenience of allowing authorized personnel to "charge" their meals to the company account. I also have to remember that whatever system I put in place has to be quick and simple so my staff can expedite these transactions quickly during the busy meal times.

We ring these house account customers through Square as you would a regular transaction but when tendering the sale I have enabled the "Other Payment Types" option. The cashier chooses this option and, in the Optional Notes box, enters the name of the House Account and/or customer name that is charging that sale. They then print out a receipt for the customer to sign and they slip that receipt in the cash drawer slot for safe keeping. A second receipt can be printed if the customer requests a copy. This method is actually faster than ringing a cash sale, so the line is not slowed down at all!

As manager, I collect these charge receipts daily and at week's end I match them up to the Transactions in Square by going in through the admin side and clicking on Transactions, then clicking on the date you want and changing "All Payment Methods" to "Other". This step is only necessary if you want to make sure you are not missing any transactions.

At month's end, I separate all of the signed House Account customer receipts by account (which prints out on each receipt when the cashier enters the account name during the sale), and I total them up on an adding machine, then invoice the customer through my regular invoicing program. I return all of the signed receipts to the customer with their invoice so they can validate the purchase on their end.

This month-end step is what could be eliminated if Square had a system to accommodate house accounts but I realize such a system does not generate any revenue for Square since they mainly make money on the processing fees, but it would definitely be another good selling point for their software, in my opinion.

I hope this info helps anyone who is looking for a solution for house accounts.

[CharlesC]

The work-around I developed is this:

We have cafes in office buildings and there are several companies that want the convenience of allowing authorized personnel to "charge" their meals to the company account. I also have to remember that whatever system I put in place has to be quick and simple so my staff can expedite these transactions quickly during the busy meal times.

We ring these house account customers through Square as you would a regular transaction but when tendering the sale I have enabled the "Other Payment Types" option. The cashier chooses this option and, in the Optional Notes box, enters the name of the House Account and/or customer name that is charging that sale. They then print out a receipt for the customer to sign and they slip that receipt in the cash drawer slot for safe keeping. A second receipt can be printed if the customer requests a copy. This method is actually faster than ringing a cash sale, so the line is not slowed down at all!

As manager, I collect these charge receipts daily and at week's end I match them up to the Transactions in Square by going in through the admin side and clicking on Transactions, then clicking on the date you want and changing "All Payment Methods" to "Other". This step is only necessary if you want to make sure you are not missing any transactions.

At month's end, I separate all of the signed House Account customer receipts by account (which prints out on each receipt when the cashier enters the account name during the sale), and I total them up on an adding machine, then invoice the customer through my regular invoicing program. I return all of the signed receipts to the customer with their invoice so they can validate the purchase on their end.

This month-end step is what could be eliminated if Square had a system to accommodate house accounts but I realize such a system does not generate any revenue for Square since they mainly make money on the processing fees, but it would definitely be another good selling point for their software, in my opinion.

I hope this info helps anyone who is looking for a solution for house accounts.