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…

[manousheh]

I just want to say thank you.  That was an excellent use case, and exactly the reason why a house account would make life simpler for people using Square, and even identified why they would not be interested in solving this problem.  I'm in the midst of picking a POS, and Square was on my shortlist but I've decided to go with Clover just because I can't create custom tenders on Square.

[Kassi_]

Hey there @manousheh - 

Thank you for letting us know. I completely understand. You have to make choices that work best for your business. Good luck going forward 😊! 

[reddsgrill]

We are opening a location in a hotel, and this issue is something we are going to be dealing with in the next few days.  Have there been any updates for this yet?  Also, I don't know where to ask this, so I'll ask it here.  With this next location we want to use Square for Restaurant.  Do we have to have it at all of our locations, or can we only subscribe for the new location?  We like what we have at our current locations, but would love to use Square for Restaurant at the new location.

[AshleyK]

Hey @reddsgrill thanks for asking and welcome to the Seller Community! 

In response to your first question, this is still a feature request we are tracking. There are a few workarounds posted by Tom that may prove helpful to you in the meantime. You can also use our Team Management feature to create a general "House Employee" and use that email/password log in for each location. All the permissions will be limited to what you may need and it will allow them more autonomy with logging in. 

For your second question, when you subscribe to Square for Restaurants you will have to pay for every active location tied to that Square account. 

I hope this helps and please let me know if you have any other questions!

[lpgoakland]

My situation is similar to yours and I would love for Square to add a House Account charge option. As others have stated, it’s not a priority (and never will be) because there’s no income in it for Square when checks are received for payment. Most of my corporate clients pay by check after an invoice is received. 

From a bookkeeping standpoint, I’m not sure your process would be sound. The “charge account” customer transactions would show as income on your Square POS daily sales reports. And then the sales would show as income again on your financial management system, QuickBooks for example, when you invoice and receive the actual payments.

How do you eliminate the duplicate sales entries to keep your income reports balanced? 

[AshleyK]

Hey! I appreciate your time in sharing your thoughts here. 🙂

Also, to answer your question regarding duplicate sales entries, the only way to remedy that will be to refund a duplicate sale as we cannot delete transactions at this time. 

[lpgoakland]

Understood. As I thought, not the best accounting method. 

[Joe]

We appreciate your honesty here, @Ipgoakland - we are always looking for ways to improve our software and features, and your feedback goes a long way! 

[ChefRay]

We use the square system in several schools and have to get 150+ kids through the lunch line in less than 15 minutes. We have a few kids that the school pays for and subsequently we have to invoice them - a house account would be great. 

OUR WORKAROUND: I placed our corporate credit card to each of these students so it just charges the card on file  - at the end of each week I invoice the school for those purchases and charge them the fees associated with the charges. Since i only have about 10 students that need to be kept track of, it takes less than 10 mins to reconcile and bill the school at the end of the week. Bonus is my AmEx points get a little boost each month. My accountant has a separate line in quickbooks to keep track and he reconciles that against the check that comes from the school. Again, its not perfect but it works for us!

[still_waiting]

Hi team Square, I know that you are still working on a house account tender option. However, I am concerned as this is a basic necessity for a large portion of your customers. I'm sure I don't need to mention that this is a basic function offered by nearly all of your competitors. What is the real timeline for this, or should we look elsewhere?

Thank you!

Sincerely,

Concerned