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…

[EJ_]

Hi @Crave

Payments aren't recorded and completed until they're paid for with some type of tender method, including Cash, Check, or Other tender.

[lpgoakland]

Corporate customers do not want an Invoice for each order. They want one Invoice, typically once a month, for everything that was purchased on their House Account during a certain period. Square needs to add a House Account feature. Other systems, such as Revel, have a House Account feature on their POS software. 

[lpgoakland]

Square needs to add this feature. Many of their customers would find this very useful!

[DeborahBCohen]

I will be doing a school book fair. Instead of paying at time of purchase, each student will be billed to their school accounts.  I still plan on running the purchases through as cash sales on Square for accounting and stock purposes.  At the end, I'll run a spread sheet to show how much each student  spent.  Parents will be asked beforehand how much money their child can spend.  Is there a way on Square to set up a "house account"?  For example, add in Joey Jones as a customer and give him a credit of $25.    

[Chad]

Hello @DeborahBCohen!

This is interesting. Currently we don't offer a house credit through the Point of Sale system, but I think I might have a work around for you. It would involve using Square Gift Cards. You could create an customer profile for each student and give them a gift card with the amount their parents specified. The profile will allow you to track what the student purchased and the gift card will make sure they can't over spend. This method will allow you to keep track of inventory without processing any money. 

The only downside is you'll have to create a transaction to load the gift cards with credit. You can select cash as the option, but these will show up on your sales report, so you'll have to take this into account. 

[Boatlanding]

Before I switched my service over to Square I was told that the house account feature was going to be set up soon. I need this service also.

Have you found an easier way than to create an invoice for each transaction? As far as I know there isn't a way to pay multiple invoices under the same customer name.

[Helen]

This post was updated in March 2021.

Great question @alittleoffbase!

We are currently building a House Accounts feature for Square for Restaurants and when it's ready we'll certainly announce it. Subscribe to our Product Updates to be the first to learn about new launches.

In the meantime, you can use one of the following workarounds instead:

1. eGift Cards: You can sell an eGift Card or you can apply a 100% discount to the eGift Card sale, and then add the eGift Card to the customer's profile  (or employee/loyal customer's profile) from the app. When a server closes the bill for this customer/employee they select Card On File as the payment type > they then add the specific customer profile to the sale in order charge their eGift Card on file.
2. Comp reasons: Create a comp reason with a specific name like "Employee: Name + Dollar amount + Date", and comp tickets to that amount.

As I mentioned we'll let you know about any updates as soon as they are available! 

[Boatlanding]

Has there been any update on setting up house accounts in Square? When I originally started with Square last year I was told that this was a feature that would be available soon. The gift card option doesn’t work for my business, I’m currently using the “Other payment” option with notes added with the customers name and then adding it to a scheduled invoice but this causes duplicated sales reporting and is a very manual process.

[Tom]

Thanks for checking in on this, @Boatlanding. I don't have an updates available on hand, but I'm surfacing your post with our Restaurants folks. We'll be back with any available developments ASAP.

[Tom]

Sorry to keep you waiting—I was able to touch base with the Restaurants Team and there are not any updates that I can access and share out.

Another suggested workaround: you might consider loading a Gift Card and saving as a Card on File to the customer profile. From there, you'll be able to deduct from the balance. If you're billing customers at the end of the month, this would be the closest we could get for now.

Please don't hesitate to let us know if any questions or concerns remain. Appreciate your patience as we continue to expand our payment options based on seller feedback!