Best Practices - Settling Bulk Tips/Auth Slips

[vkk]

Hello,

Looking to see some best practices out there when settling payments at the end of a shift/close of day. 

If you have a stack of receipts needing to be settled, what are some efficient ways to speed up that process? I know you can sort by either receipt number or amount but in a workflow of a stack, do you just search each one down the list or sort the receipts first by receipt number, time, or amount physically then settle?

That goes into another question: what's the best way to tell which "merchant"/auth slip you're missing? If you add up the auth receipts then compare it to the sales report of the day/time and you're off by a good amount, what's the best way to tell which receipts your missing to reprint?

[isabelle]

Hey @vkk-

Thanks for posting in the Seller Community. 

Any insight here @ACAcatering @RHatch @ryanwanner?

[ryanwanner]

Hello @vkk ! (And thanks for the ping @isabelle !)

Lets start with a question of my own: are you tracking things by employee? I'm assuming you are, but if you're not the steps are slightly different. I'll show you some steps for employee tracking.

To answer your second question first: You can create a Custom Report on your Dashboard that will show you the counts of tickets each server runs. It would be nice if you could click through to get a full list of tickets, but this is a good start.

To do this: Dashboard -> Reports -> Custom Report. Create New.

-Add Report: Team Sales

-When it's done populating (it can take a while when you're editing the report, it will speed up when viewing normally), hover your mouse over the top right section of the report (inside the dotted lines). You'll get some options. Choose Display By then Payment Method.

-Save the report.

When you view the report, you can then click on the little > symbol next to each payment type and get a breakdown of the # of tickets per employee. Match their auth slips with that number and you can get a good idea of what is missing.

Yes, you can do this without a custom report, but I'm lazy. 🙂 I prefer to set up a report that is two clicks to the information versus mucking about with settings each time I want to know things. You *may* be able to do something like this from the Restaurants front end, but I'm only using the regular Square POS so I wouldn't know where to start. Sorry!

As for settlement, I recommend sorting by time stamp. To me it just made things easier when it came to organizing the tickets. Otherwise, it's just a long slog through adjusting. I do recommend adjusting the zero tip tickets too so they disappear from the "need to adjust" queue.

Hope this helps!

[vkk]

Thanks so much @isabelle for the references and thanks @ryanwanner for the reply!

We currently are in a test phase of Square. We have been using a typical Verifone Credit Card terminal for many years and our staff has relied on a specific workflow and certain reports (like a report for each brand type card and a detailed transaction report) to achieve a balanced settlement.

This is where one of my questions originated from. We currently run the Verifone card type totals report (visa, MasterCard, Amex, Discover), then sort the merchant copy slips by those card types, add up each stack’s total then compare it to the individual card brand type total amounts to see if we’re off/missing a slip. If we’re good with 3 brand types but off on the Visa amount, that’s when we’ll run a detailed transaction report and hunt down the missing slip.

This whole workflow is what I’m looking to change, which is where my other question came from as to how to efficiently adjust tip amounts using square. Our staff has gotten very used to the Verifone system workflow with the specific keys to adjust tips then settle. I’ve seen the Square video and read up on the support article and seems neat but looking for a real world example.

What device do you find easiest to use to adjust tips and settle? We currently have a Square Terminal but not sure if an iPad would be best for typing purposes.

Also, for team management, we haven’t enabled that function since we’re still in a testing phase. We’re using the Square Terminal right now to just take payments. Would enabling team management help us in this situation or further down the line with a added menu and order ticketing?

[ryanwanner]

Hey @vkk --

First, welcome to the Square ecosystem! Once you get used to it, you'll never look back to Verifone. 🙂

To be honest, I haven't looked into a report breakdown on what card type was run, Square makes it where you don't have to get that granular with reporting to get the job done. I bet that there is a way to do it, I just haven't looked that deeply.

But now that you've described your setup, I think I have an easier solution that will eliminate the settlement process completely:

Since you have the Terminal, I would take the merchant/customer slips out of the equation. Each time you have a customer who is ready to pay, bring the terminal to them! Have their ticket up on the screen and hit the Charge button in the upper right. The next screen will show the total bill item by item. The customer can then hit "accept and pay" (or something like that) at the bottom of the screen. The next screen prompts the customer to enter/swipe/tap their card. They then have a few screens (tip, receipt, loyalty) to interact with. They can get a receipt direct from the printer on the terminal too if they desire.

Since the customer enters the tip at transaction time, you don't have to worry about settling the tips at all. It is automatically done with Square unless you have the "Customer signs on printed receipt" option enabled on the terminal settings. Keep it disabled and everything is done for you! 🙂

In order to make this work moving from the Restaurants app to the terminal, make sure you have the "Save Open Tickets" option enabled on both the tablet and the terminal. When you save a ticket on one device it will show on the other within 2 minutes.

As for Team Management, I highly recommend it. Not only is there accountability for each server and their bank, you have access to a LOT of reports showing how each employee is doing versus it being all lumped into one report.

[isabelle]

Love the collaboration here! Thanks so much @ryanwanner and @vkk!