Can you set up an item with a negative price? (For returns)

[roughdraftny]

Hi there. We are a bar that sells beer to-go in growlers, which we "sell" for a $12 deposit. When someone brings the growler back, they should be able to return it and get their $12 back.  I have not been able to find a way to issue a return for their growler unless I have their credit card or receipt number, which is too much to ask for in my opinion. I want to just be able to type in "growler return" and have an item that rings up as -$12 and take $12 out of the drawer.  

I have a similar quesiton about returns in general -- sometimes people bring back a book or another item they'd like to return, but they don't have the receipt or a credit card.  Is there a way to do returns without either one of these two things? Right now we do it manually but then we are scrambling to account for the money missing from the drawer. 

Thank you! 

[Chad]

Hello @roughdraftny! This is an interesting case. 

Currently Square Point of Sale does not have the ability to create an item with a negative price.

Quick question, when a customer returns a growler are you giving them cash in exchange regardless of their payment method or are you issuing a partial refund from the transaction? 

Currently the only way to search for transactions is by receipt or the last four digits of a credit card. If they don't have this information you can scroll to the date they made their purchase on the transaction list.

If a customer didn't have any of this information on hand at the time of a return I would be a little wary. Especially when it comes to books. Without a receipt or credit card to look up the purchase how can you be sure this individual didn't purchase the book on Amazon, and is attempting to return it at your business to make a profit? This is just my personal take on returns with out receipts, last 4 digits of the credit card, or the purchase date. 

I'll keep an eye out for your reply! 

[roughdraftny]

Right, we wouldn’t generally take back a book we couldn’t prove was purchased at our store. But occasionally a regular has wanted to return something we know came from us, and if they don’t have the receipt or the credit card on them, it’s annoying to tell them we literally cannot issue a return. Mostly though this applies to the growlers. We would just give cash back in most cases, rather than refund the credit card. And it’s too difficult to ask every person who buys a growler to hold onto the receipt if they ever want to bring it back. The growlers are branded so they obviously come from us; people shouldn’t have to prove they bought it here. Thanks for your help! 

[Chad]

@roughdraftny okay that makes sense now with the context! 😄

In regards to the growlers have you considered using Cash Drawer Management? 

You could use the Paid In/Out feature to track when you take money out of the drawer for returned growlers. You can even add a description to confirm what the withdrawal was for. 

Let me know what you think! 

[roughdraftny]

Yes that’s probably our best bet and a workaround we have discussed. Still not 100% solution because ideally we’d like the negative money to be reflected in our net sales, as a return would be. But a payout is certainly better than nothing. If more options are ever added for returns on specific items without receipts or credit cards, we’d certainly appreciate them! 

[Chad]

I'll make sure to share your feedback with our Point of Sale Team @roughdraftny! 

If you have questions in the future, please feel free to reach out to me! 

[Dcicci]

Does anyone from square even read these threads? This issue has been brought up for years now and still nothing has been done. It should be a very simple fix.

I create invoices for my wholesale customers on my desktop. If they have returns for some reason I cannot issue a credit on an invoice. Why is it we still can't create a negative priced line item to resolve this issue?