How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

[FarmMom]

We sell our farm's meat and poultry at farmer's markets, on farm and by delivery, and price mostly by the pound.  I'd love to have the ability to set the quantity to a decimal input, so I can enter the weight on the package meat and be able to have a set price on the item, but that is still not available.  So most of our items are just "variable" pricing, and I have to have a calculator in one hand, or go to back and forth from the calculator app on my phone to Square, to calculate the price on all our beef and pork.  The only other option I've been told is to set a price for .01 or .001 lb, and enter the decimal amount in as a whole number.  So if a Pork Shoulder Roast is $8.00/lb, and weights are in tenths, like 2.78 lbs, I'd have to set the price for the item as $.08 and input the quantity as 278, since it only takes whole numbers.  This seems like an expensive accident just waiting to happen.  And trying to explain why I have to do this to customers, and how it would show up on their receipts, just doesn't seem worth it, even if it would save time not having to calulate everything while inputing.  Are their any other farmers, butchers, or others who price by decimal quantities doing it this way successfully?  If so, do customers care?

[Helen]

Hello @MStolp, thanks for your post. This is currently a feature request that the Invoices team is tracking in this thread. When we have a solution for managing partial hours with Invoices we'll post in this thread to let you know.

[kelleykphoto]

How is this still not available after almost 3 years? It seems like such a simple request. Lots of people need to charge customers in quarter hours or other partial quantities (pounds, yards, etc.). 

[becbec]

This reply was created from merging an existing thread: Charging services by the hour

I cannot believe that after all these years Square still has not enabled the ability to enter fractions in the quantity of an item!

We charge services by the hour. So if we work 2.5 hours on a job, we only have 2 options for invoicing. 

1 - Charge a line item for hourly rate for a qty 2 PLUS ANOTHER line item for ANOTHER item or modifier for 0.5 hours at a 0.5 hrly rate.

     - This looks stupid and unprofessional on the invoice!

     - Is confusing to the customer and sometimes needs to be explained, which makes Square look just as bad!

2 - Charge a single line item with a variable charge which we enter after manually computing the correct total charge.  

     - It will always show a qty of "one" which can be perceived as unprofessional looking on the invoice, and possibly deceiving.

     - This allows way too much room for error in calculation.

     - It doesn't give a business owner an accurate report showing total hours worked. 

WHAT IS SO HARD ABOUT FIXING THIS PROBLEM?!?

[Helen]

@becbec I'm sorry that this feature isn't available yet. I don't have a timeline to share when Square Invoices will be optimized for businesses who need record and accept payment for partial hours. We'll change the status of this thread as soon as we have good news to share.

[thenerddevelope]

I really need to enter partial quantities as well. Please make this feature possible. 0.33 hours, 0.5 hours, etc. 

[agrater]

Square has been "looking into" this dead-simple function for years.  The choice is to send out a Square invoice that makes us look bad or use PayPal and ignore their odious politics, which is what I reluctantly do.

[launchpadmedia]

It is imperitive that this functionality to bill for partial hours is added before I can fully use the Square invoicing system with my clients. It is really disappointing that partial quantities were not built into the system from the beginning, but it's even more embarrassing that your users keep asking for this over the past three years and it is still not possible. This is another enthusiastic plea to please bring us the ability to bill in fractional hours (.25, .50, .75)!

[thenerddevelope]

Do you have an estimate on when this feature will be ready? @Helen 

Thank you.

[capslockon]

I'm sad. I was so looking forward to this update but then saw that I STILL can't charge for partial quantities, such as quarter hours.

Users have been asking for this since 2016, Square. What gives?

Please, PLEASE move this up in priority!

See https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Feature-Requests-Invoices/Can-you-enter-partial-quantities-for-In... for EIGHT pages of requests (over 80 posts).

[jmartca]

We still need these options... wish for 2019

[barry_mason]

How to create items which multiply hours worked time hourly charge. I have several hourly rates and the number of hours worked vary and can be in 1/4 hr increments...I have a service business

[Helen]

@barry_mason Currently this is a feature request - and it's a popular one too! We've shared a workaround here but I've also added your post to this Feature Request post where we're tracking how many people would use this and how it would help them. This means you'll automatically be notified of any updates! 

[agrater]

Helen, the workaround gets to the right number but is not acceptable.  It makes us sellers look like we don't know how to invoice partial units.  For example, if someone sells a product by the pound, he or she wants to bill for 268.5 pounds, not 4,296 ounces or 537 half-pounds.

Most of all, next to fixing it, we sellers want Square to understand this is not a feature request.  It's core functionality that has been ignored for YEARS.

[becks]

This is something our company needs greatly. It's time consuming to do manually, and gives way too much room for employee error. 

[seanmccaughan]

This is a seriously unsatisfactory answer to this problem. I need to be able to charge in percentages of an hour. I can't do that on Square??? I was just about to transition from Quickbooks, but now I don't know what to do.

[katieand]

Hi all - our team is now inviting beta testers for decimal quantities in invoices and iOS POS. Learn more on this thread and comment if you'd like to sign up. 

[Helen]

@seanmccaughan I'm very sorry for the frustration this has caused! I've added your post to this thread as we are beta testing a new feature for sellers interested in using ​​​​​​​decimal quanties with Invoices and the iOS version of the Point of Sale app.

I hope you can participate but if not we'll share more updates in this thread as soon as they're available! 

[hipsterforhire]

Hear hear ICS-Sean! Feel like we’ve been preaching to a deaf choir for years. I’m all about Dubsado now.

[DDRight]

Have been using Square for almost 2 years now (and prefer it over Paypal). As a services provider, the thing that drives me batty -- and I'd love for you to update and improve -- is the inability to do non whole numbers in the Quantity section of an Invoice.

I bill different rates for different services, and MANY times I'm not spending a whole hour on a particular service. Which means I need multiple rates for multiple rates so I can account for 15 minutes or 30 minutes or 45 minutes for a corporate customer, an individual customer, a writing/editing customer, a customer who needs both writing and in-person sessions... It's insanity.

What I'm requesting is for Unit Quantity to be available (and calculate) as .25, .50, .75 increments of every whole number, so I can create one line item for each service rendered for each client, instead of this weird list of fees that looks unprofessional and confuses clients and me, frankly, when I review it. I included two different examples so you can get a more visual understanding.

Happy to share more details, if you need. Thanks for considering this and PLEASE add this to your feature list. And please consider your Service Provider customers more than you're doing now. Not all of us have physical items.

Example of how I have to break out fractions of time spent for one client, when charging different fees for different services.Another example -- different client with different rate.

[RHatch]

This has been asked for many times.  Maybe it will come in the future.  In the meantime, you could try to just have an item with a 15 Minute rate.  Then when you bill for an hour it is a quantity of 4 if you do an hour and 15 minutes it would be a quantity of 5.  Your item could just be Career Consulting with a rate of $50.00 for a 15-minute segment.  I wouldn't put a description in the item.  When you ring it, add a note to the item with the actual time like 1:15 mins session.  This will clean it up, make it easier to read and understand and then the Qty really doesn't matter too much.

[DDRight]

That's definitely a better approach than the one I have, thanks. Still hoping Square considers how many of us are service-based versus product. 🙂