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?

[kovtuno]

I need this option too ASAP 😃

[ac2]

How long will it take to input the feature of entering partial quantities? for example "quantity 1.5" ...

[ComputerGal]

Well, ac2. I created this thread a year ago. And had been calling tech support for another year before that, asking how to implement partial quantities on invoices. So don't hold your breath. Hopefully the more of us that keep this thread active, maybe... one day... 

[ac2]

I noticed that... how sad... seems like such a simple feature...

[AlanA]

It has not been fixed because making upgrades that square can charge for helps their bottom line. Spending a couple of days programming, testing, and debugging does not give them any extra earnings so the see it as not beneficial because they know we will continue to use the program. At least until a new startup comes along that doesn’t need to see a certain amount of growth each year out of the company. Gotta love greed. 

[bhagara]

count me as one of those that can't use this system as it is.  Maybe someone can let me know when this is ready for Primetime.  Right now, this is a major fail... and weirder, there's no good reason for it.

Seems that Quickbooks has this worked out and they'll take a credit card for me.

just sayin.

[Tom]

Hello @bhagara, thank you for taking the time to reach out here. While we do not have any updates available on this request, I'll be surfacing your insight with our Product Liaison team.

In addition, you can subscribe to this thread as we'll circle back with any new developments that come through. In the meantime, hopefully lior's and Sean's posts help with more context. We'd love to be able to support more sellers — please do keep in touch.

[bhagara]

I asked around with people in my business (I write databases) and everyone had a story of how they worked around it.  

... as I mentioned before, my Quickbooks account can send invoices and accept payments for me.  The process of getting that setup was no more than 10 minutes time and was able to invoice and accept a payment immediately.  

All that is beside the point... Square is incapable of selling 1 and a half of something.  That seems like the tip of the software design iceberg to me.  What else wasn’t thought through?  Especially when selling time, it’s unthinkable that you’d be billing for only an integer’s worth of an item.

good luck with that.

[emms1023]

Wow! 16 months later and they haven't fixed this? And there is no way I can reach anyone to talk to about this. How are other people getting around this??

[WolfsdenLLC]

The BEST way, without the feature installed IMO is to create "sub"invoices. 

For example, I use WDE20171210-001 type naming for mine, WDE is my identifier, 2017 the year, 12 the month, 10 the day, 001 the first invoice of the day.  Now just add -A, -B, -C etc at the end, each listing the main total in description and go from there... Bit of a huge pain, but since "our dev team is aware and working on it" is the quote of the day, the only other option is PayPal or another of the card services....

[emms1023]

Thanks, but that seems way too complicated for my clients. I want them to be able to easily see what hours they are being billed for. 

[bhagara]

agreed.  It's why I don't use the square system.  I had originally signed up for it thinking it would be the way I'd be moving forward.  This one issue made me set it aside as a non-starter.  Frankly I can't understand how everyone at Square missed this issue and even now seem unconcerned about it.  

The ability to sell time has always been the main feature used in any sort of billing system and certainly nobody should be expected to sell only whole hours, but that's basically what you'd have to do if using Square.  

Looking at it from their perspective I see that they're main concern has always been the bottom line of the invoice, not the line items.  I suppose that another way to deal with it would be to create the invoice in another system where you have more granular control of the line items on the invoice and just move the total to a Square invoice.  In that way, you could make the line item say what you need it to and put a custom amount on the line item.  Clearly that leaves you maintaining two systems which is less than optimal.

Good luck.

[bhagara]

I don't understand how 'sub-invoices' solves this problem.  What I believe is the solution (if you're intent on using Square) is to setup products (Items?) that are parts of hours.

On one end of the convenience scale (if any of this is convenient) is to setup an item for an Hour, an item for half an hour, and one for 15 minutes.  Using this method you could sell 3 and a half hours as 3 hours and one Half hour.  This is a ridiculous way to do this, but it would work.

Another method would be to just sell your time as 15 minute increments and that 3.5 hours would just be quantity 14 of the Item called 15 minutes.

It seems clear that Square doesn't feel this is all that important since solving it would require some kind of development effort ($$$) and they've certainly not promised that they're doing anything about it.

In my case, I spent 10 minutes adding credit card processing to my Quickbooks online subscription (no extra cost) and sent my invoices from there.  Now my invoices can be paid by credit card or EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer).

Can't say enough good about that setup.

[emms1023]

This again seems like a hard way for my clients to understand their invoice. "Why am I getting billed for 17 hours when you were here for 8.5 hours?" "no you're getting billed for 17 half hours because I use a program that is too stupid to be able to just bill for 8.5" 

[AlanA]

So quickbooks allows you to accept credit cards with no additional fees except the subscription? I am looking into this today!!!! 

[bhagara]

To be clear, Quickbooks treats a credit card transaction exactly the way that Square does... there's a fee for each transaction, but it's < 3% and I'm cool with paying $3 out of every $100 for the convenience of it.  We pay that same basic amount for *any* credit card charging system.

But no, Quickbooks doesn't charge extra for the feature... which means if you're not using it, you're not paying for it.

[OUTKAST_MX]

This reply was created from merging an existing thread: How can I bill for labor hours in increments

I just switched over from Quickbooks, literally just created my first two invoices.. While I was excited to start using square, I'm quickly becoming very disappointed. As a repair shop owner, I have to bill in 1/4 hour increments. The gentleman I spoke with on the phone from square told me to create 3 different labor items, which works, but I do not want to clutter my invoices- example 1.75 hours billed would have 3 labor lines. The other option is to use quantity 4 of 1/4 hour labor line item. Don't like that either. These options do not come across professional on an invoice!!! Am I going to have to go back to Quickbooks?!

[RHatch]

You can also create an Labor item with no price.  Then on your invoice when you select labor it will ask you for the price.  Enter the amount and add to the item note the number of hours. 

[Chad]

Hello @OUTKAST_MX, I think the suggestion @RHatch made is your best bet for keeping your invoices looking clean and allowing you to bill for incremental hours. 

Please let us know if you need help setting this up. 🙂

[johnsmith11]

Hello,

Would this get fixed in the future?  This is not great as we need to show the hours against the line items for the csutomer invoice.

Thanks,

John

[Tom]

Hey @johnsmith11, thanks for checking in. I don't have access to a specific timeline that we can share out right now but I'll be sure to surface your post with our Invoices Team.

For now, you might need to create a specific item and associate the price with it as RHatch mentioned above. For example, the item name could be "1.5 Hours of Labor" and then you could enter in the amount due as you create the invoice. For more information on creating variable priced items, have a look here: How to Create Items on your Square Dashboard. This would allow your invoice to display the hours against the line item within the invoice itself.

If this doesn't get you where you need to be, you might want to take a look at some of our invoice partners as they may offer a solution: App Marketplace > Invoicing & Services.

I realize that the item workaround is manual, but I hope this helps.