How do you cancel a sale?

[Matt_Marino]

The title of this thread was updated from its original title: “cancel”

Hello all,

I'm brand new to Square and just received my reader today. In the process of testing and getting familiar with it a created a sale and swiped my card. I now want to cancel the sale and clear all the information but for the life of me, can't figure out how to do it. I've been searching support and the community for the better part of 45 minutes and can't find the information. It must so obvious, no one else has ever had to ask how to do it.

[VanKalkerFarms · Accepted solution]

You can refund your transaction, info here https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/6116-process-refunds

There isn't a way to delete the transaction, but by refunding it your books will be balanced.

[Juliem]

I want to cancel the sale because it should have been for $83.20 and my finger hit the 2 again so she was charge $832.02!!! Issuing a refund is not a good option for a client!!! It says it will take days for her to use that money that now has a hold in her account!! This is very bad for my business!

[puka]

Hi @Juliem - It looks like our Facebook team has already escalated your case to CS who will be able to help you further. They will follow up via email so keep an eye on your inbox.

[shbowen]

This isn't much help for the rest of us and it seems such an obvious eventuality to prepare for.  Is there a publicly available solution?

[VanKalkerFarms]

The solution is to refund the sale fully or do a partial refund to get to the correct amount that should have been charged., there isn't a way to delete the sale and the money would still be tied up in the refund process even if you could cancel it.

If you fully refund an incorrect sale and then want to charge it correctly the customer would need to be present to charge the card again, but if you just refund the partial amount that was overcharged you will be all set and not need to reprocess the sale with the card present.

[SLOJES]

Wow, this is really archaic and cumbersome. For a company that so obviously works hard to make things simple this is frankly bizzare. If I make a little error while ringing someone up, maybe I touched the wrong item or touched it twice instead of once or the customer changes their mind and says never mind, are you really saying there is no way to Edit, or backout of the sale? What if they walk out and you don't have their card to swipe? Is the device then stuck and unable to ring anyone else up? Please tell me I'm an idiot and am just missing something.

[VanKalkerFarms]

@SLOJES, you can always delete an item or the entire cart before you complete a sale.  This is talking about after you have completed a sale and charged their credit card.

[modehexe]

I hear you. This is so not elegant. I use Quickbooks as well and there one can void a transaction up until 4pm or so which is the cut off time for batching out.

[TDH-Boutique]

I had the same issue and couldn't believe there was no way to delete an item if a customer changes their mind after adding the item to cart or if I accidentally added 1 item twice.

What I did was...I am using my cellphone not sure if it will be the same on their systems.  I closed the app completely and reopened the app and the items were cleared from the cart. Tedious? I know but I was happy the items were no longer in the cart.  Hope this helps someone.

[instructorre]

I have had this happen too but i have the reader not a stand so I will just close the app and reopen. That way no one is charged for my mistake. 

[_Violet]

Hi @instructorre - Thanks for reaching out to us here on the Square Seller Community👋 Sorry to hear that you've had some trouble with this.

When you're on the "review sale" screen you can swipe from right to left on the item that you want to remove from the sale, similar to closing an app on your phone.

I hope this information is helpful but please do let me know if you have any additional questions 🙂

[Paul_Sh]

I just figured in out!!  You tap the 'Current Sale' at the top of the screen and then swipe from the right side of the item.  The 'Delete' shows up and you tap it.  That is all there is to it.  It sure wasn't too obvious.

[JustinC]

@Paul_Sh Glad you figured it out!! 

[BCJ_LEW]

Exactly Paul_SH.  But I am trying to figure out how you cancel or back out of the sale if you have selected the CHARGE bar (on a square small terminal) and you want to cancel it, either because they changed their mind or don't have their card with them???  I know I can select the left arrow at the top of the screen which takes me to a screen where I can select 'CASH' and then go in and cancel the cash sale later, but is there any other way to cancel the sale without doing this step?

[BCJ_LEW]

Oh wow. I just figured out my own answer.  Once you select CHARGE and the screen is waiting for the credit card, select the <- back arrow in the upper left corner, and then select the X in the upper left corner and voila, you are back to the screen that is before you pushed CHARGE.  You can now delete the items from the current sale at the top of the screen by tapping on current sale.  YAY!!!