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Gratuity based on pre-discounted total

Hey all:

 

We are a bar that utilizes Square for our transactions. We have various percentage-based discounts (happy hour, industry, etc); however, we would like to list the gratuity choices as a percentage of the pre-discounted amount. For example, if the original bill is $100 and a 50% happy hour discount is applied: Square currently lists the 20% option as $10 (20% of 50) instead of $20. Does anyone know if it's possible to modify these final gratuity values to reflect the prediscounted total? Thank you!

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1 Verified Answer
EJ_
Verified Answer

Re: Gratuity based on pre-discounted total

Hi there. 

 

Unfortunately both smart tips and tip percentages are calculated based on the total sale amount that you'll be charging your customer, not the price of the items or services rendered. 

 

I'll gladly pass this feedback over to our Product Team, and if we decide to make a change around this we'll be sure to announce it. 

 

There might be a work-around that one of your fellow Square Sellers currently use, so hopefully they can chime in and help out. 

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Square Community Moderator

Hi there. 

 

Unfortunately both smart tips and tip percentages are calculated based on the total sale amount that you'll be charging your customer, not the price of the items or services rendered. 

 

I'll gladly pass this feedback over to our Product Team, and if we decide to make a change around this we'll be sure to announce it. 

 

There might be a work-around that one of your fellow Square Sellers currently use, so hopefully they can chime in and help out. 

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This situation is causing a lot of strife with my staff as well.  They feel they are getting penalized for my business offering discounts since their tips are based on the discounted price instead of the original cost of the service.  They are asking me to charge the client full price then refund the discount in a separate transaction. I feel this is an awkward situation at best.  A subtotal feature would be great so that a tip can be left before the discount is applied.

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Hello @BEAUOAKLAND and @Igg

 

I recently merged your thread into this one since this question has been asked before. Currently this is a feature request that we're collecting feedback for. I will make sure to flag your comments for our Product Team! 

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This should be triggered at the category level where you can calculate the tip percentage.

 

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Square Community Moderator

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this @crovean

 

If anything new comes up in regards to this we'll be sure to chime back in with an update. 

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Any work around for this yet?

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Square Community Moderator

Hi @mullersciderhou

 

Nothing new to report around this, as tips are still calculated using the final sale total, but it's definitely gaining some momentum with seller advocacy. 

 

I'll bring this up to our Point of Sale team and hopefully they can reprioritize this for everyone. 

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Any Update?

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This reply was created from merging an existing thread: “Tipping on non-discounted rate”. The original author has been notified via email.

 

When a business offers discounts on services it is customary to tip employees based on the price/rate before discount applied. It would be great if Square would add toggle similar to tax/ before tax tipping.

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I own a salon and offer discounts on clients that continue to rebook.  Many of the staff feel penalized by not getting a tip based on the original price of the service with these clients. Since Square doesn't seem to offer a solultion I am thinking the only way around this is by charging the full price and having the client tip on the full price and then initiate a refund in their presence of the amount of the discount. Any thoughts?  

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I just want to add to this that I think this should be a HUGE issue for Squares team to address for the service industry. As a former server/waitress I went to a local diner tonight to eat & was pleasantly surprised that the business owner used Square just as I do for my business (although my business is not in the service industry where tipping is taken into consideration). We received a discounted tab & when the top options came up on the screen I was taken aback. And I immediately felt awful for the servers there when someone's ticket is discounted. I noticed immediately that the tip offers were based on the discounted total. Of course I chose the highest gratuity percentage seeing as I am a former waitress in that industry prior to becoming a business owner myself. But even in doing so it was less then what I would have preferred to tip the server. So I left, went to the atm, & brought back cash in addition to the tip I left through my debit card transaction. But I told my husband in that moment that Square must have some sort of work around to this that I could pass on to the business owner because as we all know most clients will just click the percentage & not pay any attention to the fact that the person providing the service is actually being cheated due to the gratuity being based on the discounted total. I vowed to hop on the board tonight to find a work around so I could pass it on to the business owner of this restaurant because I felt so awful for these servers. I'm sad to see that there isn't really any work around to it 😞 

 

I'm sure the service industry makes up a great deal of Square Merchants so I will be praying that Square develops something soon that will be effective in having the customers/clients tip based off of the total price prior to any sales/discounts.

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Admin

Thank you very much for your post @speakmountain. I do understand how important this is to servers and service-industry businesses using Square. I will share your experience with the Payments team, this is really great feedback.

 

I wish I had an update for you right now but as soon as we have any news on this request we will post in this thread to inform everyone. 

 

Thanks again. 

️ Helen
Seller Community Manager

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Has there been a fix yet? This is the only thing holding me back from switching to square from another system. 

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Hello @Inkbeautybar, we're still collecting feedback for this request. We will make sure to post an update when we have news! 

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How many unhappy square customers are needed for this gratuity issue to be fixed? 

I have been with square for many years and luckily do not have issues and am lucky enough to have understanding employees that take their tiny tips with a grain of salt. Enough is enough though. People just do not pay attention when tipping thinking they are so great for leaving 25% when in actuality that amounts to a few bucks for a discounted or gift card used $60 service. 

 

I just wanted to add my 2 cents in so that it could add to your collected data. Please change these tipping options to include the percentage total BEFORE discounts AND Gift card redemptions. 

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Admin

Hey @bodytreats, thank you for taking the time to check on this request. I went to look for further updates but wasn't able to uncover further information. I'm surfacing your post with a member of our Point of Sale Team and will circle back with any other details as they become available.

️ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
Find step-by-step help in our Support Center
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The work around that I use is to list the "standard" gratuity (15%, 20% ) as a tax, but in the description I put "gratuity". I tell all the clients at checkout that the standard 20% gratuity has already been added to the total but they can change it if they want to adjust it. 99% leave it that way or add additional.  The "taxes" (gratuity) are added pre-discount. Then I do any discount as a payment by using "other" and list the discount type in description. Long way around it but it works. 

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Hi @Sherrilynne,  How would this work if you actually need to charge tax for an item?

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You set up multiple taxes. And you choose which items are charged which taxes. For example if you're charging sales tax on retail you can set that tax on only retail items.  For services you can set up gratuity and sales tax if applicable. And if your charge any other service fees etc you can do separate ones for those. You name the item so it can say tax, gratuity, service fee, etc.

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Beta Member

This reply was created from merging an existing thread: Do we have the option to apply the tip % before discounts?

 

It is customary to add tip to the total before discounts are applied, but there doesn't appear to be an option to do this automatically in the Square system.  This means lower tips for my employees during happy hour and an incentive not to give customers the discounts that they should.  Can we get this feature added?

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