How can you pause or suspend a recurring invoice?

[Koawood]

[The title of this thread has been edited from the original: Temporary Pause on Recurring Series]

With the current COVID-19 situation, many business are temporarily closing. For those of us who have recurring payments (subscriptions or series) with our clients for services we cannot currently offer, how do we pause or suspend these series?

[#2]

Hey @Koawood-

Thanks for posting in the Seller Community.

We don't have a way of temporarily pausing or suspending recurring Invoices at this time. You can either end the current Invoices series (and create a new one when things get up and running), or you can adjust the next payment date to extend the time frame so they won't be charged this or next month. If you'd like to adjust the payment date, head to the Invoices section of your Square Dashboard and select the recurring invoice you'd like to change. From there, select Edit Series, then locate the Next Invoice button to make the adjustment:

We realize that recent events have impacted our seller's day-to-day business and sales. I hope this suggestion is helpful. Having a suspend or pause button for Square Invoices is a fantastic feature request that we received in the past, and input like yours is very helpful to the product teams that develop these features. Please let me know if you have any questions about this information, or if there's anything else we can do for you during this time✨

[#3]

Hi @kfunch, welcome to the seller community and thanks for bringing this up!

You can edit the payment amount and date from your Invoices tab, though the ability to automatically send a prorated invoice in a recurring series is not available. For now, I would suggest sending a single invoice for the initial partial amount, then you can create the recurring invoice series for the full amount when the next payment is due.

I can see how this feature would help streamline your workflow. Rest assured that I'll be sharing your post with our Product Liaison team. We'll circle back with any updates or additional options as they're available.

Thanks for your patience, and let us know if you have any other questions. 🙂

[kfunch]

I have a subscription offering that bills and ships each season. I have a new customer I would like to set up on the recurring billing system however they are joining "late" so the first time frame will be 2 months then moving to every 3 months going forward.

Is it possible to eidt the reccuring billing timeframe once the invoice flow is started?

Thank you in advance!

[Tom]

Hi @kfunch, welcome to the seller community and thanks for bringing this up!

You can edit the payment amount and date from your Invoices tab, though the ability to automatically send a prorated invoice in a recurring series is not available. For now, I would suggest sending a single invoice for the initial partial amount, then you can create the recurring invoice series for the full amount when the next payment is due.

I can see how this feature would help streamline your workflow. Rest assured that I'll be sharing your post with our Product Liaison team. We'll circle back with any updates or additional options as they're available.

Thanks for your patience, and let us know if you have any other questions. 🙂

[TimeForYou]

I'm using recurring invoices for a membership program. As an incentive for referring new members, I want to offer them a free month in the program. Can you please make an option to "pause" a recurring invoice? At present, I'd have to cancel their invoice and then start it up again the next month, which is not only a hassle on my end, but because the system then generates emails to them when it's cancelled and when it's re-started, that is not a clean customer experience either. 

[Mommysinger]

A related question: Is there a way to pause recurring payments? I run a music studio and customers pay a set monthly tuition, but I sometimes have to adjust a monthly payment to account for referral rewards, additional expenses like lesson books, and summer break. What's the best way to do this?

[EJ_]

Hi @Mommysinger

While you can make edits from the Recurring section of your Invoices Tab in your Square Dashboard, there isn't a way to pause a recurring invoice series at this time. 

You should be able to accomplish what you're describing with the "Edit Series" option. You can make a one-time change to the serieis for the next monthly invoice before it's sent, and then edit again once that custom invoice is paid. 

[keizermarz]

I second this request! I teach piano and we take a break/reduce billing during the summer months, as well as doing only a half-month in December. It would be so helpful not to have to stop everyone's invoice series in November, then re-enter everything in January, stop it in May, and then re-enter it all over again in September. A Pause function would be super appreciated!

[puka]

Hey @TimeForYou and @keizermarz - Based on your use cases, I can definitely see how helpful a Pause button would be with recurring Invoices. I'll pass on your feedback to our Invoices team to consider for future improvements. We'll make sure to share any updates here as we hear of them.

[FreshShelfFarm]

Has this been implemented? I could use this feature as we have a weekly delivery service and when customers go on vacation for the week it would be great to pause their recurring series. 

[Chad]

Hello @FreshShelfFarm welcome to the Seller Community! 

Currently we are in the stage for collecting feedback for this feature request. If there are any updates we will post them to this thread! 🙂

[ImageFit]

Please add us to the list of business needing the "pause" feature.  We are a membership based business where our customers will often skip a month to go on vacation.  This feature would be amazing to help us streamline our record keeping so we are not creating a new recurring series each time a customer decides not to make a purchase that month.  The original recurring series should follow that customer and just be allowed to be edited as needed.  Thanks!!