Can I backdate or edit a transaction?

[Community-Team]

Hello Seller Community! 

Am I able to backdate or edit a transaction after the sale is complete? What if the sale occured earlier and I recived payment at a later date? 

[Daniel-labs]

I issued an invoice to a customer.  The customer paid via check.  I cashed the check over a month ago.  Now that I'm catching up on my bookkeeping, I marked the invoice as paid and indicated that it was paid via check.  However, Square will not let me indicate the correct date that the check was cashed - It only allows me to indicate that the payment was received today.  Now my bookkeeping with Square is inaccurate and there is no way to fix it.  This is a huge problem for me and my business and creates potential liability for me as a business owner as it could create confusion during an internal or external audits.

Square should allow business owners to indicate the date that a check was cashed when marking invoices as paid.  We don't all update our books every single day - which would be essential for this lack of functionality to not cause problems.

Square - if you're listening, please give us the ability to enter the date that an invoice was paid when we are indicating it was paid by cash or check.  This is ridiculous!  It makes me want to switch to a different credit card processor.  There are plenty of competitors that offer this functionality.

[rococomac]

YES!

For example, I had an invoice set up, Client paid. A week later, client lets me know he will be leaving that job and gave me the new contact person. Since it has been paid, I cannot go back in and edit their info or add that info for my delivery/set up guy. It's a very inefficient way of handling the invoices.

Also, it would be best if we could " add to" the invoice as opposed to starting a new one. The invoice could just have a remaining balance... it's not that complicated.

We also need invoices to be organized by date of service! You need to give us options on how to organize our own invoices. It's just sloppy of Square to leave it this way.

Start listening to all of us that use and PAY for this program. Please do better!!

[lind13]

I have a few more checks that I need to record for 2022, but if i record my check it will be for 2023 not 2022. My transactions for 2022 isn't finished. Is there a way I can edit that?

[Kassi_]

Welcome to the Community, @lind13 - 

At the moment, you cannot backdate or change any transaction information for your payments. 

I have moved your post to a thread where other sellers have discussed the same thing. I know this has been a huge ask from our sellers to add to our roadmap, but it's still considered a Feature Request. 

You can jump over to the Ideate Board and post it there too! In the event we get more information from our Product Team, we will circle back and change the status on the post to keep you in the loop. 

Also, you can tag any other seller you'd think would be interested in this feature to add their voice! 

[VermontPuzzle]

I thought I had set up tax exempt for wholesale correctly -- but at the end of the quarter it is telling me that those wholesale sales are taxable.

This information is then sent by you to my state either now or with a K-1 -- this makes me have to deal with telling the state tax department what the error was -- and if I miss dotting an i or crossing a T the state will charge me a penalty and interest.

In the end I will have to spend a lot of time dealing with it. 

The tax exeption for wholesale is not easily figured out (at least for me).

[Chad · Accepted solution]

Right now we have no plans to add the ability to backdate or manipulate transaction information after a sale is complete. 

For context, the ability to manipulate transactions can cause issues for reporting, 1099-K's, and chargebacks. Also it would make it easier for fraudsters and scammers to commit crimes using Square Point of Sale. 

Hopefully this has provided some transparency on this request, and why it's not available. 

[OCGarageDoorLLC]

Notice this response is all about protecting Square. It's become apparent that Square is primarily for credit card processing, which is where they make their money, and the other functionally is just a "bonus" so that you tolerate their fees. And once you discover all the problems with their system you've already got too much history and data to make switching to another system easy, so you're stuck. Square is certainly not a true bookkeeping package. 

[PartyAnimal]

I had no choice last night to charge the wrong city for sales tax because on mobile or on my terminal I could find no way to add the right city!! This is an enormous pain for mobile sellers - we have a mobile bar - and I should not have to remember to bring my laptop with me just to do the most BASIC things I need to do as a seller who needs to change a drink to a different tax type (alcohol vs retail or a new city.) I just correct it at the accountant so i pay the right city taxes but my own dang records will be forever wrong because of mistakes or like last night, something I had to do rather than have no taxes set up at all. 

[Tarryall]

It would be very, very helpful to be able to edit the "notes" on a completed/saved transaction. I have read through this thread and still don't see why this would be dangerous to security. 

[SGwithJan]

Could it please be considered that a vendor could process an exchange on a transaction?  I entered the wrong flavour and can't fix it.

[mariaE]

Hi, I did a transaction with the wrong taxes, can I edit it, to correct the amounts but without changing the total amount. For example, the transaction was first recorded with 100$, 0$ tax, but it should have been 90$ with 10$ tax.

[puka]

Hi @mariaE - Unfortunately, there isn't a way to edit any aspect of a transaction once it has been completed.

[KrossProcess]

This really is a flaw in the Square system, it seems as though it is automatically set up to record GST. There are numerous providers who do not charge GST so there should be a way to edit taxes attributed to sales.

[SPetel]

Hi @Chad ,

I've read a bunch of threads on this topic and you keep giving this "Fraudsters and scammers" answer for something that seems very reasonable and a lot of people need.

Fraudsters and scammers can issue invoices using a simple word or google docs editor - you are not enabling anything by allowing this. An invoice is not a transaction and the credit card payment has nothing to do with the date on the invoice. I can pay with credit card today an invoice that was created 3 weeks ago or 3 months ago, there is nothing wrong about that.

No one is asking to change the date of a credit card transaction - all we need is to be able to backdate an invoice. NOT a transaction.

Simply put: We want to create a new, unpaid invoice, that is dated last week for example (when the service actually took place) - how is that enabling scammers or fraud?

Then I can proceed to take payment for it - either by cash or by credit card - it will show it was paid today, but the invoice date would be last week. Again - can you explain in what scenario can this be manipulated for fraud?

It is a common practice for businesses to do book keeping every few days and send out invoices a few days after the service was performed. If I work Monday-Thursday and send out invoices on Friday, using your system all my invoices are dated Friday.

Perhaps you should reconsider this flaw, unless you care to explain what fraud or scam you are referring to.

[YME]

I need to correct the date on a couple invoices. How do I perform this transaction? 

[Valentina]

Please take a look at the Best Answer provided by @Chad here in this thread for a more detailed answer, @YME. It is not possible to backdate transactions, and an invoice falls within that category - you will not be able to edit the date of a paid invoice.

[KellyAllen]

The question I have is not exactly similar. Can I change the date of an UNPAID invoice? 

[isabelle]

Yes @KellyAllen! Is this for a recurring invoice? Or just a singular one? 

[SavoryAlaska]

Actually, there are reasons it would be nice to have the ability to backdate a payment. Mainly to accurately track monthly revenue. For example, if I receive a check for payment of an April invoice but received it over the weekend at the end of the month and don't mark the invoice paid until May 1, it gets counted as May revenue when it's not. Throws things off when you use revenue data for making future revenue projections, etc. 

Another example - I had an invoice get paid over Christmas but due to holiday schedule forgot to mark it as paid until after Jan 1 so it shows as 2022 revenue when in fact it was 2021. Having the ability to backdate the payment to the correct date would keep data from being skewed. 

[LakeHoustonSign]

I accepted and deposited a check in December of 2019, I didn't mark the invoice as paid until today. My reports won't show properly unless I can fix it. I understand the "seemingly" fraudulent thought behind most, but I really just want to show the reporting correctly though our sales reports. Is there anyway to do this?