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Is there a winery/wine club capability in square?

is there a winery/wine club capability?j

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@anthonyf - Thanks for taking the time to share! While I think the basic foundation for a wine club is in place, as far as recurring payments - it definitely looks like there are other features that are missing. I'll definitely be sure to pass along the example to our product liaison team. It would also be an option to build a custom solution using Square's APIs if you teamed up with a developer. 


Sean
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Product Manager | Square, Inc.

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I'm pretty sure that with the launch of recurring, or subscription payments, we now offer the key feature you would need. 🍷

 

Would you mind sharing a few more details about what other features you might need for this to work? Or is this the main feature you were looking for? 

 


Sean
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Product Manager | Square, Inc.
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@Sean While I think most of the work is done with recurring payments, there are some wine club features we may need. Think of it as a subscription. You can sign up for a period and the customer chooses which level or club to join. deciding factors can be $'s, times of year, types of wine, etc. Signup can be done online or via web. discounts then get applied to the level of club on club purchases as well as anything in store (hook into a customer database). 

You may want to take a look at a resonably feature rich wine club offered by Vin65 to get details of what folks are asking for.

https://documentation.vin65.com/Store/Clubs

 

 

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@anthonyf - Thanks for taking the time to share! While I think the basic foundation for a wine club is in place, as far as recurring payments - it definitely looks like there are other features that are missing. I'll definitely be sure to pass along the example to our product liaison team. It would also be an option to build a custom solution using Square's APIs if you teamed up with a developer. 


Sean
he/him/his
Product Manager | Square, Inc.
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Hi, I have a wine bar and would like to set up a monthly subscription offering as a club membership.  It really is a way to get customers to engage and visit the shop regularly.  Am definitely interested in a customized solution with the Square API working with one of your developers.   

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Thank you @tapintowine! I'll share your request with our team. If Square builds a solution for wineclubs in future we'll let everyone in this thread know.

 

In the meantime you could take a look at Square's integration with Chargify to manage subscriptions.

️ Helen
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Thank you!  I'll check that out.

 

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I can see customers have been asking for this feature since 2016,  I would very much like to hear an update on its delivery without the "I will take this back to the team" included.   This is quickly becoming a distinguishing service for our winery and others.

 

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Please check out Wineclubsite.com.  They are my backend now for processing wine club memberships on their platform that integrates with Square.  Works very well and is much less expensive than the wine club software I was using!

 

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This reply was created from merging an existing thread: Subscription Automatic billing

 

I am rewriting an app that uses PayPal to automatically bill for a subscription. We are writing our checkout pages using the Square API. PayPal and Authorize.net allow fo the configuration of a subscription period and amount, and then the card is charged automatically. No human intervention is required, no invoicing. This is for online purchase of  a recurring charge that occurs automatically. 

 

From what I can see, it doesn't look like this is possible with Square. Am I correct? This would be unfortunate as there are reasons that I prefer Square way more than PayPal.

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I have been asking for this feature from Square and from what I can tell, it doesn't exist. We really would like to offer our monthly clubs as a subscription service from the Online Store, but we can't. It is a few step process and is a bit clunky:

 

1. The customer has to purchase the club from Online Store (purchase amount is one month's fee).

2. Then we need to manually set up a recurring invoice to start the following month (since they already paid for this month) and allow the customer to opt-in to autopay and save their card on file.

3. Then you hope the customer remembers to check the 'I agree to autopay and save my card in Square' when they receive and pay their first invoice. 

4. if the customer doesn't remember to save their card info or optin to Autopay, you need to follow-up with them and hope they do it following month...

 

Like I said...clunky. It's functional, but far from ideal. Offering a product subscription with Autopay would be the correct solution. Let's hope the Square team sees the value here...

 

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@GorlockSmith, apologies for the late reply! To confirm: there isn't an API for recurring payments at this time.

 

@Wine_Master Thanks for your post and for your feedback about using invoices and card on file for your subscriptions. I will share your post with the Product team, I agree that an autopay feature would be brilliant and help you and your clients set up subscriptions more efficiently. We'll certainly announce any improvements or new features for subscriptions in future, and we'll update this thread to let you know. 

 

️ Helen
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@Helen Any updates on this feature? I have seen similar posts from other Square users asking for the same thing on subscriptions. We are expanding our monthly club memberships and it is becoming burdensome to track down and remind customers to 'save your card and then opt-in to AutoPay' after you receive your first recurring invoice. Most of them assume because they paid for the membership in the online store that all their payment info is already stored and will get charged each month (which is a logical thought, but isn't the case here). Poor customer experience for them and more work for us. Not sure why this feature isn't possible since Square has all the parts in place already for storing payment info, recurring billing, and AutoPay?? 

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Thanks for your post @Wine_Master, I appreciate the detailed feedback about this from your point of you and your customer's point of view too. I don't have any updates right now, but in the meantime you could take a look at Square's Iintegration with Chargify. Chargify is a product you can use with Square to manage subscriptions and it might help to streamline everything. 

 

I've also moved your post into this thread too, @tapintowine if you've had time to take a look at Chargify can you share your experience here or share any advice? It would be a great help to the other wine clubs in the Community! 

️ Helen
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@Helen thank you for the info on Chargify. It seems like it could work to solve some of the shortcomings with how Square handles subscriptions, but it has one major drawback: PRICE. We don't have the subscription base to pay $150 per month on top of the higher Square processing fees for recurring payments and still maintain profitability (We currently have like 30 monthly memberships, not 3000). Maybe Chargify is more feasible for @tapintowine situation, but for a smaller business I don't see how that will work without passing on the cost to customers. Ideally, Square will just put subscriptions on their product roadmap since all the pieces for making it work are already contained within your system.

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@Wine_Master I appreciate hearing about your experience with your wine club membership uptake and level of user experience.  That is exactly what I wanted to address going into a brand new wine club offering.  And, I too, agree that Square could be a solution if they would just connect the dots on their end vs. leaving it to us to cobble things together.  The cobble-factor is enough to discourage the customer user, and even at the modest level of 30 members, has become burdensome for you to manage.  After researching software offerings, I have decided to go with a cloud-based wine club management service called Nexternal.  It's not cheap, but it is very robust and flexible, and after the $1500 set-up and integration with your own website, the process will be very user-friendly and accessible, for both your customers and you to manage it. There is no integration with Square possible with this, which is the missing link, so managing payments will need to go through a gateway directly to your bank.  But, once that is set up, everything is automated.  You might want to check it out.  Cheers!

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@tapintowine thank you for the info. We aren't to the size yet to justify the breadth of what Nexternal is offering, nor their cost...plus it looks like it's more geared towards wineries with the various mebership types, shipping, etc. We are just a smaller retail shop.

All our other sales flow through Square, so not having integration to track sales and orders would be additional work. For now, all we can do is hope Square takes these suggestions to heart and puts it on their roadmap because if subscriptions keep growing and they offer no viable solution, we may need to consider other payment processing platforms that offer more robust solutions to handle what our business requires.

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winemaster,

 

thanks for pursuing this with square as we would like to same options without another price, in this case the $150 per month--the transaction fee should be enough for square--and it shouldn't be that hard to set up...here;s hoping they listen and set this feature up!

 

trish

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@stonehouse: we can only hope... We continue to struggle with getting customers to understand they're essentially buying a subscription, but it will take multiple additional steps (both from them and us) in order to make it work like a recurring subscription after they sign up.

 

I've been asking Square for a product roadmap for future planned enhancements and features without much luck, so no one knows if this functionality is actually being considered seriously. 

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@stonehouse Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and I wanted to chime in to let you know your interest is being heard and we're advocating for everyone looking for a solution. 

 

I don't have anything new to report, but hopefully we can get something rolled out in the near future. 

 

Thanks for sticking with us thus far. 

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Hey there, we are also looking to manage a wine club through Square.  The previous comments are spot on about the needs.  There are approx 10,000 wineries in the US that produce 1500 cases a year or less (and who knows how many micro breweries).  The current options we have found are all price prohibitive.  The best one for features is Active Club, but $1000 set up and $60 a month PLUS fees is absurd for 50 to 200 members.  Seems like a real business opportunity for Square.  Any updates would be appreciated.

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