New: Manual and Variable Service Charges are Now Available on Square Point of Sale

[Laurie_]

Hey Sellers,

Today we’re happy to announce the release of Manual and Variable Service Charges and Surcharges for Square Point of Sale!

This means you will be able to manually add a variable service charge as a percentage (%) or a fixed amount ($) to a sale as part of the checkout flow. Common use cases in Australia include card surcharging and public holiday surcharges. 

This release of manual service charges is the first step we’re taking to bring service charges/surcharges to Square in Australia. We plan to release further functionality to service charges in the future, including automated service charges and support for other Square products.

You can create service charges from your Square Dashboard and then apply them on the Square Point of Sale app. 

Create and edit service charges on Dashboard

1. Go to Account & Settings from your online Square Dashboard. 
2. Click Business > Service charges > Create a service charge. 
3. Name your charge. This name will be displayed on customer receipts and order summaries.
4. Choose a percentage-based or fixed price service charge.
5. Enter the amount of the charge, or leave the service charge amount blank to enter it at the time of the sale.
6. Select the location where the charge applies and add any applicable taxes.
7. Click Save.

Apply Service Charges

Once you create a service charge from your Square Dashboard, you can manually apply it to transactions via the Square Point of Sale app. You can add service charges to orders that include items, custom amounts, or both. You cannot apply a service charge to multiple times on the same sale or invoice.

Note: Service charges are not yet available for Square for Restaurants, Square for Retail, Square Appointments, Invoices or Square Online. 

From the Point of Sale app:

1. From the Checkout screen, tap Library.
2. Search for service charges by name or tap the Service Charge category.
3. Choose all of the service charges that apply to the sale.
4. Tap Review Sale to check the details of the transaction.
5. Tap Charge.

The service charge will show as a line item on your customer’s receipt and in your transaction report details.

To learn more about this feature, visit Get Started with Service Charges.

We hope you find this update useful for your business! While it doesn’t cover every scenario we’ve heard requested from our sellers in the past, it’s an important first step in building out further functionality moving forward.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave any comments or feedback below!

[lawnbrook]

Great to see a start to the implementation although disappointed that it's not usable in Square for Restaurants as it's the Hospo industry that really needs the ability to apply a Public Holiday Surcharge.

[Emjaykez]

I love that this feature is finally out. Have done some testing at it appears to work well. I know this release is preliminary stages but would love to be able to turn it on by default for each transaction (rather than having to remember to manually apply it for each transaction).

Also there appears to be a feature to apply it automatically to Online Sales however it is greyed out for me and I can't figure out how to get it to apply to Online Orders (we use online for ordering ahead and have to switch off Online on Public Holidays as there has been no way to add the surcharge... this would come as a huge relief to customers and staff alike if we could apply it to online)

[KincumberIndoor]

Not yet available for retail or restaurants ? They are the very businesses that need the Sunday or Public Holiday surcharge. It also needs to be automatically started and stopped on those days. Staff can't be responsible to make sure they turn on and off this feature on applicable days.

[JJ_]

I agree with you on this one @KincumberIndoor. Service Charges are a fairly new feature and we hope to be able to bring them to other platforms like Square for Retail.  I will make sure to share your interest with our product team for their visibility and consideration.

[LS68]

It would appear that the surcharge feature which was recently added was initially available on my Square Terminal as I was using it for the first few transactions, and now this feature is only available via the Square app. Seems crazy that we paid all that money for the machine and could have saved our money as now we can't use the machine, we have to do it via the app which was free. It is now an expensive paperweight.

[Arie]

Hi @LS68,

Welcome to the Seller Community 👋 I noticed it's your first post. 

We're currently in the process of rolling Service Charges back out across the Square Terminal, and Square Register. You'll be able to use this feature again shortly - when you have a chance today or tomorrow, check for any updates on your Terminal by tapping on the Menu > Settings > Hardware > General > About Terminal. From here, check for any software updates. Please let us know how you go!

[ATSB]

Excited for this feature to be rolled out to Square Retail for Register & Terminal. It was the main missing feature that was holding us back from getting started with square. We ended up setting up a clumsy work-around via a custom tax, but employees forget to remove this when accepting cash payments. Eagerly awaiting the update!

[PRT2021]

Awesome! Any indication when it will be available on Square for Restaurants?

[Laurie_]

Hi, @PRT2021, thanks for your interest here!

While we don't have any updates to share at this time, this is certainly still on our radar and we hope to be able to share some more news regarding expanding service charges to Square for Restaurants shortly.

We'll be sure to update everyone in this thread once we have more information.

[Jak1234]

Cool this is exactly what we need... When will it be available for Square for Restaurant? 

[Arie]

This is still something we're working on, @Jak1234 - thank you for letting us know this is something you'd like to see on Square for Restaurants!