Live Q&A: Learn how to make any item in your Square catalog subscribable!

[kristen]

Hello Seller Community,

Exciting news! We've just launched Square Subscription availability through your Square Online catalog. To showcase this powerful feature, we brought back @jean_sq, the Subscriptions product marketing manager, for a quick demonstration on how to create these subscription plans. We'd love to hear your reactions, so take a look at the videos below and drop your feedback in the comments section. Please note that this feature is currently only offered through Square Online and Square Dashboard.

How to sell subscriptions through Square Online

How to create a plan with Square Dashboard

With this new feature, you can sell physical items, donations, and services on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly subscription basis. In addition, you can create "Subscribe & Save" programs, which allow you to give your most loyal customers discounts on their subscription orders.

How to participate:

Check out the video demonstration above and post your questions to this thread. Then, check back with us on Thursday, July 13, at 12 p.m. PDT/3 p.m. EDT as the Subscriptions team responds. 

A few example questions:

• I'm just getting started with subscriptions for my business — what should I keep in mind as I get set up?
• If I could do "_______" with subscriptions and inventory, that would make my customers' experience much better.

Please note: We are unable to share specific details on our product roadmaps, though this information will be helpful as we continue to make improvements.

[jean_sq]

Hello @christiema,

I’m sorry but Square Subscriptions is not integrated with Square Loyalty at this time.

[phillipsrw]

Hi @kristen thank you for developing this new feature. I have a couple of questions.

1. At the item level will we be able to add a subscription variarions from a drop down box so the customer can selected thier preferred variation? Eg we sell hot choc subscriptions where customers can sign up and select thier preferred chocolate flake type, we have three types, milk, white or dark. 

2. Would there be a mechanism within the system for the customer to change thier choice of flake before the next dispatch date without cancelling the subscription and resubscribing ie they fancy a change from white flakes to milk flakes that month? 

3. Would there be functionality for a customer to buy a subscription as a gift ie add a gift message?

Many thanks and really looking forward to this feature going live.

[jean_sq]

Hi @phillipsrw,

Great questions. I’ll answer them below in order:

1. Yes, you can set up item variations on your Square Online item so that your customer can pick from your chosen options for their subscription: Create and Manage Item Options with Square.
   
   
2. At this time, we do not offer customers the ability to change their subscription item choices after the initial subscription.
   
   
3. Yes, you can set up your Square Online items to be available as a gift (and there is an option to add a personal message). Once you have done that, those gift options will carry through to the subscription.

[HyattTraining]

Hello! Will we be able to use ACH for recurring subscriptions? 

[jean_sq]

Hello @HyattTraining,

Thanks for bringing this up. I’m sorry but there are no near-term plans to support ACH as a payment method for Square Subscriptions.

[Whitesquirrel1]

I own a winery and currently have 350 wine club members. We offer 9-different club options (3, 6 12 bottles, sweet, dry or mix) and it is a quarterly billing. Is there any way to manage this with square?

[jean_sq]

Hello @Whitesquirrel1,

I believe that Subscriptions can currently handle your request. One way to do this is to set up the wine club as an item in Square Online items. Use item variations for the sweet, dry and mix options and modifiers for the different quantities (and corresponding prices): Create and Manage Item Options with Square.

Here is a screenshot of an example that I set up:

[estigirl1]

How would a subscription work for a provider that receives a commission on the service? Would they get the commission when the subscription is paid or can it be broken down to when the service is actually received? I really need my providers to receive their commission at the time the service is provided, not when the subscription money is collected. I also use square payroll.

[jean_sq]

Hello @estigirl1,

Appreciate the question. Square Subscriptions does not have any mechanism to track commissions from a subscription. It could certainly handle the recurring billing and you would receive emailed notifications when payments are made. However, you will need to develop your own system for distributing commissions for your subscriptions.

[JacquelineHyde]

My question is when will subscriptions apply to a paywall of pages on square sites that are not Weebly based. A scenario where we don’t need to issue a password to users that they can log into their account (like for appointments) and content that they pay to subscribe is shown. 

thank you

[jean_sq]

Hi @JacquelineHyde,

Thanks for the question. Subscriptions could certainly handle the recurring billing aspect of your request but providing a way to password protect your content is not something that Square Subscriptions can tackle.

[phillipsrw]

Hi @kristen 

Our team have been chatting about subscriptions and we are trying to figure out if the new updates will allow the following.

1. Subscriptions for self-purchase we feel are on a frequency based delivery, i.e. I want to receive my coffee every month, every 2 months or three months etc. until the purchaser decides to cancel the subscription.

2. Subscriptions purchased as a gift for another person we feel are duration based, i.e. you are likely to buy a gift subscription for say 3, 6 or 12months after the duration is complete the subscription cancels automatically.

The system as it stands works well for the self-purchase subscription, with the planned updates will it work for the duration based subscription?

Many thanks

[jean_sq]

Hi @phillipsrw,

Thanks for the questions. If I’m understanding your questions correctly, I believe we can do all that you are asking. Answers below:

1. This sounds like you want to offer coffee subscriptions where a buyer could choose from different frequencies. The current available frequencies for subscriptions are: weekly, every two weeks, monthly, quarterly, twice a year, and yearly. We don’t have options for every two months. After a buyer purchases the subscription, it will continue until they cancel.
   
   
2. For this you could set up a plan that has options where the subscription ends after 3, 6, and 12 months. You may want to create separate plans and/or items for that option, but that's entirely up to you: do you want it to all be on the same product page or have separate pages? (i.e., different gift item with a plan that has frequency options that end after a set duration)

[Kinsman]

Will you be able to support invoicing for subscriptions?  Many of my overseas customers still insist on paying by wire transfer, but I'd love to couple this with Square automation.

[jean_sq]

Hello @Kinsman,

Thanks for the question. Currently all subscriptions only bill to a card on file.

Please note that when creating a new subscription on Dashboard, if you choose “Send Invoice by Email” (under the Payment methods) it will send an invoice on the first billing to collect the card on file. All future billings will be to the newly captured card on file.

[TheShadySun]

This should be really helpful. But we also need an option for an enrollment fee to be added in the same spot- customers won't go back and add that if it's another "item".

[jean_sq]

Hello @TheShadySun,

Appreciate you bringing this up. I’m sorry but Subscriptions does not currently support one-time fees like enrollment fees.

[wyldbill]

Any plans to enable renewal reminders (refunds for canceled subscriptions are killing us), filtering/exporting of subscriptions (in the "backlog" for 13+ months), and requiring payment by invoice in the near future? The lack of these fundamental features required us to abandon the use of Subscriptions. We might consider trying them again once these are addressed.

[jean_sq]

Hello @wyldbill,

I’m sorry but there are no near term plans to provide subscription renewal reminders. I understand why they are valuable to you.

We will be providing better filtering/sorting of subscriptions within Dashboard later this year. In the meantime, in the coming weeks, we will be releasing a CSV export feature within Dashboard. This will allow you to export all of your subscription data and manage it within your preferred spreadsheet tool (Excel, Google Sheets, etc.).

Lastly, we are not planning to offer payment by invoice for Subscriptions. We believe that Square’s recurring invoice option is a better fit for sellers who wish to regularly bill their customers by invoice.

[sharkie_rich]

Hello! We are a non-profit with e-commerce donations set up through our online shop. We would like to offer both one time donations and recurring donations through Subscriptions on Square. Since all donations are tax deductible (because of our non-profit status), we are required by law to physically mail end of year statements on donations made by our donors, so that they can claim a deduction. In order to do this, we need to be able to collect actual mailing addresses from our donors at the point of sale (donation), and be able to export that data in a report format like a CSV file.  

This seems to be pretty easy and straight forward to do for single, one time donations through the shop. But it does not seem to be possible for Subscriptions (recurring donations). There does not appear to be any report export capabilities with the current Subscriptions functionality. 

How would you suggest I retrieve this data from the Square database? Please advise. Thank you!

[jean_sq]

Hello @sharkie_rich,

Thanks for this question! A brand new Export CSV feature for Subscriptions will soon be launched across all Square sellers.

This will enable a “Export” button on the Subscriptions page in Dashboard. Using this, you will be able to download all of the subscription data (including their address). I believe this should provide you with what you need for your end of year statements.