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How to offer tipping on only the food portion of the bill

I have a retail store that also contains a small tea room. Often customers have afternoon Tea, or some sort of food and beverage and then they will shop the store and bring a few items to the cash. When I ring up their items and add on the food, the tip options are based on the whole bill including the retail purchases. Is there a way to offer tipping on just the food or do I have to ring in two separate bills? Thanks

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Square Community Moderator

Hello @LONDONCALLINGBR,

 

Good to see you posting in the Seller Community again, welcome back !๐Ÿ˜

 

Currently, the best solution to your inquiry is to ring up separate transactions as you mentioned.  The tipping function is currently 

limited to including the whole transaction amount, whether that be for items or food service. 

 

I do love your idea though! I see you are a part of the Beta Community as well. Your insight would be very valuable to the product managers.

 

I look forward to reading your reply๐Ÿ˜Š

Frida
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Hi, thanks!

 

I thought it would be probably be a little too much to expect there to be a way to separate it on one bill. For now if a customer buys less than $10 worth of retail I just ring it all together and don't say anything. But if they spend more than that on retail items and it starts significantly raising the total then I offer them the terminal with just the food first and explain why. It's not a big deal but it would be nice to have a toggle on what you have rung in, much like the one where you can turn the sales tax on and off, that allows you to include it in the smart tipping or not. This must happen to other retailers in settings such as hair salons, tattoo parlors, piercing studios, probably a ton of others I haven't thought of, where the customer is purchasing a service that would be tippable but also potentially retail items related to that service. 

 

I have enjoyed being part of the square terminal beta group and am so happy with the way it works now. They totally fixed the initial problem and now it's a very workable POS to use an iPad, Bluetooth scanner, and then the terminal as the customer facing payment screen and the receipt printer. The only thing I wish for now is that you can press print receipt from the iPad, on a cash transaction, and have it come out of the terminal. Currently in that scenario I have to totally unhook the terminal from the app on the iPad in order to print a cash receipt and it means the customer waiting while I do that and then sign into the terminal with my email and password 

 

 

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@LONDONCALLINGBR Thank you for that insightful post! ๐Ÿ˜Š

 

That is quite the work around, and I commend you for it! Your request is a popular one. If I'm not mistaken this may be a Beta trial,

 

have you reached out to any of the Beta managers about this?

 

 

 

 

Frida
Community Moderator, Square
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Thank you! I have not asked anyone about it, but if it's a trial I would be very happy to take part and test it out. I have multiple scenarios a day that I need to print the cash receipt from the iPad so I could easily test that out. Please let me know who I would ask about that! 

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@LONDONCALLINGBR Absolutely! 

 

Are you familiar with this Launch page to join Beta testing? 

Frida
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I'm not but I'll have a look! 

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@DannyH hello, I've spoken to you a bit about the beta for the square terminal and how we use it to connect to POS app on an iPad, and you helped me loads with the issues around the need to tap the screen before the terminal would wake up. I believe on the launch page for beta testing there is paying with cash using square online, and it says to DM you. Would you be able to point me towards the above mentioned beta for testing out cash transactions that would be keyed into the iPad using the app, and then the option to print the receipt for that transaction using the terminal? I currently have to unhook the terminal from the iPad and then sign into it with my login to use it standalone to print the receipt. Thanks 

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Hello again @LONDONCALLINGBR!

 

Just to clarify, the Pay with Cash App for Square Online beta program that I believe you are referring to allows for customers to pay with their Cash App -- introducing a new payment method. I understand the possible confusion, but this beta program is not a feature that allows for a pre-order and then payment of cash upon pickup/arrival for the customer. 

 

As for the printing cash receipts on the Connected Terminal, this has been a popular feature request, however the only option at the moment is to have a secondary printer connected to your iPad which can initiate Cash payment receipts. The team is looking to modify how this currently acts, however it may be some time until it's fully implemented.

 

Danny
Beta Manager, Square
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Okay I understand, thank you for the reply

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I don't use the tipping function, so this might not work. But if you want to keep it as one ticket (for tracking, analytics, and customer history), could you try "splitting the bill"? I know Square has a function for that. They would still have to pay twice, but if most of them are doing tap, it's not a big delay. A bit of a weird experience for the customer though, I'll admit that.

 

It would be neat if they could add another column in the inventory database* next to taxes. For example, all of my items are GST: Y, PST: Y. It could also be Tippable: Y. Then when the transaction runs through, tipping would only calculate for the items with Tippable: Y. Should be pretty minor to implement, and gives you perfect granular control over it at the managerial level. If it's implemented exactly the same way, you'd even be able to control it on specific items at a specific checkout by managing the item in the checkout cart.


* This is referring to the Items Export .xls.

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Wow what a great solution! I'd be willing to go through all my items on the CSV file and add that in if the functionality was there. And like you said if it had the toggle button to turn it on and off at the checkout even better! Not sure who to ask about whether that's an option

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You could implement it literally as a tax right now if you wanted, and if you were okay with a standardized tip/gratuity instead of letting the customer select it. You're in hospitality, so I'm sure you can think through the ramifications of that better than I can.

 

However, you might want to check with your accountant or bookkeeper (or consider it that hat, if you do it yourself). There might be knock-ons for how Square reports tax information for them if a portion of it isn't taxes. There is a report view specifically for taxes at https://squareup.com/dashboard/sales/reports/taxes, if that helps.

 

If/when the functionality is added though, it should take you like 3 seconds to update your items. In Excel/Sheets, enable filters, then sort or filter by category. It sounds like the items that are tippable should all be in different categories than the store items, so you can just copy and paste Y into every cell. Again, when they implement it though.

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Thank you for the ideas! I don't think it would work as it's own tax because we use the smart tipping where it offers the customer suggested amounts based on % of the bill and then a button for them to choose their own amount. Everyone is different when it comes to tipping, some people don't tip, some leave around 10%, others up to 30% it's a smaller bill. I wouldn't want to force people to have to choose a set amount and I wouldn't want to add it to the bill without them choosing it. For now I'll continue ringing in two separate bills and hopefully eventually something will be added where I could distinguish the groups of items.  Maybe they can make it so you could have a separate category and in the settings all items in thay category are automatically included or excluded from the smart tipping.

 

Thanks! 

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