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Does Square prompt you to deduct tare weight when using the integrated scale?

I've called into support and am having trouble getting an answer to this question. All of our products are pay-by-weight and we need the capability to deduct the tare weight of the container from the total weight after weighing it on the integrated scale. This is the only way that this scale would make any sense for our business, so I can't justify making the purchase without knowing the answer to this question. I don't see "tare weight" mentioned anywhere in any articles or product descriptions, so I'm a bit worried that this software just doesn't have that capability, but I am hopeful!

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Re: Feature Request: Tare Weight Function

We are a bulk store and found a scale that had a tare function---where we can type in the weight of the container and hit tare, and it only gives us the weight of whats inside the container for entering on Square. This works for our zero waste store!

 

 

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If we take a look at this scale in the Square Shop, there is a Tare button on the bottom right-hand side of the face of the scale. This is the button you'll use to tare out the weight of a container prior to weighing the product to be sold.

I used to work at a loose leaf tea shop, where we had a big scale that we used to weigh out teas into varying sizes of containers. Sometimes, we used the Tare function before filling containers with tea - we typically did this for oddly shaped containers that we didn't have presets for. Most of the time, we used a couple of preset Tare buttons that we had set up on the scale itself. 

 

If you already know the weight(s) of your container(s), the preset Tare weight sounds like it's the feature you're looking for. You are able to input 5 different preset Tare weight values using this scale. If you set up preset Tare weight values, you will be able to deduct the weight of the container from the total weight of what's on the scale by using a button on the scale.

 

If your customers are bringing in containers of all shapes and sizes, you would follow the same steps I followed with oddly shaped containers at the tea shop. @LocavoreStore similarly explained how a yogurt shop would ring up yogurt in a container without charging customers for the container here

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We are a bulk store and found a scale that had a tare function---where we can type in the weight of the container and hit tare, and it only gives us the weight of whats inside the container for entering on Square. This works for our zero waste store!

 

 

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Hi,

 

We are trying to set up the POS with square, and facing a few huge challenges.

We are tiny grocery store that carries bulk items. It seems like Square doesn't offer the features allowing us to enter price based on weight. This  article https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5088-price-items-by-weight recommends 2 workarounds, however, I don't think they are really effective. We have more than 50 unique bulk items, and it'd be a huge amount of worklord for us if we need to set up the different price points for each possible weight under variants. I don't like the second option either as it will results in human errors for sure.

 

Has anyone figured out other ways to figure out pricing with weight?

 

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We have a small grocery store with a lot of bulk items too. Not having an integrated scale is the one shortfall that would make a huge differrence for our type of business with Square.

We have though had great sucess using price calculating scales and barcode scanners. I make a print sheet of everything that has a variable price and it's barcode, then I tape it to the top of each cash register. When someone buys bananas, they go on a scale, input price, then scan appropriate barcode. There really is no other way around... And it's not much different in big box grocery stores either.

Some things I will individually barcode to speedup the checkout process. Steaks for instance... I'll print out a bunch of labels with the items name and it's barcode, and a blank box for the total price. Then I'll weigh each one, and write in how much it cost, so our employees can just scan the barcode and input the variable price. You could shell out a lot of money for a Scale with a built in label printer. You could store all of your bulk items and their barcode in it's memory, so when you weigh a steak, it'll printout an appropriate label w/ it's barcode ready to scan... That's really more for deli-like items, but you could make it suit your needs to some degree.

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Deli Label is what we've been using at our farm market. It's purpose-built for this exact issue and integrates beautifully with Square. https://www.delilabel.app

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I need a function on the Square POS to deduct tare weights which is essential when selling bulk products by weight.

 

I need to be able to enter in the weight of the empty container so that it can be deducted from the net weight. This makes it so that the customers only pays for the product and not the weight of the container.

 

I'm surprised this isn't already a built in feature of the POS considering that you can already sell products by weight. I think having this feature would give Square hundreds of new potential customers (all the bulk stores).

 

How quickly can a feature like this be implemented? I'm looking to switch to a new POS but need a tare weight deduction feature.

 

Basically all the feature would require is an input line to enter in the tare weight of a container, and the function would deduct this weight from the net weight to get the product weight.

 

The receipt would then show the product weight, net weight, and the tare weight.

 

Image attached of our current POS that has a line for inputting the tare weight of the container.

 

tare weight.png

Another image attached of how the receipt would look like.

POS receipt.png

 

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We are a bulk store and found a scale that had a tare function---where we can type in the weight of the container and hit tare, and it only gives us the weight of whats inside the container for entering on Square. This works for our zero waste store!

 

 

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Thank you for sharing, @EarthMarket! 🌎 

Valentina
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I know this is an old thread.. but thought it was worth a shot!

Do you mind sharing the make/model of the scale? Also, is it compatible with Square or do you not have it integrated?

 

 

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  ..

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Hi there, @scoopseattle👋

 

I believe you're asking about the scale we introduced in this product update post. Taking a close look at the image of this scale in the Square Shop, it looks like there is a Tare button on the bottom right-hand side of the face of the scale. I opened the image in a new window and zoomed in to confirm this. Please let us know if I'm missing something here!

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Thank you for your response. I am not asking about the tare function on the scale, I am wondering if we already know the tare weight of the container, does the software have the ability to deduct that weight from the total weight that it receives from the scale. I am guessing that it must not since no one from Square has been able to answer this question for me. This capability is essential for any bulk food business.

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If we take a look at this scale in the Square Shop, there is a Tare button on the bottom right-hand side of the face of the scale. This is the button you'll use to tare out the weight of a container prior to weighing the product to be sold.

I used to work at a loose leaf tea shop, where we had a big scale that we used to weigh out teas into varying sizes of containers. Sometimes, we used the Tare function before filling containers with tea - we typically did this for oddly shaped containers that we didn't have presets for. Most of the time, we used a couple of preset Tare buttons that we had set up on the scale itself. 

 

If you already know the weight(s) of your container(s), the preset Tare weight sounds like it's the feature you're looking for. You are able to input 5 different preset Tare weight values using this scale. If you set up preset Tare weight values, you will be able to deduct the weight of the container from the total weight of what's on the scale by using a button on the scale.

 

If your customers are bringing in containers of all shapes and sizes, you would follow the same steps I followed with oddly shaped containers at the tea shop. @LocavoreStore similarly explained how a yogurt shop would ring up yogurt in a container without charging customers for the container here

Valentina
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Hi Valentina, 
I really appreciate you taking the time to try to figure this out for me! The reason that this probably won't work is because we need to be able to deduct custom tare weights. Our customers bring in containers of all shapes and sizes, and each one we encounter has a different tare weight. This sounds more like the function that, say, a Fred Meyer has, where they can deduct the tare weight of a mushroom bag or a bulk bag or a produce bag but don't have the ability to enter a custom tare weight. 

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And thank you for getting back to me here, @scoopseattle! When I worked at the tea shop, we sold many oddly shaped tins that we didn't have presets for; customers would also bring in their own tins. In these cases, we'd place the container on the scale for a moment and use the Tare button to quickly zero out the weight of the container. We would then fill the container with tea, place it back on the already tared scale, and get the weight of the tea without the weight of the container. This whole process was extremely fast and efficient.

 

If your customers are bringing in containers of all shapes and sizes, as you mentioned in your more recent response, you would follow the same steps I followed with oddly shaped containers at the tea shop. @LocavoreStore similarly explained how a yogurt shop would ring up yogurt in a container without charging customers for the container here.

 

You asked in an earlier post: "I am wondering if we already know the tare weight of the container, does the software have the ability to deduct that weight from the total weight that it receives from the scale." In these cases, you could have preset buttons for the containers with known weights.

 

Searching a bit on the internet, I wasn't able to find any software that supports deducting a custom weight - only known weights, in which case using preset buttons is probably easier. I would imagine this is because scales already support this functionality by offering the Tare function. Are you currently aware of a software that offers the ability to deduct a custom weight from the weight calculated by the scale? If you are, it could be helpful information for our product team to look into if we decide to build out the scale integration feature any further.

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I am looking to start a new zero-waste/refillery store and am considering Square, however, customers would need to be able to get their tare weights ahead of time on their own containers, shop the store (filling their own containers) and then come pay for their total purchases. At this point we would need to be able to weigh their purchase and have a button on the Square app to deduct the different tare weughts from each item that would have been pre-recorded. 

 

Is something like this possible or in the works?

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Hey @greenbriar_mkt-

 

Hmmm. I'm a little unclear on what you're looking for aside from tare. 

 

Are you referring to an automated tare per item? Let me know so I can look into this further. 

️ Isabelle | she/her
Seller Community & Super Seller Program Manager | Square, Inc.
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Here is an example....

 

A custoemr walks into your refillery with their own containers.  All are different weights which you provide for them. Container A weighs x grams, Container b weighs y grams and Container C weighs z grams. You take note of these and the client takes their containers and goes to your refill station and fills each of their containers with different products. 

 

When they return to you at the cash desk with their purchases (in the mean time you have rang through several other clients) you weigh each item. Container A now weighs t grams you need to remove x grams from the value they will pay. And so on for the other two containers (i.e. Container B needs to be u grams - y grams and Container C needs to be v grams - z grams) where you have to deduct DIFFERNET container weights for each item for each client as they bring multiple containers back to you at one time and are not fillign and registering as they go.

 

What we need is a way to weigh a container once filled, have it register on the square POS and then be bale to deduct different weights from each filled item (coresponding to the original weight of each different container).

 

As the client is taring all their different containers before they shop and returning after with all the different weighted containers you simply cannot wiegh the item, tare to 0, fill that container and continue. This would be the case for any bulk or zero-waste refillery store that allows their customers to bring their own containers.

 

I hope this clears things up!

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Hey @greenbriar_mkt I'm stepping in for Isabelle while she is out of the office today!

 

The best way to do this would be to have a variable priced discount (you can name it Tare Discount) in which you could remove the tare weight at the time of checkout. As far as your customers giving you this information before walking around your store, you can consider creating an open ticket for each customer that comes in and marking the tare discount before they walk off. The only hiccup is you cannot have a negative transaction, so you may need to consider adding the container's weight in a note before saving the ticket as you cannot have an open ticket with just a discount active.

 

You will be able to view the note when opening/viewing your open ticket, but the note will not appear on receipts. 

 

I hope this makes sense, but let me know if I need to clarify anything!

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I'm not the original poster, but want to throw out there that this is a vital function for us and adding a discount is simply not a time-effective/workable solution.

 

Clover allows you to manually set the tare for each item from the weight screen, and there is an app in their marketplace that allows you to specify pre-set container weights you can associate with an item.

 

A large percentage of our customers are bringing their own reusable produce bags, and all of our produce items are priced differently. We'd have to be individually calculating discounts for bag/item, which is 1) time consuming and a terrible customer experience, and 2) difficult given that Square won't allow you to add more than one instance of a discount to a transaction.

 

This is a vital function for us.

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Agreed. This is a vital function for us as well..

May I ask, did you ever find a solution via square or opt for another POS company? 

Thanks

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Ended up going with Clover and adding the “Unit Tare App” for about $6/month. 

 

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