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.

[Stacelyn24]

This is exciting because we were considering starting a subscription based service for in-home nail services.  This would definitely make it more easier to manage 🙂

[HeroAir]

We would like to use this feature but we need it to be a bi-annual subscription or preferred a yearly subscription. We are a service provider and need to be able to offer a yearly 1X payment plan that we can have manage itself for our customers wanting service agreements. So far the longest period available is monthly. We could create a hybrid type monthly but it’s really not typical in the repair service  industry. Thoughts? Options?

[JessPoynter]

Thanks for taking the time! 

I wonder, is there a way for us to create a subscription that keeps a running total or balance? For example, I have clients that need to do weekly or biweekly treatments. How can I create this? I'd like to be able to set up a monthly subscription that clients can buy treatment packages that give them X amount of visits for the month, i.e. 4 treatments a month for $X, 10 treatments for $X, and so on, but then those visits would be tracked in the subscription? 

[waxonhairoff]

I use invoices for all of my membership needs. It's customizable and Clients love it. 

[jean_sq]

Hi @JessPoynter,

At this time, Subscriptions could help with handling the recurring payment (eg. $200/month) for the subscription. However, we don’t have a way to track the subscription benefit (eg. how many treatments has a subscriber used in a particular month).

We are currently working with Square Appointments on an integration that would track the benefit usage as you described but for now you would need to track it some other way.

[TCSlaguna]

+1 for @JessPoynter's request for keeping track of services rendered via subscription. 

We would like to offer a monthly service subscription, and would need a way to keep track of whether a client has received the service or not for that given month they paid. 

Looking forward to what the Square Appointments team is working on @jean_sq!

[Neighborsatx]

I've submitted multiple requests to have whether or not the subscription is active or not next to the clients name when you pull up their customer profile. Possible to add this feature?

[jean_sq]

Hi @Neighborsatx ! That's an interesting idea. May I ask how having the subscriptions tagged  in a customer profile will help you with your business? Thank you for sharing!

[erinreyehair]

i got back every sunday and text clients who haven't been back in 8 weeks, it would be helpful to know if they have a subscription they haven't used to either automate a marketing email or include it in the text. for example i intend to use subscriptions for a once a month treatment blowout for whenever they'd like to come in that month and need to be able to remind them if they have it and haven't used it yet

[christiema]

Hi!  I own a skin studio and offer a monthly subscription where clients get charged on the 1st of the month for a facial and have the month to book on any day they choose.  Since they are already charged, I'm curious what you would recommend to do once they come in for their appointments.  ie comping the appointment?  I currently have them book a MEMBERSHIP facial specific for them that is zeroed out and essentially not a charge but it throws my reports off specifically the numbers for each employee. 

[jean_sq]

Hello @christiema,

Good question. I am a newbie with Square Appointments so I posed your question to someone on that team. There isn’t a perfect workaround but they mentioned that you could create a 100% 'Member' discount that you apply when you check out the member. They thought there is a way you can then exclude discounts from calculating staff commissions, so this might avoid throwing off numbers for each employee.

The Subscriptions team is currently working with Square Appointments on an integration that should help track the subscription benefit so you would not need these workarounds. However, until that integration is complete, you will need to depend on workarounds.

[1stMtn]

Will it be possible to charge everyone at the the same time in one batch instead of on the day of the month they signed up? We need to know who is paid and who isn't before we distribute the products to them, and that needs to happen all at once.

[jean_sq]

Hi @1stMtn ! Yes, Subscriptions is planning to launch custom billing dates very soon which will allow you to pick the billing date for your subscription plans! We will announce in Product Updates when it's available.

[mradorables]

I would love to offer my customers a subscription. Quite a few come to me weekly or monthly, so I know they would appreciate it if it was automated for them.

[StuffInBalloons]

It needs to have delivery options available...

I have a few different subscriptions available to my customers - they have been "legasied" and I was excited to be able to attach them (or a new version of them) to corresponding website items. I created a new item, created the corresponding subscription and attached it to the item only to have it tell me I MUST have shipping ONLY for subscriptions. We are offering locally delivered or picked up flower arrangements - NOT  a shippable item. This makes the new feature for subscriptions completely useless to me without a time-consuming workaround. We do ship some of our gift items nationwide, so if I set the subscription to "Shipping" I will end up having to cancel orders that are requested for outside of the local area even if I make it clear in the subscription description that it is a local item only (people don't read). Is there a plan to allow delivery and/or pick for subscriptions up in the near future? I see service businesses that also have products that they do ship having the same issue if customers or clients outside of their service area select a subscription service.

[js4sfarm]

I'm in the same boat. I offer local pickup and delivery (fresh produce). I really want to offer subscriptions but I don't do shipping. Look forward to being able to use delivery and local pickup.

[jean_sq]

Hi @StuffInBalloons,

Thanks for sharing this. The good news is that we agree that pick-up is an important fulfillment method for sellers so the team is already working on building that feature. The team is also aware of delivery as a needed fulfillment method.

[cgmedia]

Can you provide a walk-through for a service option, e.g., offering maintenance plans for websites?

[jean_sq]

Hi @cgmedia,

I would start by creating a “Service” item type (maybe call it “Website Maintenance”) in your Square Online item library for your service. You may add a description as well. Add your price for the service (let’s say it’s $100/month so put $100 as the price). Save the item.

Create a subscription plan to allow for the recurring billing.
Under “Assign Items”, attach the item you created above to the subscription plan.

For a maintenance plan that is billed monthly, add “monthly” under “Add frequency option”
Save the plan.

If you want this maintenance plan to be purchasable by both recurring billing and a one-time instance, you are all set.

If you only want this purchasable as a recurring billing, follow the rest of the steps below:

• Go back and edit the service item you initially created in your Square Online item library.
• Under the “Subscriptions” section, you should now see your subscription plan attached.
• Check the “This item is purchasable only as a subscription” box.

Now when this item is displayed on your website, it should also display the subscription options like my example below:

[christiema]

I've noticed that my members in the subscription don't get loyalty points when the subscription gets charged.  Is there a way to change that?