thread Re: Accepting tokens as payment in Payments Troubleshooting

Accepting tokens as payment

LaLevantina — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 11:27:18 GMT

Hi there, I've just received our new Terminal (up until now I have used an Android tablet with Square POS). I have a question regarding types of payment on our food truck.

At some public facing events we do, we accept tokens given out to staff by the organisation so that they may receive a free meal, which we are then subsequently paid for when the event finishes.

I would like to process the order with Terminal, as if it were from a paying customer, but then receive 0 payment (in the form of said token), simply because I need to create an order ticket, and account for my stock in my inventory.

How can I program Terminal to accept a token/voucher which has 0 money amount associated with it?

Thank you so much,

Paula

Re: Accepting tokens as payment

tranguyen — Thu, 05 May 2022 13:36:55 GMT

Welcome to the Seller Community @LaLevantina!

There are a couple of ways you can process these types of payments. You can either setup a Comp Reason or a 100% Discount.

To setup a Comp Reason:

On your online Square Dashboard, go to Items > Settings > Comp and Void
Click Create Comp Reason at the top right hand corner
Enter the event name as the comp reason > Save

To comp an order or an item:

On your Square Terminal, ring up your sale as usual
Click into the item you're looking to comp and scroll down to the bottom. You should see the option to Comp Item here.
Select the appropriate reason > Comp

Alternatively, you can setup a 100% Discount which may be quicker when you're busy:

On your online Square Dashboard, go to Items > Discounts
Click Create a Discount at the top right hand corner
Name the discount after the event and enter 100% as the amount

To use the discount on your Terminal, simply ring up the sale as usual and when reviewing the sale, click Add a discount and select the discount you've created on your Dashboard.

I hope this will help! Let me know if there's anything I can do for you.

Re: Accepting tokens as payment

LaLevantina — Thu, 05 May 2022 13:55:37 GMT

Thank you for that. I actually thought I'd sorted something out last night, by selecting the option of "Other Payment Types" to appear at checkout. When processing the payment, I can type whatever I like in the box (e.g. Token) and the sale goes through and prints the order ticket. But the transaction is recorded as money having exchanged hands. I just tried your Comping idea, and it works great, and the transaction comes up as £0. Thank you so much!!

Re: Accepting tokens as payment

Sam_400º — Fri, 06 May 2022 08:41:50 GMT

In similar situations I use the open tickets feature.

If you do that, then each of the token sales are just saved & your ticket is still printed. You’ve then got an easy record when collecting your money of all the food bought with the tokens too, & you can either close out the ticket (recording the funds now revived) or delete/void them off.

Re: Accepting tokens as payment

k_atie — Fri, 06 May 2022 09:08:13 GMT

Just stepping in for Tra here. Glad to know our solution worked out for you @LaLevantina!

And thank you for providing another great alternative solution @Sam_400º.

Re: Accepting tokens as payment

LaLevantina — Fri, 06 May 2022 18:22:27 GMT

Thank you, I'll take a look at that option. Trying to keep things as simple as possible though as we have new guys helping out this summer! Hope you have a great season x