thread Re: Best Approach for Rental Business in Archived Discussions (Read Only)

Best Approach for Rental Business

ejatwd18 — Mon, 03 Feb 2020 21:53:56 GMT

Hi, I run a rentals business, and we often need to charge our customers after the initial sale for late fees and damage fees. I'd love to be able to do this without making the customer physically come to the store for the second card swipe.

Two options I see, but not sure if they're possible -

1) Hold the card info on file, and run the second charge remotely when needed, without requiring another physical swipe

2) "Authorize" a rental fee + deposit at the beginning, and then "capture" the balance later when the item is returned (shortcoming with this is I understand banks only authorize funds for up to 7 days)

Are either of those possible with square? Or is there a better approach for this use case?

Re: Best Approach for Rental Business

PreOrder_Apps — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 02:57:19 GMT

You should check out the Invoicing feature. I can definitely tell you it's awesome for saving a Customer's card and being able to charge it at any later date (we do that currently). I think Square refers to that functionality as "Virtual Terminal".

Then I'm almost positive they did some recent changes where Customers could pay partial on invoices too, which maybe you could somehow utilize (though not sure).

I'm with an official Square Partner company and we make custom solutions, so if you want something that does exactly all of that - that's what we do. And, we're fast and affordable and can even give you this in a mobile app using our Square-powered Pre-Order App Solution/Service.

Hope the Invoicing helps though at least!

Ken

Re: Best Approach for Rental Business

nika — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 16:39:50 GMT

Hi @ejatwd18! @PreOrder_Apps is correct. It sounds like our Square Invoices would work great for you and that situation. You also have the ability to save a customer's card on file if you need to go back after the fact to charge for damages and such. Although, of course, you need to get the permission of your customers to save the card on file first.

Hopefully this suggestion works for you!