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Q&A: Using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional

Kpay — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 20:41:38 GMT

Hi Sellers,

On Friday, January 26th from 10am-11am PST, we hosted a Live Q&A on payment best practices for freelancers and service-based professionals. We had the Square Invoices Product Manager, Rohini Pandhi, here to help you make the most out of our invoicing product. Check out all her answers below!

@rohini leads the product team for Square Invoices. Previous to Square, she worked as a consultant, started her own company, and has experience invoicing her own clients. She understands how important getting paid on time and having a healthy cash flow is for many small businesses.

Customize your Square Invoices to have your professional branding.A couple example questions:

How can I protect my business from future disputes and non-payments?
How can I automatically charge my customers for their monthly service fees?

Thanks for all your questions and cheers!

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

Mingo — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 00:16:31 GMT

Can you provide any real/hard/meaningful update regarding the implementation of a partial payment function re: timeline for roll out?

For so many freelancers and service folks, “deposits/partial payments” are how we protect ourselves and how we ensure good faith with our clients. It is so important that we are able to process transactions in this manner and right now squares options are not professional or convenient.

Thanks in advance for your time!

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

Hillside — Sat, 13 Jan 2018 02:21:47 GMT

Yes! yes!

Please update us! This would be amazing and super helpful.

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

FCJ313 — Sun, 14 Jan 2018 02:01:12 GMT

I'm a freelancer and invoice customers via Square. I have a few that are delinquent, which I will have to send to collections. Does Square offer a feature to place these types of invoices in a separate location so the totals won't show up in the dashboard as currently outstanding or offer the ability to void/move these invoices without the customer getting notified of such, thereby thinking they don't owe for the invoice any longer? An option to place these invoices in "collections" or "bad debt" would be great.

Also, it would be great if Square would edit the invoice so the customer would have to actually click on it to see the total and we would know that it's actually been viewed. Unless they click the link to pay it, there's no way to know this.

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

paravelmedia — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 04:47:32 GMT

Partial invoice payments and the ability to offer store credits are the two most basic feature requests that go back years. If Square has no intention of implementing them, can you let us know? For many professional businesses, these features are extremely important.

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

acok — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 00:48:18 GMT

Not questions, just feedback / suggestions. 1. A PO (purchase order) number field on invoices. 2. The ability to generate quotes or estimates along with invoices. 3. A way to inform customers that invoices can be paid by check other than the message field. 4. A way to have my business name and my personal name or the employee name on receipts and invoices.

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

musicmegga — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 01:13:25 GMT

How can I change the headline that shows up on my digital invoices "New Invoice" to something else?

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

HeatherSweetD — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 02:05:19 GMT

Yes to this!

Decimal Billing?

AShapiroStudios — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 02:06:27 GMT

Thanks for a 90% great product, that keeps getting better. Is there a plan to roll-out decimal billing for hourly-based invoices? Ie, 1.3 hours, etc? Also, +1 for partial billing (ie deposits, retainer, etc). Thank You!

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

HeatherSweetD — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 02:12:19 GMT

When will we be able to accept partial payments on invoices? (not installments of a predetermined rate but of custom amount)

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

judaht — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 02:47:45 GMT

Could we get the ability to automatically include a "date of service" in the note field for an item on the invoice based on today's date or another set date?

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

phemomenon — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 02:57:23 GMT

When I create an invoice and start typing the item, it recognizes the item in my online store and auto completes the name and price. Does this deduct the item from inventory? When that item is out of stock will it be automatically removed from my online store? I hope so because I don't want it to show as available if I already have it on someone's invoice.

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

wisconsingirl30 — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 03:24:37 GMT

Have you thought about integrating with USPS to make shipping merchandise that our patrons have purchased from us through your site???? That would be enormously helpful!!!!

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

mikealbright — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 03:27:19 GMT

I would like to take set appointments and turn them into invoices directly.

(off topic), I do real estate shooting and would love to have a place for clients to add "Where" information when they are scheduling themselves. Also, when I add addresses to my 'Notes' it doesn't show up on the client's e-mail.

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

southpasmusic — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 03:40:50 GMT

Hi Invoice team. We are a music school offering lessons to our clients. The recurring invoice function would be ideal for how we bill our lessons a month in advance. There is a problem. Anytime we need to make any change to the recurring invoice, it sends an email to our client. (If we misspelled something, if we need to change the number of weeks to bill i.e. some months having 5 Mondays instead of 4) it sends another email. Our clients would be drowning in notifications and would likely be quite upset.

Is there a way we can limit the notifications to the client, to when the recurring invoice actually charges the card? That would be a game changer for us. Currently, we hand-build over 250 manual invoices a month and it is a major time investment. Thanks for any thoughts you may have.

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

southpasmusic — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 03:46:08 GMT

That would be unbelieveably helpful for our business as well.

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

Uniqe_Evnt_Dsgs — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 04:05:00 GMT

I agree with you and request it too!

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

sh67 — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 04:05:03 GMT

Is there an easy way to enter client name address and phone when creating a new invoice and to have them appear on the invoice that the client sees? Also business name would be handy!

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

Uniqe_Evnt_Dsgs — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 04:05:58 GMT

I agree with you and request the same information.

Re: Live Q&A: Ask us about using Square as a Freelancer or Service-Based Professional!

tjonesmedia — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 04:29:08 GMT

Thank you for asking this question. I was actually going to inquire about the same thing, it's the one feature I wish Square had.