thread Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square? in Archived Discussions (Read Only)

Is there any way to override a price in Square?

happenstance — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 20:50:44 GMT

We are having a large clearance sale this weekend and have reduced many items to flat pricing - i.e. $2, $5, $10. We need to ring in the individual items for inventory purposes, but how can we change pricing when it isnt a straight percentage?

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

Sean — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 20:50:30 GMT

Great question! I haven't heard this request before, but it totally makes sense.

While there isn't a way to override a price, you could consider creating a variable dollar amount discount (as opposed to percentage). When you create the discount, just toggle to the money sign. If you leave the price field blank, when you add it in a sale, it will prompt you to enter a custom amount. Here's a screenshot:

PS) If my answer solved your problem, would you mind marking it as "Best Answer"? That'll help the rest of the community find what they're looking for. If not, just write back, and I'll continue to help. Thanks!

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

jlabanca — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 16:02:46 GMT

You can edit the prices of your items in bulk using the CSV export/import functionality:

Export your item library to a CSV file.
BACK UP THE CSV FILE so you can revert your library after the sale
Open the CSV file in Excel (or another spreadsheet editor)
Adjust all of the prices to their discounted price
Import the updated CSV file, selecting the "Modify Existing Items" options.
After the sale, import the unedited backup version of the CSV file to restore the original prices

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

RagCo — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 19:44:32 GMT

Love Square! We ran into the exact same issue as with Jlabanca. It was kind of an awkward transaction changing the item's price.

We just switched from Vend to Square for various benefits; however, Vend does have some positive features that I know Square could implement to stay ahead of the game. With Vend, when the item is in checkout, the item can be directly selected and pricing can be changed as well as discounts being added.

How soon can Square deploy a feature like this?

Thank you!

Stacy@theragcompany.com

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

Kelly — Sun, 21 Aug 2016 18:16:56 GMT

@RagCo We don't have a timeline for editing prices in sales but we do have a few features that may work for you right now!

As Sean mentioned above, you can use a dollar discount to adjust the pricing by dollar amounts right in the sale.

You can also create a variable priced item, which will require you to enter in a price each time you ring up an item allowing you to choose the right price each time you complete a transaction. Creating a variable priced it is simple! Simply leave the item price blank when you are creating your item and your Register will automatically prompt you to enter a price at the time of the sale.

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

jlabanca — Mon, 22 Aug 2016 13:25:13 GMT

@RagCo, you can also create an item with both a fixed price and a variable price. When editing the item that already has a fixed price point, add a second price point with a blank price.

At checkout, a popup will appear allowing you to choose between the fixed price or the variable price.

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

Heathen — Tue, 20 Sep 2016 01:16:35 GMT

Hi, I can't seem to get the blank variable discounts to appear on my smartphone register. Is there a reason why only the pre-set discounts appear?

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

jlabanca — Wed, 21 Sep 2016 16:57:26 GMT

@Heathen, I just tried impersonating your account, and I'm able to see your variable discounts on an iPad and iPhone. If you're using an iPhone, try searching for "Var" in the search box and they show up. On an iPad, you can click on the "Discounts" category.

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

cleanprosupply — Sat, 21 Jan 2017 14:51:03 GMT

I am having the same issue. I can add a variable discount to the entire transaction, but the individual item only allows the pre-set discounts.

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

Chad — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 01:00:28 GMT

@cleanprosupply Currently, variable discounts can only be applied to the entire sale. I will make sure to pass your feedback along to the product team. We are always looking for new ways to improve Square.

If you have any other questions please let me know!

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

lancem — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 22:51:38 GMT

It is a severe limitation to not be able to manually override a price at checkout. Being able to manually set the price of items during checkout is such a fundamental retail POS function that I'm absolutely astonished that such an otherwise powerful POS system would lack this ability. We are a shoe retail store with thousands of SKUs. When items get put on clearance the discount amount can vary widely. I want my staff to have the ability to simply change the price on an ad hoc basis. I can create a workaround by creating a long menu of $ discounts such as $1, $2, $3, $4, $5, $10, $15, $20, $25, $30, etc. Then we'll have to select multiple discounts that add up to the correct net total discount. Talk about a kludgy solution and one prone to errors. Please add a manual price override feature as soon as possible.

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

Helen — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 23:32:02 GMT

Thank you for sharing your experience in this post @lancem. I definitely see how it would be useful to be able to manually override a price and I'll share your feedback with the Point of Sale Team directly. If we have any updates on this feature we'll let you know here.

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

blacklabimaging — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 18:54:29 GMT

This would be a great feature to have. The ability to override a price at the time of sale.

We used Quickbooks POS and it gave us the option for adding a discount or changing the price on the fly. If we changed the price, it would calculate the percentage off and show that on the customer's receipt. We were also prompted to enter a reason for the discount: demo, damaged, sale... so we can know why the discount was given.

Hope to see this option soon!

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

tester — Sat, 04 Aug 2018 05:50:44 GMT

only problem is the inventory count doesn't decrement properly anymore. so the solution will not work where inventory is tracked

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

tester — Sat, 04 Aug 2018 05:52:19 GMT

this is also very important to us

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

SmoothOperator — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 19:53:16 GMT

We would also greatly benefit by having variable discounts applicable to single items!! I've found a workaround in that you can apply it to the whole bill, then remove the discount from items you don't want to discount, but that is a bit tedious when someone is buying a dozen items, sometimes with more than one discount.

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

PearlsIntl — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 21:25:30 GMT

We're also looking for a way to do this. We shouldn't have to override our regular pricing every time we have a sale. Please make this happen sooner rather than later.

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

Chad — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 17:38:48 GMT

Hello @PearlsIntl!

Could you share some more details on what you're looking to do? I'm a little confused on why you would be changing the price of an item on every sale?

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

RagCo — Fri, 21 Sep 2018 20:27:19 GMT

Square has a well-known presence in the POS community. I would encourage the company's development team to make this issue a priority and implement a price override capability since a competitor, VEND, offers this feature. Setting up the variables for the products can be cumbersome when it comes to tracking inventory and making sure the products are properly accounted for when used during a sale.

Re: Is there any way to override a price in Square?

blacklabimaging — Sat, 22 Sep 2018 00:05:24 GMT

It is really beginning to become a pain to sit down with a calculator and add up all the discounts for each item so we can take it off the whole order. Not only does this cause issues with over or under discounting items but then there is NO RECORD AT ALL FOR EXACTLY WHAT ITEM WAS DISCOUNTED AND WHEN A RETURN HAS TO BE MADE HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT PRICE TO RETURN FOR THAT PRODUCT?? It's funny that we need to create a paper log so that we can research what we do on our fancy POS system.

The holiday season is coming and in our business, our vendors offer Instant Rebates that can change daily. We do not have the time to program each price change. The amount of work needed to do all this would cost more than just upgrading our old Quickbooks POS system. I keep seeing post after post of requests for what seems to be the most basic operations of a POS system that square doesn't offer.

Start working on listening to your customers, get these updates out or next year I see us going back to Quickbooks.

Fancy equipment that wows our customers only lasts so long. The losses we incur outway any benefit of a snazzy looking register system.