thread Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges? in Archived Discussions (Read Only)

How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

FarmMom — Tue, 17 Mar 2020 16:39:28 GMT

We sell our farm's meat and poultry at farmer's markets, on farm and by delivery, and price mostly by the pound. I'd love to have the ability to set the quantity to a decimal input, so I can enter the weight on the package meat and be able to have a set price on the item, but that is still not available. So most of our items are just "variable" pricing, and I have to have a calculator in one hand, or go to back and forth from the calculator app on my phone to Square, to calculate the price on all our beef and pork. The only other option I've been told is to set a price for .01 or .001 lb, and enter the decimal amount in as a whole number. So if a Pork Shoulder Roast is $8.00/lb, and weights are in tenths, like 2.78 lbs, I'd have to set the price for the item as $.08 and input the quantity as 278, since it only takes whole numbers. This seems like an expensive accident just waiting to happen. And trying to explain why I have to do this to customers, and how it would show up on their receipts, just doesn't seem worth it, even if it would save time not having to calulate everything while inputing. Are their any other farmers, butchers, or others who price by decimal quantities doing it this way successfully? If so, do customers care?

Is there a setting so I can enter fractions as quantity? ie. fabric by the yard--1.25 yard

Tailormade2 — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 19:13:47 GMT

I sell by-the yard fabrics and need to enter 1.125 (1 and 1/8 yard) or 1.25 (1 and 1/4 yard) or 1.375 (1 and 3/8 yard)

The quantity option is in whole numbers only. Can I customize this in my settings some place??

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

LocavoreStore — Sat, 07 May 2016 17:51:28 GMT

Had the same issue before they introduced variable pricing... Almost everything we sell is by weight. And for a long time everything we sold had to cost $0.01. So If I sold someone $20 worth of produce, it got ran through square as 2000 individual pieces being sold at 1 cent each. It made for usless reporting. Right now your best solution is to get a calculating scale (~$150 online... its worth it!) Punch the price into the scale, and it tells you the total, then put into square. Hopefully one day Square will have scale integration.

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

Honestware — Mon, 09 May 2016 13:44:40 GMT

Most of my sales are for services charged by the hour, so I have also requested, and keep waiting, for decimal quantities. It is the the current glaring omission from an otherwise great system at the moment.

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

FarmMom — Tue, 10 May 2016 13:13:30 GMT

I don't need a scale at the market since all our meat has the weights printed on the packages by the processor. I just don't understand why decimal quantities would be so hard to implement in the programming. But then I'm not a programmer.

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

FarmMom — Tue, 10 May 2016 13:20:28 GMT

I never thought of services charging by the hour for partial hours! I wonder how many Square customers a feature like this would really help out. I wish I knew how to program. It just baffles me why decimals would be so hard to implement into the item quantity.

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

RealHonestware — Tue, 10 May 2016 13:27:01 GMT

I *AM* a programmer.. It's not hard. The only issue I can see is if the underlying data structure for quantity was defined as an integer rather than a real number.. Even so, it's a HUGE issue that needs to be resolved.

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

Sean — Tue, 10 May 2016 16:45:46 GMT

Thanks for everyones contributions here! This is definitely a feature request that we're tracking very closely. I really appreciate the honest opinions (and help answering the question)- this is exactly the kind of feedback that we love sharing with our product liaison team.

For reference, here is our Support Center article that discusses this feature gap, and the workaround you all suggested. As a recommendation (since it wasn't already mentioned), the CAS 2000 Jr. scale is a scale that can be pre-programmed to record weight and price. 👍🏻

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

Quiltyfeelings — Mon, 30 May 2016 06:20:45 GMT

I sell fabric to the nearest 1/8 yard. I, too, need decimals. I entered 50 different variables for 1/8 yard up to 5 yards at 1/8 intervals.....for $1/yard-$12/yard. UGH.

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

PVF-West-Stand — Tue, 31 May 2016 14:57:44 GMT

Agreed. This should not still be in the backlog. This is a critical enhancement (and speaking as a professional software developer, on the face of it, a relatively small lift) that would open up a huge new swath of business types for Square. It should be a priority.

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

NavyPoint — Sat, 04 Jun 2016 17:12:21 GMT

Can you make estimate as to when the fraction/decimal feature will be available?

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

IronmanFellini — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 16:48:44 GMT

I thought I was missing some custom formatting feature in Invoicing...the community comments answered: NO DECIMAL /partial QUANTITIES???? Apparently I am not the only person who bills his time... I am going to create two Items...Consulting Rate (Hours) and Consulting Rate (Minutes)... PLEASE FIX THIS ISSUE ASAP...It is much more important and dare I say critical to our business's self respect and Squares. Fancy coat...no shoes.

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

ninjacowfarm — Fri, 01 Jul 2016 22:00:00 GMT

Just chiming in on this topic since it appears that Square is paying attention to this thread (which I'm relieved to see).

We do about $150,000 in sales per year on Square. 99% of it is in decimal quantities. We implemented the suggested solution to move the decimal place so that $10 per pound is $1.0 per pound and the quantity moves from 1.2 to 12. It works, but I field a question/complaint from a customer about once per week on just what the heck did we charge them for! Their bill makes no sense! They KNOW that they didn't by 52 pounds of hamburger! How dare I?! I explain it's a Square thing as best I can. Some come back. Some don't. This issue is costing me customers. It is critical. Please give an ETA on when/if this will be addressed. Otherwise I need a new POS. I'd love to hear from someone directly with Square for an answer to this topic. I'd really don't feel like changing POS systems but this is costing me business.

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

Sean — Wed, 06 Jul 2016 17:37:20 GMT

@ninjacowfarm - Appreciate the detailed post!

@NavyPoint - While I can't offer an ETA for this feature, I can assure you that your feedback isn't being ignored. I'll definitely pass this along to our product liason team! Thanks for sharing!

Re: Is there a setting so I can enter fractions as quantity? ie. fabric by the yard--1.25 yard

dnmair — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 00:03:24 GMT

Did you ever get a resolution to this? I have the exact same problem!!

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

dnmair — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 00:33:54 GMT

I am wondering why this issue is taking so long to solve. I am new to square and was completely thrown off and disappointed by my inability to use decimal quantities on the register app. My entire business depends on it.

If this issue has been going for so long with no resolution, I question whether or not the "product liason team" even exists or cares about their customer's requests. It looks like a large percentage of sellers relying on square would benefit from this one (might I venture to say tiny and/or easy) addition to the app.

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

Sean — Sun, 17 Jul 2016 18:08:21 GMT

@dnmair - Appreciate the feedback, and I completely understand where you're coming from! I can personally assure you that this discussion has been sent over to our product liaison team (as well as the feedback we've heard from phone calls/ emails). While I can't offer any sort of timeframe, this is certainly something that's on our radar.

Thanks for your patience, and I'll be sure to update this thread if I hear any other details on the topic.

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

sunfedbeefnyc — Mon, 18 Jul 2016 22:42:51 GMT

I asked for this feature 1.5 years ago and they still have not added it. I got the same canned reply back then that it was on their product team's radar and should be implemented soon. I doubt much has changed.

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

FarmMom — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 11:09:06 GMT

I have been asking about this for a couple years as well. As soon as they actually had call-in support I called about it. I'm glad to see the forum actually has someone responding. I love using Square, and love implementing the improvements as they happen, and when this finally gets fixed it will make selling at the farmer's markets so much faster! I thought I was all along, or maybe it was just a meat thing. Never dreamed it was also time and lenths (were there other units?), not just weight, that were charged by decimals.

This fix will make a big time savings for us not just on the front end of sales, which takes a while when having to calculate each package of beef or pork before entering it as variable. It also will save time in bookkeeping not having to back out each sale to figure weights out.

Please figure this one out soon!

Re: How are others that price by a decimal quantities working their charges?

FarmMom — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 21:35:43 GMT

This looks like a nice scale, but I'm not weighing anything at the time I'm selling it. At the farmer's markets my products are wrapped and the labels have the weight on them. This also doesn't help with those billing for fractions of hours, or selling by the yard, like fabric. I didn't realize there were so many businesses selling things in fractional units. This fix will make using Square much easier for a lot of businesses.