[CA] Live Q&A: Ask any questions about Square’s Subscription Management Software

[Ani_]

Square’s subscription management software allows any business to easily create recurring revenue streams. If your business utilizes subscriptions, memberships, donations, or other forms of recurring payments, our product team wants to hear from you. Not using this service but interested in learning more? This is also the event for you. 

We're excited to welcome @jean_sq from the Subscriptions team for a Question & Answer session! Her team is eager to learn about how they can better address your business's recurring payment needs as well as answer any questions you may have. Learn more about Square Subscriptions before the event. 

Photo Credit: Ambitious Creative Co. - Rick Barrett on Unsplash.

When: Post your questions to this thread before Tuesday, September 27 and check back with us on Thursday, September 29, as she responds. 

A few example questions:

• I'm just getting started with memberships for my business — what should I keep in mind as I get set up?
• If I could do "_______" with memberships, that would make my customers' experience much better.
• What are the latest subscription and membership features and how do I activate them?
• What ways are available for me to interact with my members or subscribers?

Note: Although we can't share specific details on our product roadmaps, this information will be helpful as we continue to make improvements.

Click Reply below to post a question ahead of time, and we’ll address as many posts as we can on Thursday, September 29.👇

[#2]

Hello everyone, thanks for taking the time to post your questions! 💯 The product team is signed in and will begin responding soon —and following up in this thread throughout the next hour. 🙌🏻

[theartfulchild]

Is there a fee for using the subscription service?

How will customers know I am offering subscriptions? Can I add it to social media or link it to my website?

Would the subscription somehow be linked to the product (in my case coaching segments)

[jean_sq]

@theartfulchild Great questions! There is no charge to use the subscription service. You only pay processing fees on the subscriptions. With regards to how your customers learn about your subscription offering, there are many ways to market it: make it available through your website, generate QR codes to share on table tents in your store, include your subscription link via social media channels, train your staff to share it with customers as they are checking out. These are just a few ways! 

At this time, subscriptions do not tie to your Square inventory. What this means is that if you have, for example,  a wine box of the month, your Square inventory will not automatically decrement every time you ship out a wine subscription box to a customer. You will have to keep track of your inventory another way. That feature is coming in early 2023

[agregd]

What’s the experience in the Square community for product based subscriptions? Is it a hit or a miss? What are the best practices?

[boundary2]

Can customers choose the starting date of the subscription, so it renews each month on that same day. Ex. 1st of each month or the 15th. 

[jean_sq]

@boundary2 Early next year we will be releasing custom billing dates feature which will allow you to set the billing date for a subscription (the current default is billing date is tied to subscription start date).

[meggyj113]

I love the direction Square is going with subscriptions, but at the moment, I am still missing a few key features to use subscriptions seamlessly for my business. 

1) I need to be able to pair a membership to services and/or products so that it is taken off the retail inventory monthly and counts how many services are left or available to each client throughout the month as they use them. 

2) An option to allow people with a membership the opportunity to book "membership only" appointments or services included in the membership (ex. free highlights as they are a part of the monthly membership) 

3) A place in the client's profile to see their current membership, if it is up to date and what services or products they have used or are remaining for them to use before the end of the month so that we can make sure that they are not double dipping on services easily or to make sure they are used if they haven't yet. 

4) The ability to automatically send contracts or have a way for them to sign a contract before they sign up for the subscription or membership. 

5) Customization for the virtual subscription pages so we can say what is included, add branding, etc. 

Hopefully this isn't too much of a list! Thank you.

[jean_sq]

Hey @meggyj113,

Thank you for using Subscriptions! To answer your questions:

1. Currently, subscriptions are not tied to Square inventory. However, we are looking to roll out that feature in 2023.
2. With this question, are you looking for Subscriptions to be integrated with Square Appointments?
3. It sounds like you are looking for a way to track usage of a membership benefit by a customer? (eg. if the membership includes 1 facial per month, have they used it yet?). We will be looking at that type of workflow in 2023. Would love to hear your thoughts on how you think it should work!
4. We have heard the need for contracts at sign-up for a subscription. At this time, subscriptions does not support that. For your use case, I’m curious if it would work if on the subscription purchase page,  there was a link to the contract that was hosted somewhere and an acknowledgement button for the potential buyer?

Customizations to this page are a bit limited right now but you can make a few branding tweaks by following these instructions.

[boundary2]

We would like an option to also upload a contract, or have a way for clients to sign up with our business. 

[SMCan]

I use annual membership subscriptions for my business. Will your product be helpful for this and does the service send renewal reminders to customers? Are customers still able to pay with cash or in person, but receive renewal reminders and invoices via Square subscriptions? 

[jean_sq]

Hi @SMCan,

There is an “annual” frequency available when creating a subscription plan. Subscriptions does not currently send out renewal reminders.  If you anticipate your customers paying in cash in store for their subscription, you might want to set up the subscription as “Invoice” instead of card on file. That will mean that the customer will need to pay the invoice when sent (payment won’t be automatic), but it also means you can take cash as payment for that invoice in store. They could also pay off the invoice via card in store as well. Feel free to elaborate a bit more on your issue if this doesn’t quite answer your question!

[boundary2]

Will businesses be able to offer debit subscriptions. Will there be any additional fees for this?

[jean_sq]

Hi @boundary2,

Could you elaborate on what you mean by “debit subscriptions”? The only fees currently associated with Subscriptions are processing fees.

[boundary2]

Hi, 

Sorry, I mean can we set up debit interact subscriptions? Would they just be the 10 cent per transaction.  

[jean_sq]

Hi @boundary2 sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Square accepts Interac Debit and Subscriptions doesn't block accepting that type of payment so I would imagine that it would be an option. I would recommend setting up a test subscription plan (free with your Square account) and generate a subscription for yourself and test it. Hope this helps!

[Tom]

Hello everyone, thanks for taking the time to post your questions! 💯 The product team is signed in and will begin responding soon —and following up in this thread throughout the next hour. 🙌🏻