Yes, I've already refunded all my test transactions with "Testing" as the reason (with the exception of the very first live credit card test I did several days ago, which I refunded under "Accidental Charge" before I was a little savvier). But this is a kludge and is only a somewhat acceptable workaround when first getting started. Obviously, you will not want to do this in the middle of live business operations when you're training others on the use of the register. As others have mentioned, this affects both accounting reports and IRS records. Not good.
A testing/training mode is something that should have, at best, been included by Square before they ever launched their product. Or, at worst, been corrected immediately when it was first brought to their attention at least 6 years ago. I used to work in the tech industry as a web services/database backend programmer and this isn't rocket science nor is it particularly difficult to implement: just create a shadow database table for test transactions and provide a passcode-protected option to switch transactions from the business's live database table to the test database table and back again.
This is something they should have been able to roll out in a month (including development and testing, and in parallel with whatever other features they were working on at the time). To me, this illustrates a lack of concern for their customers and a corporate priority of profits over quality and customer satisfaction. They realize that most of us who've already invested in their hardware and software are essentially "trapped" customers who are unlikely/unable to leave despite Square ignoring our valid complaints. This is a common industry problem where tech companies rush to develop shiny new "bells & whistles" for marketing in order to attract more customers (AKA revenue) while failing to fix foundational bugs and deficiencies in their core product.
