Can I backdate, edit, or delete a transaction?

[AC]

The title of this post has been edited from the original:  Can you delete a transaction?

How do you delete a completed "Cash" transaction? I ran it just as a test.

[AC]

The title of this post has been edited from the original:  Can you delete a transaction?

[#3]

Hi @TheGlencafe,

Right now we have no plans to add the ability to backdate, delete or manipulate transaction information after a sale is complete. 

For context, the ability to manipulate transactions can cause issues for reporting and chargebacks. Also, it would make it easier for fraudsters and scammers to commit crimes using Square Point of Sale. 

If you have test cash transactions in your transaction history, you can always refund these payments to balance your books. See our help article on how to refund a payment.

Hopefully this has provided some transparency on this request, and why it's not available. 

[#4]

Hello @alexaiezza, welcome to the Seller Community! 

Currently adding the ability to delete a transaction is not on our road map. The reasoning behind this is we use this information to submit 1099-K's to the IRS. I'm not saying you would do this, but it would be easy to cook your books if this ability was available. 

Another request on this thread is to be able to void transactions so they don't show on reports. Currently we are in the process of collecting feedback for this request. I don't have a timeline on when it might be available. 

If you have any other questions please let me know! 

[#5]

@TomTr

I appreciate your feedback in regards to this. I know you've probably read this multiple times within the Seller Community, but we really do send customer feedback over to our Product Teams, and advocate for changes for you.

I absolutely agree that a void feature would help with training and testing, and also make reporting look a lot cleaner as well. You make a great point that with test payments, or payments made by mistake, nothing is ever actually sold, so your gross sales report shouldn't reflect a sale (which is what results when issuing a refund).

As you've alluded to in your previous post, there are two different requests within this thread. Some folks are looking for the ability to completely remove or delete a transaction, which isn't possible at this time. We don’t have any new information around whether or not this will ever become available.

The other option that folks are looking for, having an option to mark payments that have been completed as voided/cancelled rather than refunded, would help sellers a ton and we’ll continue to reiterate that to the team on your behalf.

We know this request is important to you, so as soon as there are updates that we’re able to share publicly, we will.

I hope this provides more clarity, and thank you all, again, for your feedback!

[#6]

Maybe the Square team can find a way to mark the transactions as Void, so that they do not affect sales totals, but neither are the transactions erased.

From an accounting standpoint, I can see why they would not let a transaction just be deleted. There has to be a documentation trail.

When I have to make test transactions, when I refund the transaction I make note that it was a test transaction and that is why it was refunded. There is also the "Accidental Charge" notation available.

Then when I download my sales reports, I sort the test transactions out and make a note in my saved spreadsheet.

[Susan12]

Also, it was impossible to delete the Variation. I had to delete the entire item. This is suboptimal.

[maggie50]

I also was wondering if a transaction error can be deleted?  I was trying to take a $300 credit card payment and it kept posting as cash.  So, now I have three transactions that are invalid.  We only use Square for credit card transactions and I have never had this issue before but my donor was becoming impatient so we ended up using PayPal.  Now I have $900 in error transactions on our square account.  : ( 

If your company cannot remedy this then that is a real shame and also might be a reason for customers to go elsewhere.

Maggie

[kimijye]

This is definitely a deal breaker. I need to be able to manage charged transactions fully, including deleting mistakes, issuing credits and whatever else. It's stupid that Square will not allow these adjustments. 

[SteveWI33]

Yep this is a problem for us too.  Had an employee enter a $50k transaction (we refunded) but now all of our reports are a mess.  Cute software but probably only good for tiny vendors guessing we will leave it soon.   

[RMjames]

How do you refund or delete an old transaction? I paid the person out but I need to balance my books and you can create an invoice with negative amounts

[protechsllc]

A member of my team left the tablet with square open facing the customer. A kid entered  a sales for $9,999,999.00. I'm so upset this messes with my real number and imports into quickbooks. All my trends and report are incorrect . How do I remove cash a payment that was added by mistake ?

[AshleyK]

Hey, guys! I want you both to know I've merged your post with an existing thread that will help answer your questions. This is a feature request for now. Thank you!

[saltpointstudio]

It seems I am having the same issue as many people on this thread; I tested the invoicing feature out as Square encouraged me to do, but I now have my income reporting incorrectly. How can I correct this?

It seems this has been an issue since 2016...

[Metroyal]

With that condition, Do you still expect it's going to be solved?

I respect what the dev team wants on their own feature. But for me, migration to another app is my solution since 2016, after 1 week of testing  ✌🏼️😂

[BighornSecurity]

An employee of mine accidentally issued the wrong check amount on the invoice, because the invoice had an item taxed that wasn't supposed to be taxed, and therefore increased the amount of the invoice by $1.50. He didn't pay attention to the total of the invoice, and entered the check amount that the invoice was asking for instead of the amount that was on the check.

Because the payment was 1 single payment, and the invoice was marked as fully paid, the only option I had was to refund the entire invoice and it wouldn't allow me to delete the payment or issue another payment. Once I selected refund entire invoice, it basically treated the invoice as being cancelled. I then had to proceed to duplicate the invoice and reissue the correct check amount. This automatically sent an invoice to my customer saying that their entire purchase was refunded.

The issue arose because there is no delete payment option. I can understand delete payment for credit card transactions can cause issues, but checks and cash are physical items you keep on your person until you deposit them into your bank. There should be no reason to completely start over on an invoice because of a slip of the finger or simple adding mistake.

The second issue is the fact that I couldn't edit the invoice once total payment was rendered, meaning I couldn't subtract the $1.50 tax and then issue a fake refund to the customer for the incorrect check amount and correct the problem that way.

A simple delete payment button should be added to any non credit card payments so simple human errors don't cause huge issues. Every other invoicing system has the ability to delete payments, Square should have it too. 

Now for the people about to comment that there is an issue refund option on the square invoice, that is correct, however, it still comes up on your report as a refund on your gross sales report. If I were interested in running a panzi scheme I could enter amounts that are wrong and return them on half my transactions and let all my potential investors see my huge gross sales numbers, but that would not be ethical or correct.

Thus ,a refund is not the correct response for canceling a payment. It actually does affect your sales numbers and throws off useful analytics that companies use for knowing how much they sold. The transaction I am referring to was over $4000.00, so now my monthly sales this month show me doing a really good month, until you actually look at my net sales.

I would like to see Square join the rest of the online retail community in adopting accounting practices that have been around for hundreds of years and actually allow people to cancel payments instead of using a round about method that throws off sales numbers.

Thanks