Feature request - surcharges

[mikesee]

When will it be possible to configure surcharges in Square?

I see some old discussion topics (2 years) saying it is on the roadmap.

There are several reasons why we need surcharges but the two big ones for me:

1. Apply a credit card surcharge to all card transactions

2. Apply a Sunday or public holiday surcharge. This is pretty essential in Australia due to the higher wage costs.

Needs to be automated and rules-based.

[#2]

Hi Everyone!

We’re excited to announce some new updates to the Automatic Surcharges feature that will make managing your Weekend and Public Holiday Surcharges easier than ever! 

What's New?

Weekly Surcharges with Custom Day and Time Selection

You can now choose the exact days and times when a surcharge should be applied, such as weekends or late nights.

1. From your Square Dashboard, navigate to Account & Settings > Business information.
2. Click Service charges > Create service charge.
3. Enter service charge details such as a Name, Amount type (% or $), and Amount.
4. Choose which locations the service charge will be applied to.
5. Toggle on Apply automatically.
6. Click Weekly schedule and select the day of the week and time period for automatic application.
7. Click Save once all changes have been made.
   

Public Holiday Service Charges

National, state, and local public holidays are pre-populated – simply pick the ones that apply to your business.

1. From your Square Dashboard, navigate to Account & Settings > Business information.
2. Click Service charges > Create service charge.
3. Enter service charge details such as a Name, Amount type (% or $), and Amount.
4. Choose which locations the service charge will be applied to.
5. Toggle on Apply automatically.
6. Click Public holiday schedule and select the holidays for automatic application.
7. Click Save once all changes have been made.

Custom Date Service Charges

Easily create surcharges with a custom date to suit your business needs.

1. From your Square Dashboard, navigate to Account & Settings > Business information.
2. Click Service charges > Create service charge.
3. Enter service charge details such as a Name, Amount type (% or $), and Amount.
4. Choose which locations the service charge will be applied to.
5. Toggle on Apply automatically.
6. Click Public holiday schedule > Create a custom holiday > Create holiday.
7. Add a Holiday name and Date, then click Create.
8. Click Save once all changes have been made.

Once set up, these surcharges will be automatically applied to card payments on Square Point of Sale, Square for Restaurants, and Square for Retail based on their specified dates/times.

Check out the Product Launch here. For more information on setting up service charges, visit our Support Centre.


As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences with these new updates, so please feel free to send through your feedback on this thread!

[#3]

Hi Sellers! 👋

Just jumping in here to share some exciting news about automatic surcharging!

We're thrilled to announce that Square’s Automatic Card Surcharges Beta Program is now open to all eligible Australian Sellers! This much-anticipated feature allows you to seamlessly pass on processing fees for card payments directly to your customers.

Getting started is easy. Eligible Sellers can now activate and manage one automatic surcharge directly from their online Square Dashboard. Once set up, the surcharge will be automatically applied when a customer pays with a card from:

- Square Point of Sale

- Square Restaurants POS or Square Retail POS apps on compatible iOS devices, Android devices, Square Terminal, and Square Register

To learn how to set up your automatic surcharge, visit Get Started with Service Charges Beta. 

For questions or feedback on this new experience, please join the Card Surcharges Group in the Beta Seller Community.

We're eager to hear your thoughts and experiences with this new feature. Feel free to drop your comments below!

[#4]

EDIT (July 2022): We've started to roll out Service Charges (AKA Surcharges) in Australia, which you can read more about here. The first iteration supports:

• The Square Point of Sale app
• Manually applied fixed ($) or variable (%) surcharges
  
  

In future iterations of Service Charges we hope to support:

• More Square products (eg Square for Restaurants, Square for Retail, Invoices etc)
• Automated service charges, so you won't need to manually add it

---------------

Hey @mikesee,

I'm sorry to say that I don't have an update on surcharges right now.

We're still tracking feedback on this and it's a popular request from Australian sellers. For now we recommend building surcharging into the overall price of your goods as you might other operating expenses, or you can manually calculate a surcharge into the overall cost of a given transaction.

If you would like to pass on credit card processing charges to your customers, you can use the following to calculate what you would charge.

For transactions put through a Square Reader at 1.9%:

Transaction amount divided by 0.981

e.g. $100 / 0.981 = $101.94 - you'd add $1.94 as a 1.9% surcharge.

For “Card not Present” transactions at 2.2%:

Transaction amount divided by 0.978

E.g. $100 / 0.978 = $102.25 - you'd add $2.25 as a 2.2% surcharge.

For transactions put through Square Terminal at 1.6%:

Transaction amount divided by 0.984

e.g. $100 / 0.984 = $101.63 - you'd add $1.63 as a 1.6% surcharge.

Why Wouldn’t I Just Add 1.9% or 2.2%?

Square’s card processing fees are based on the overall transaction amount, so if you’re adding $1.90 to a $100 transaction, the transaction becomes $101.90, not $100. Using the above formulas accounts for this small change to the overall fee on transactions if you’re adding a surcharge

Should you decide to apply a surcharge, it is your responsibility adhere to Australian regulations as set out by the ACCC.

[Karen26]

Yes please, I would love this feature too

[mlaforest]

@Cafeownersyd .... I feel your pain.

[TheFlourHouse]

For years now I have been trying to figure out an easy way to quickly add 10% surcharge to my client's online orders that will be placed on Christmas day or Easter here in Australia. There is no simple way to do this and it needs to be fixed.

At the moment I have to create a whole new location, call it "easter" and then add all new products to this location with 10% increased price, I have to make the original location not accept orders for the public holidays and the new location only available for those public holidays

Then when it comes to inventory, it's a right mess, I can't just assign 100 of each item daily, I have to now create 3 different products and assign 100 each for those 3 days.

The whole thing is a mess and doesn't need to be this complicated or hard

[Laurie_]

Hi, @TheFlourHouse,

Thank you for writing in to share your feedback with us.

This is a popular feature request here in Australia that we're currently tracking for both in-person and online payments via this thread. As it stands, the ability to add online taxes to Square Online is currently not supported.

For tracking purposes, I've gone ahead and merged your post with our ongoing feature request thread for surcharges.

We'd be happy to pass on your feedback to our team. Should we receive an update on this request from our Product Team, we'll be sure to tag everyone and comment in this thread.

[HanoiPho]

I'm new to Square and sales advised me that I could add a surcharge for CC costs which I recognised not the real case. Super disappointed!

[DimplesCowes]

Square sales reps are giving false information it seems to get people to buy their products, we purchased it as we were informed it could do everything, we needed for our business.

We have since found this isn't the case, continuous updates without notice even when you are in the middle of sales, can't add merchant fees onto the system, can't add public holiday fees, limited with its layout choices as we had a software update it changed the functionality of the new sales screen in the middle of service our staff were busy as it was, then they had to work out these new changes on the go. The lack of communication around their updates or what it is going to impact your business is unprofessional.

I would not recommend square to anyone because of all the issues we have had!

[mrdmel]

We need to add a permanent surcharge to the SFR due to our remote location. I know there is a way to add a surcharge but unfortunately we have to add it manually to all items which is too time consuming.  Is there are better way?

Cheers

MRD

[Laurie_]

Hey there, @mrdmel, thanks for writing in to express your interest in the feature to add automatic surcharges.

I've moved your post to a thread where we continue to track the feedback we receive for this request. At this time, we don't have further news to share regarding this request.

The best long-term workaround we can recommend in the meantime is to build your fees into your item and service pricing.

[olivia_tulloch]

Hi everyone are you able to add the processing fee to your online store?

[Laurie_]

Hey there, @olivia_tulloch 👋,

Welcome to the Seller Community!

The ability to add a custom tax, or a surcharge, to your Square Online items or orders is currently not supported.

I've gone ahead and merged your post with a thread where we are tracking this request. We've continued to advocate for this request with our Product Team here in Australia, but I'm afraid to say I don't have any further updates I'm able to share at this time.

Let me know if anything else comes up in the meantime.