Grow your business: Ask us anything about subscriptions and recurring payments!

[Tom]

👋  Hello Sellers! We were thrilled to have our Subscriptions team drop in for a Q&A on Wednesday, September 1st at noon PT / 3pm ET!

We recently launched a set of subscription features that unlock the ability to create subscription plans and accept recurring payments with your customers. As we will continue to iterate after this initial launch, our product team wants to hear directly from you.

With that, it was exciting to introduce you to @JenLax, who has been leading the charge with this new set of features. She and her team were eager to hear your thoughts on everything ranging from initial setup—to what you'd like to see more of in the future.

Note on account-specific questions: For your privacy and security, we are not able to address issues related to specific payments, deposits, or account status details in our public forums. If you need assistance on one of those topics, please contact our Customer Success team and they'll be able to take a deeper dive into your account.

[jean_sq]

Hi! At this time, Subscriptions does not offer custom billing options. We are working on launching custom billing dates (which will allow you to have separate billing dates from when you ship) in the next couple months but that unfortunately won't include the cut-off date feature. That one is still on our future roadmap. Let me know if I can answer any other questions for you. Thank you!

[keetertech]

I'm looking for specific functionality for my SaaS business.  Here's what I would like to have:

• Quoting & Invoicing for Subscription Items
  • Items would look just like inventory items, except there is no inventory to manage.
  • Items would have specific subscription periods.
  • When quoting, I would be able to add multiple subscription items & qtys to the quote.
  • The quote would be emailed to the customer from the dashboard.
  • The customer would have the option to approve the quote and pay for it or create an invoice that needs to be paid.
  • Alternative I could send an invoice with specific subscription items and quantities on it.
  • Subscription periods would not start until the customer paid for the invoice or I recorded an offline payment to start the subscription.
  • Subscription purchases would have the option to be automatically renewed using the credit card used for payment.
  • There would be a portal for the customer to login to pause/cancel their subscriptions or update quantities of a particular subscription item for renewal.
  • Bonus if a customer could add to a qty to an existing subscription.
  • Bonus if the customer could an entire new subscription item from our catalog to their subscription.
  • In the portal the customer should be able to update their payment information.

Is any of this possible now?  If so, which parts and how do I accomplish it?  If not, are there any plans to implement this functionality.  It's key for SaaS subscriptions.

[thegreenwitch]

Um... its 2023 why is this not currently offered? It says that there will be an update on this allowing business owners to set up fulfillment support and it is not an option currently as of April 2023....  

[jean_sq]

Hi @thegreenwitch - unfortunately, updates fall behind for a number of reasons. Fulfillment support is coming this year but I'd love to hear what your ideal fulfillment flow looks like! That will help make sure we are covering as many seller use cases as possible with our feature launches! Thank you for your patience!

[meagle]

@jean_sq What has been changed with the Subscription option? We currently use subscriptions for our delivery business, however we had not been entirely pleased with the subscription functionality, so we have been using Invoices and setting them to "Recurring".  it's been working but it's not - user friendly, amongst all the points below.

Please let me know if either Invoices or Subscriptions do in fact offer these functions below. (in parentheses are what we notice / steps we take to get around the lack of functionality)

Here's what we would need for our subscription program:  

• Please allow for customers to check-out with a subscription option / sign-up (not yet offered on Online checkout)
• Typically when offering customers to sign up for subscriptions, there should be an incentive - eg, "10% Auto Pay discount"  So, please allow us the option to use this functionality....An automatic discount thats applied when our customers purchase a subscription (currently we manually add a 10% Auto-Pay discount directly to their invoices because we still have to fill out their invoice and set them up for auto pay)
• Offer the fulfillment option "delivery" (not just shipping)
• Please make "tips" a recurring charge as well (tips fall off after 1st invoice charge)
• Customers need to be able to modify, pause, or cancel (right now they have to email us and we make the changes to the invoice for them)

Thank you. 

[meagle]

@jean_sq  in addition to my post above, I just checked out the Subscription set up. here are some issues that I notice off the bat that won't work for our business.

• address is "optional" 
• sales tax field won't allow me to have a decimal. Florida sales tax = 6.5%. prompts me that I "need to have a # between 0 and 100" 6.5 is in between , but it doesn't like the decimal.
• not offering diff fulfillment options: "delivery" or "shipping"
• no option for tipping
• looks like the plan cannot include more than 1 line item. e.g. what if I wanted to track inventory of items I sell instead of just everything bundles and just called a "plan"? 

Thank you for your help. 

[thebusykitchen1]

Hello how do we setup appointments? like if someone books how do we allow them to select a certain date and time?

[HealdFarms]

With the increase in prices across the board, I unfortunately have to now transfer those to my customers.  How do I edit the price of the subscriptions?  Do I have to delete the current subscriptions and create new ones?  If so, what does that do with the current subscribers?

[MayaP]

Thanks for reaching out @HealdFarms. Great Questions!

You would need to delete and create whole new subscriptions in order to change the price of them.

If you do create new subscriptions this will not affect the current ones you have. When you delete it you will get a notice saying, ” Existing subscriptions to this plan will not be affected and will continue to renew until canceled.” 

Please let me know if I can help you any further. 

[HealdFarms]

Will the price change change the renewal price for my existing customers?

[timothycope76]

We offer ongoing subscription service for weekly maintenance service (billed 1x per month).  However, with 400 customers on subscription, when its time for our annual price changes (i.e. inflation), how do i change the subscription pricing and have it apply to every customer on that subscription (without having to go through each customer one by one!).

[LoveSister2014]

I use the Square POS System in my Healing Center for appointments and retail sales. How can I tell which clients are in the subscription program from the POS?

[pinballgallery]

There seems to be more capability implemented in the Developer APIs for Subscriptions.  For instance, I see you can define Phases for subscription plans in the API, but this capability does not current exist in the normal UI.  Is this true.  If so, why?

[taylorandjones]

@Tom @jean_sq 

Hello – I'm a Square Online website designer that works with clients that would benefit from Subscriptions features.

Checking on the launch of the following features as mentioned during the Q&A event, or Marketplace Apps that can accommodate:

Subscription fulfillment support: Though not currently available, we plan to offer this in early 2022.

Square Online integration: We hope to have full integration with Square Online in 2022 which will offer fulfillment flows with online inventory as well as deeper access to customer information.

Many thanks for any helpful advice and guidance.

[jean_sq]

Hi @taylorandjones ! Both of those features are looking to be launched in May, 2023.

[taylorandjones]

Hello @jean_sq 

Any update on timing of Subscription fulfillment and Square Online integration features?

We eagerly await these updates!

Thank you for your time and effort. 

[jean_sq]

Hello @taylorandjones ! Early June is the expected launch date. Apologies for the delays.

[taylorandjones]

Hello again @jean_sq just checking on subscriptions features launch – is it still on track for early June?

Many thanks!

[BernadetteA]

Thanks for checking in, @taylorandjones 😊

I'll also see if I can confirm the expected launch date. This sounds super exciting! 

[taylorandjones]

Hello @BernadetteA @jean_sq 

Has the Subscriptions features update launched?

I noticed some directions in the following help article about attaching subscription plans to Square Online items. When I attempt this, I do not see a Subscriptions section in item details: https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/8021-set-up-item-subscriptions-in-square-online

Looking forward to learning more!

Continued thanks and appreciation for your help.

[jean_sq]

Hi @taylorandjones, I'm sorry that article got released a bit early. The feature is not quite ready yet but fingers crossed it starts rolling out very soon!