Feature Request: Determine the Fulfilment Method for Payment Links by Item Type

[HM4M]

The title of this thread has been edited from the original: Events & download Products charging postage ... sometimes.

I sell physical items, downloads and tickets to my own events on my website. Obviously the only time customers should be charged shipping is when they buy a physical product. BUT. I have had multiple customers over the last 6 months of time being charged shipping on events and downloads. It is costing me customers because some will not proceed with the transaction when they see the flat fee postage charge. 

The events are created as an event.

The downloads are created as a digital item.

The physical products are created as a physical item.

There is no reason why the listing should be charging postage.

And here is another twist to my story. They don't all get charged postage. Sometimes the direct to item don't get charged whereas the website browsing person does. 

Has anyone had this happen to them? Because I am so frustrated and angry at the inconsistency and lost sales that I am working on a new platform but I need to fix this in the immediate term. Anyone? 

[Katie_SQ]

Sorry to hear about this issue, @HM4M!

I'm wondering whether these event items also have payment links enabled for them? 

To check, sign in to your Square Dashboard and go to Items > Item Library, and any items with a payment link enabled will have a link icon listed next to them. 

Then, I recommend navigating to Payments > Payment Links > Settings > General. Scroll down to Fulfilment and check if Enable shipping is toggled on. I'm wondering whether this could have anything to do with the issue you're experiencing here. 

Let me know how you go. 🙂

[HM4M]

And what about the items with payment links that do require shipping? I need shipping for the physical items but not the digital or events. How do I address that? The above fix sounds like it would apply to all items when I only want it to apply to specific items

[Katie_SQ]

Sorry for any confusion, @HM4M. To clarify, if these items are payment links for non-physical goods (such as events or digital downloads) and are being incorrectly charged shipping fees, our Engineering team will need to investigate further.

I've escalated your case to the team so they can examine your recent transactions, and try to identify the cause of the issue. I'll update you here as soon as I have more information.

Thank you for your patience in the meantime!

[Katie_SQ]

Hi @HM4M,

I've received an update from our Engineering team, and they confirmed that this behaviour is expected, as payment links don't differentiate between item types (such as Events or Digital Downloads) and apply fulfilment settings uniformly. This means that if shipping is enabled for your payment links, shipping fees will be charged across all items.

To avoid this, it's recommended to create items directly from your item library and share the item's URL from your website with your customers. This method bypasses the payment link fulfilment settings, and shipping fees shouldn't apply, as the site items will be recognised as either Event or Digital item types at the checkout. You could also consider using a link shortener like Bitly to make the URL more concise. To find your item's link, navigate to your website's Shop All page, click on the item, and copy the URL from the address bar.

If you have any further questions or need additional assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out.

[HM4M]

Thanks for the update. Using an item URL is incredibly long. The payment links are short URLs so they really are _a lot_ better for sharing especially on social media. I know I can go and get the URL shortened but I really think Square should stop sending me to other places to get basic functionality. It encourages comparison with providers who don’t do that.

For some user feedback, I actually don’t think the payment link should be the place where fulfillment is a factor. I think fulfillment should be differentiated at the item level. If I ask for a payment link in my event item, the fact that it is an event should either

a) override the postage fulfillment or

b) ask me if there is a postage profile I want to attach to the event item. The latter may apply if I need to mail out a ticket for example.

The process should be the same for a digital item. It is the item type which dictates the delivery fulfillment with an option to add postage at the item level if I want to when I create the item.

This means that the option to create differentiated delivery profiles becomes much simpler because they focus on item fulfillment rather than store fulfillment. I offer digital items that can be downloaded or the customer pays extra for a hard copy to be printed and mailed out. That postal fee is different from the fee for a large bag for example, so immediately I need two different types of postage profile and I need the item to be able to access those two types of fulfillment so I can choose which one applies to the item.

Putting functionality like fulfilment at the store level means there are too many places where the store fulfillment can override the item type. My focus is to sell the item not the store. It also does not allow for a variety of fulfilment methods because it assumes the store only offers one kind of fulfillment which in these times is just not true.

[Katie_SQ]

Thanks for following up @HM4M,

I can certainly appreciate where you're coming from, and I really appreciate you taking the time to share this feedback. 

I’ve gone ahead and moved your post to the Feature Request board for Square Online where our Product Team actively monitors these threads, making it the most effective place to highlight the need for this capability. This provides other Sellers the opportunity to share their thoughts, and allows us to track all feedback and provide updates in one place.

Should we have any news to share on this in the future, a Community Moderator will reply back on this thread with an update.

Thank you again for sharing!