Our small business is switching to Square for Retail next week, and while setting up our menu we’ve run into an issue with discount functionality.
In our current POS system, we can assign a specific discount to a specific item. When applied, the discount affects only that individual item and requires supervisor authorization via a passcode or permission level.
In Square, we can create discounts that require passcodes. However, in practice, once a discount is applied to an item in the cart, adding additional items causes the discount to be applied to every item in the cart.
I’ve explored using Automatic Discounts, which allows me to assign a discount to a specific item, but this applies the discount every time the item is added to the cart, which is not what we want. While automatic discounts can be set to require a passcode, when I tested this using an account with zero permissions, it did not prompt for a passcode at all. Based on my troubleshooting, I haven’t been able to configure discounts to meet our needs. I’ve spoken with Square Support, and they’ve said that what I’m trying to do should be possible, but I haven’t been able to get it to work in practice. I don’t want to use comps, as they apply a 100% discount.
At this point, it seems like my only options are:
- Create separate items or categories with automatic discounts applied.
This isn’t ideal, as it would only work for some discounts. For other items, creating duplicate buttons would interfere with inventory tracking. Additionally, when testing this setup, items marked as passcode-protected were still able to be added to the cart by accounts with zero permissions.
- Run separate transactions for discounted and non-discounted items.
This would slow down service and feels unnecessary.
Our goal is to be able to apply individual, item-level discounts on demand, with passcode authorization, without splitting transactions.
Has anyone run into this before or found a workable solution? I understand Square may not function exactly like other POS systems, but I feels like there should be a comparable option and I’m hoping I’m just missing something.
