Round-up option for non-profit donation

[pljcs]

Square, please add this right away.  I have been asking you all for this for literally years (as a nonprofit ourselves, we would like to give patrons an option to round up to donate to us), but businesses also need the option to help local charities.  When change is in short supply as it is now, this is even more important than ever.  It's undoubtedly a simple option to add, and most of your competitors have it.

Thank you!

[COH_Director]

I have worked with several non-profits.  There are a few workarounds, that all make donating "harder" on someone than it should be.  The way to incentivize someone to donate is to make it AS EASY AS POSSIBLE.  Many businesses in our small town are able to "round-up" your purchase to a donation, whether donating to them or to a specified charity.  I don't see why the programming would be any different if the non-profit did it for themselves, or if a for-profit did it for a non-profit organization.  Also, I don't see why the programming would be hard to implement - use almost the same programming as for "Tips," change the wording obviously, and make it auto-round to the nearest $1, the nearest $5, the nearest $10, to give it some customization.  Every other card processor has figured this out or partnered with someone who has.  Profits can increase when a customer knows your for-profit business supports local charities.  Donations are much easier to get at point-of-sale.

workarounds:

- For some reason the only one I ever see Square give is to have the cashier "ask" and then manually calculate the donation amount to add as a separate non-tax item.  If any discounts are applied, you have to manually remove the discount from this item.  Cashiers don't usually like to ask "can you round up for ____?," especially in some settings where you might be asking a lot of low-income people.  and how many cashiers can calculate change quickly in their head?  especially in a small business where you don't have a lot of people knocking down the door looking for work.

- Using the "Tips" function and posting signage that Tips=Donations.  I designed a sticker for the customer-facing display that reads "We Collect All "Tips" as Donations!..." "we are a 501(c)3 non-profit..."  This does not give you a round-up donation, instead it will give you a percent donation of the sale.  Advantages are you will be getting larger donations, and you can display to the customer you are (or are supporting) a non-profit with the messaging you provide at checkout.  Disadvantages are it's not the "usual" experience for the customer, some don't see the signage and just look at the checkout screen (my sticker over the display makes it seem a bit more like it belongs...), and the cashier always has to close out the ticket if the customer doesn't add a tip.

- Have a separate location and signage to collect donations: Jar/box (the old fashioned way...), a QR code or web link, or a separate donation terminal/kiosk.  This is not a bad option, and can be done consecutively with the other workarounds.  However, POS donations far surpass expectations in every setting I've used them in.  "Keep the change" is so common, but people need to KNOW that their change is being donated to some cause, or they won't offer it.  We've been using the tips funciton successfully, and its impressive how many people donate at the point of sale.

Since Square gets a percentage of amount of sales processed, I'd think increasing every purchase by $1-$5 would be a decent increase in profit.  Sooooooo many users would use this if available.  And having other round-up options besides to the nearest dollar, but to the nearest $5 and $10 amounts too, would make Square very competitive in folks that would use this feature.  I'm in a very small town... half or more of the businesses have a round-up feature.  The rest of us have workarounds to collect some sort of donation - whether its us collecting donations for ourselves, or the coffee shop collecting donations for the food pantry.]

Square NEEDS to add this feature... years and counting... so many of us requesting it... so many that would use it or switch to Square if they knew it was an option!

I say we all pitch together and pay a Square developer to make this... who's in?? How do we start making sure this happens?  How do we "freelance" API developers that know Square??  It can't be that hard to program... seriously!! If we are all nonprofits we could even get a tech grant that could help fund it??

[jc361]

We would love to have a round up button!

[SolMercantile]

It’s about to be 2022 and this thread is older than my kids. Please add a roundup function in time for the holidays so we can help local non-profits in an easy and transparent way.

[RutabagaPhilly]

We would love to give our customers the option to donate to our Scholarship Fund via a question at the end of the transaction, very similar to how tipping works. It's better than asking all cashiers to ask every customer directly if they'd like to donate, and could give the customer the option to maybe round up to the nearest dollar or donate larger amounts very simply.

Seems like this feature has been requested for 5+ years, but I can't find if it's been created. And if not, why not?

[Kassi_]

Welcome to the Community, @RutabagaPhilly - 

Appreciate the post regarding the ability to round up for donations. 

This has been a big ask for our sellers and I know it has been escalated to our Product Team. 

I have moved your post to the original post, so your voice is added to the feature request. 

[tbeshr]

We spend a considerable amount in processing fees to Square. Please add this feature as it is being requested in both Canada and in the US by many of your non profit customers.

It can't be that difficult!

Please add this feature before we start shopping vendors.

Thanks

[BernadetteA]

Thank you for adding your voice to this request, @tbeshr 

We do not have any updates to provide, but appreciate you taking the time to post and share your feedback. 

[SVDPTacoma]

We have been using Square in our thrift stores since 2017. I have been waiting to see this feature added since then. We are a non-profit who provide immediate financial help to our neighbors in need and our store customers would appreciate the round up feature. If there could be the round up option to donate change it would save our cashier and customers a lot of time. I also like the idea of having it set up similar to tips so the customer can pick a percentage to donate. Every store that I go to has this option. PetSmart, Fred Meyer, even Walmart. PLEASE add this feature for all of the Square users here.

[CAConBuffalo]

I can see that the request for a "round up" button goes back to 2016. Square, it's 2022, when can we really expect to see this feature???

[Prestigiouspier]

Have y’all found a work around ? Obviously we can input the custom amount at the end but the register will still add tax to it. Has anyone figured a way to work around this until this feature is available??