So, since Square STILL hasn't figured out a way to help those of us who charge deposits (that will then be discounted from the final cost of the service), here is how we work around that for now. It's a little clunky, and doesn't have the full integration and tracking I'd like, but I hope this helps some of you.
We have an Item named "*service* Deposit", with variations for the different amounts we charge for deposits. The customer can pay for it in the studio after their consultation, or we send them an Invoice for that item.
Then, we have a Discount set up named "Deposit Paid" with the dollar amount left blank, so the amount they paid as a deposit can be entered as a discount to their checkout.
The annoying thing about this is that since we charge different deposit amounts, the only way to verify how much to enter for the Deposit Paid discount (other than asking the client, which isn't very professional), is to go into their customer profile and check their sales history BEFORE reviewing and checking out their appointment. So that's a pain. It also skews the tipping percentage at the end, because for some reason Square calculates tips based on the net sale, not the gross, so in instances where the client's deposit covers most or all of their service, they have to use the custom tip option and try to do their own math to tip appropriately.
Another issue is that it's a LOT of work to track all of the deposits to figure out which clients have deposits outstanding, who haven't followed up to actually book an appointment, or haven't used their deposit yet but are still "active" and waiting until their last appointment to apply it (our services sometimes require multiple sessions).
Some kind of customer management feature that tracks deposits separately from their other sales, and automatically adds the option to apply their deposit to their appointment checkout would be FANTASTIC.
