I run a small handyman business that charges for services by the hour. I initially setup items in Square to sell in hourly units of the price per hour. I want customers to be able to schedule and book me online so I began setting up Appointments. But in Appointments, customers are booking services (not the hourly "items" I had initially setup), so I tried creating a service. The length of time for the service varies depending on how long it takes to complete each job for each customer. So I created a general service in Appointments with the price set to "Variable." Then I set the service's duration at what is an average length time for me. In the description of the service, for clarity, I mention the hourly rate, that the duration will vary depending on each job, the minimum charge, etc. Is this the best way to setup hourly services that are an unknown duration using Appointments? It seems like I can make it work that way (unless there's a better way to do this), but then at the final step, when I want to "review and checkout" the customer at the end of a service in Appointments, it lists the default "Regular" price at $0, which I can change to any amount, and I can change the duration on the invoice to any length of time. It would have been nice for an hourly rate to be set in there so I could just enter the amount of hours and it would automatically calculate the total, but it seems I have to do this manually. But even if I do this, the invoice then lists the service with its initial full description that I had to include in the initial booking part of Appointments which lists the paragraph where I state the hourly rate, the variable duration possibility, the minimum hourly charge. It just looks sloppy and confusing. I just want a clear line item x how many hours = total. I would much rather add the hourly items I initially created to the invoice instead of including this general service. And I am able to add those items to the invoice, but if I add the hourly items instead and try to remove the service, it won't let me charge the sale without the service also being on the invoice with the hourly items. Help! Is there a better way to charge for hourly services of variable durations that are booked through Appointments? Do I just ignore the end of the Appointments process where I tap "review and checkout," and instead just create a new sale for that customer and just include my hourly items? I'm not sure how that will affect the customer record if I did that, leaving the Appointment unfinished. It just seems like Square Appointments isn't quite setup right for this kind of business. I've been looking at other software solutions for booking/scheduling, but I would prefer to use Square if I can.
