Would billing clients for contracted copywriting services via a subscription work?

[ElizabethRoy]

On the advice of several sources, my contract asks for half the payment in advance and half on completion of the work. I've been reading the payment options, and selling my services via a subscription looks to me like the only way to split the payments that way. Am I right, or has someone figured out another method? How do others do this?

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

Hey there @ElizabethRoy.  If you invoice a customer, you can state in the invoice terms that 50% is required before work can begin.  Customers can make partial payments to your invoice at any time, as they wish.  They just need to change the amount they are paying when they submit the payment.  It should be as simple as that, unless I’m missing something critical here.  If I am, feel free to reply and enlighten me!

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

Hey there @ElizabethRoy.  If you invoice a customer, you can state in the invoice terms that 50% is required before work can begin.  Customers can make partial payments to your invoice at any time, as they wish.  They just need to change the amount they are paying when they submit the payment.  It should be as simple as that, unless I’m missing something critical here.  If I am, feel free to reply and enlighten me!

[Summer2024 · Accepted solution]

@ElizabethRoy was @TheRealChipA able to answer your question? 

Here are the steps to creating an Invoice that can be broken up into different payments. 

1. In Square Invoices Overview page, select Send an invoice.

2. Select a customer from your Customer Directory, or enter a new name and email address.

3. Add line items, and apply optional modifiers, notes and taxes by selecting Customize.

4. Select Add Payment Schedule.

5. Toggle on Request initial deposit and/or Split balance into milestones.

6. Enter the amount or percentage you have scheduled, select a due date and select Save.

7. Click Send.

This Support Article will also provide some insight into this process as well. 

I hope this helps! 

[ElizabethRoy]

Hi @TheRealChipA and @Summer2024, 

I apologize for taking so long to answer. I had a family crisis and then a bout of the flu. By then, I lost my link to this thread. 

I've had my site for a long time, so it's on the Weebly editor. I used the e-commerce pages to list my categories and services, but I've never figured out how to get the shopping cart to charge payments the way I wanted.

I began switching my site to the Square editor and noticed that it does have a way of listing contract services, but it doesn't work the way I want either. 

So, how do the two of you have your services listed?

It seems to me that I should forget the automated services, recreate my services page to list my categories and services without them, and send invoices as Summer2024 has suggested. 

Elizabeth

[TheRealChipA]

Hey there @ElizabethRoy.  I hope things are settling down now.  A clarification, first.  @Summer2024 is a Square-employed moderator here.  Those moderators help when we regular community members (your fellow sellers) hit walls in trying to help you and others.  You’ll be able to tell who moderators (and other Square folks) are by noticing the little black “Square logo”  at the top of their icons in posts.  Oh, and for the record, if you see a blue checkmark on those icons (like on mine, for example), that denotes a member of the Square Champions team.  Basically, we are a group of sellers who have wide-ranging experience in several categories and attempt to help other sellers here with our boots-on-the-ground experiences actually using Square.

Anyway….

I, personally, don’t use Square services — my business is an ice cream shop.  My original answer was based on experiences with invoices and on knowing the capabilities of invoicing.  @Summer2024 greatly enhanced that with her information.  My point here is that I can’t answer your new question as I don’t use Weebly.  I can say that while Weebly does interface with our Square accounts for e-commerce, its capabilities aren’t as vast in the area of the online store as are the new Square Online editor.  Hopefully, another seller can jump in here and help.  I will say that I think you are on the right track, though, if you are going to continue to use Weebly.

That being said, I would HIGHLY recommend that you consider building a new site/store using the Square Online site builder.  It is much more advanced and customizable, especially in the area of building an online store that is actually built to work with Square.  Weebly was purchased by Square a few years ago and at that time they added an interface to our Square accounts — it was not built from the ground up to be fully integrated with Square as the Square Online editor was.

Just a thought.  I’m available for questions or if you need clarification or assistance.