How to have different prices for customer groups?

[matt-paragon]

I'm trying to figure out a better way to do this: in our business, we have three classes of customer: general public, employees, and customers of our parent company.

Employees and parent-company-customers are charged for items - snacks and drinks, basically - at cost-price, and the latter's purchase history is sent to our parent company to reimburse us.

Currently, my manager has set it up where we have a variable-price inventory item for each of the latter two customer types, and a printout of an excel spreadsheet which lists the cost prices, and we enter the details manually - we lose stock inventory tracking, though, and have to fix the counts later.

We're only on the "Square for Retail Free" plan so we don't currently track cost pricing in Square anyway.

My question would be, then:
1. Is there a better way to do this within the limitations of the current plan?
2. Could it be done under a Plus plan, and if so, what would that look like?

For 1, I'm considering whether it can be done by having each of the three customer types as Options under each inventory item, but I don't know if I can run a report on that - plus it's really labour-intensive to have to set up those options for every item.  I was previously using a percentage discount, but our markup isn't equal across all stock items.

Thanks in advance!

[Katie_SQ · Accepted solution]

Hi @matt-paragon!
 
Thanks for your question. This is certainly a common challenge for businesses that need to charge cost price to certain customers while maintaining accurate inventory tracking.

While Square for Retail Plus does offer advanced inventory and reporting features, it doesn't fully solve your specific pricing challenges:

- Your items have varying markups, and only one discount can be applied to each sale.
- Creating separate items or options for each customer group would still complicate your inventory management.
- There's no specific customer group sales reporting currently available that would make reimbursement tracking significantly easier.

Based on your specific needs, I'd recommend creating two manual discounts that use variable dollar amounts.

Here’s how to set this up:

Create Two Discounts: “Employee Discount” and “Parent Company Customers Discount”

- From your Square Dashboard, go to Items & Services > Items > Discounts > Create a Discount.
- Name your Discount (“Employee Discount” or “Parent Company Customers Discount”).
- For the Amount Type, choose Variable Amount ($).
- Make sure Automatic Discounts > Discount Rules is toggled OFF (variable discounts can’t be applied automatically or to a customer group).
- Choose any other preferred settings and hit Save.

This method does require your staff to manually add the discount to the cart and calculate the appropriate discount amount at the time of sale, but it offers other benefits that could save you time in the long run:

- Maintains Inventory Accuracy: Since you're using the actual inventory items, your stock counts will remain accurate.
- Flexible for Varying Markups: The variable discount allows you to adjust the discount amount for each item based on its specific markup.
- Reporting Capabilities: You can run Discount Reports filtered by discount name to track how much was given off to employees and customers of your Parent Company.
- Reimbursement Tracking: This method provides documentation for Parent Company reimbursements.

To make the variable discount calculation easier for your staff, you might consider creating quick reference sheets to display at the Point of Sale showing the discount amount needed for each item.

Here’s how it could look:

* Have a separate table for customers of your parent company.


How to Apply the Discount

- Add all items to the cart.
- Click the discount button and choose the relevant discount (“Employee Discount” or “Parent Company Customer Discount”).
- Calculate and enter the total discount amount (add up the dollar value discount amounts for all items).
- Complete the sale.

For Reimbursement Tracking for your Parent Company

- On your Square Dashboard, go to Reports > Payments > Discounts.
- Use the Date Range filter to adjust the reporting period.
- Click the Filter By button and choose Discount.

- Click the All Discounts filter and select the "Parent Company Discount" only. 
- Click the Export button in the top right corner to download a .csv spreadsheet that you can share with your Parent Company.

This report will include transaction dates, individual discount amounts, and transaction details for all Parent Company Discount applications during that reporting period. You may want to sum the total discount amounts in the spreadsheet before submitting it for reimbursement.

Sorry I couldn’t provide a more direct solution in this instance! If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. 😊

[matt-paragon]

Thanks so much, @Katie_SQ. That's a great solution I might look at - still requires manual entry, as you say, but it does let the inventory tracking continue to work so it might be a good compromise.