Let me just start by saying that we love Square. I was using the recurring invoice feature for customers that were interested in layaway, but this was a hassle to keep track of how many payments they had made and when they were due to pay it off. I can see how the recurring invoices feature would be helpful in a subscription type product or service, but it isn't great for keeping track of layaway for customer.
Then recently I started using the "payment schedule" feature on the invoices which is pretty cool for bookkeeping because all of a customer's payments on a single item or invoice are kept together and you (and they) can see their current balance and when they are scheduled to pay it off. Up until now, no customers had opted in to try auto-pay and would just put in their credit card number for each payment.
Yesterday a customer was frustrated because she saved a card on file when she made her first payment on the invoice and then subsequently she expected auto-pay to be setup and draft her remaining payments. This is confusing to customers that they would "save a card on file" on the payment screen and then the card never drafts an automatic payment. She doesn't want the hassle of submitting a payment every month so now recurring invoices are necessary for the remaining payments which is not great for bookkeeping or keeping track of her balance.
Honestly the "save card on file" feature is kind of useless for payment schedules because you also can't charge a card and have the payment applied to a specific invoice.
It would be great if the auto-pay feature was added as an option on invoice payment schedules for ease in bookkeeping and also so customers don't have to worry about manually submitting a payment every month on a single purchase.
Does anyone else agree?
