Square Invoices Review

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Date Established

2009

Location

San Francisco, CA

Pros

• Free
• Easy to use
• Excellent mobile apps
• Impressive feature set
• Numerous integrations

Cons

• Unsuited for service-based business
• No estimates
• No multi-currency support

Overview

You probably know Square for its payment processing. You’ve probably used a Square register to pay for a latte at your local coffee shop — you may even use it to process payments at your retail or restaurant establishment. But did you know that Square also offers invoicing?

Square Invoices was added to Square back in 2014. This app is a bit different from the normal invoicing software systems we review in that it isn’t a completely separate program. Square Invoices is one of many features directly built-in to the Square ecosystem. When you create a Square Invoices account, you gain access to the entire Square Dashboard where you’ll find invoicing, sales tracking, contact management, and more.

It also differs from typical invoicing software in that you won’t find features like estimates or project management, making it difficult for service-based businesses to use the software. There software offers no multi-currency support and limited sales tax functionality.

That being said, what Square does offer you simply won’t find in other invoicing solutions, and for some businesses, this may completely outweigh the software’s faults. Seeing as payment processing is what Square does best, this software is a great option for small businesses looking for quick billing, online payment processing, detailed sales analytics, a free point of sale app, and advanced inventory. And the best part about Square Invoices? It’s free. You only have to pay the payment processing fees.

Square’s Most Popular Services

Reader	eCommerce	Retail	Food Service
Free App & Reader	Square eCommerce	Square for Retail	Square for Restaurants
Get Started	Get Started	Get Started	Get Started
Free, general-purpose POS software and reader for iOS and Android	Easy integration with popular platforms plus API for customization	Specialized software for more complex retail stores	Specialized software for full-service restaurants
$0/month	$0/month	$60/month	$60/month
Always Free	Always Free	Free Trial	Free Trial

Continue reading to see if Square Invoices is right for your business.

Get Started With Square Invoices

Pricing

As we mentioned earlier, when you sign up for a free Square Invoices account, you’re actually signing up for a free Square account with access to the Square Dashboard (which is where you’ll find the invoicing feature). A Square account is completely free, all you have to pay is the payment processing fee of 2.9% +$0.30 per invoice or 3.5% + $0.10 to charge a card on file. The fee is the same for all card types and there is no charge for customers who pay invoices via cash or check.

Your Square account can be canceled at any time. There is also a generous referral program where you can gain up to $1,000 in free processing. Contact Square to learn more.

Square

• No monthly cost
• 2.9% + $0.30/per invoice
• Square dashboard
• Invoicing
• Recurring invoices
• Sales tracking
• Contact management
• Basic employee management
• Appointments
• Point of sale (POS) app
• eGift cards
• Loyalty program
• 14 reports

Extra Costs

In addition to the features built-in to your free Square account, you can also purchase these Square add-ons:

• Square Capital: Square offers financing to qualifying small businesses. Read our complete Square Capital review to learn more.
• Square Employee Management: Square already comes with basic employee management, but to add timecards, advanced user permissions, and analytics, you’ll need to purchase Square Employee Management. This service costs $5/month per employee.
• Square Payroll: You can add Square Payroll for contractors for $5/month per contractor. Square Payroll for W-2 employees costs $29/month plus $5/month per employee (if you already have Square Employee Management, you won’t have to pay this extra $5/month fee; if you don’t already have Square Employee Management, purchasing payroll will grant you access to those features as well). Contact Square for more details regarding each payroll option.
• Square Appointments: Your free Square account comes with an appointments feature for you, the individual owner. Adding appointments for your team starts at $50/month. Read our full Square Appointments review to learn more.
• Square Marketing: Square Marketing is an incredibly cool service that allows you to create email campaigns, newsletters, event invitations, group discounts, birthday rewards, and more. Square Marketing starts at $15/month for 500 customers.
• Square For Restaurants: Square for Restaurants is an advanced restaurant-specific POS solution with features like multiple location management, menu support, coursing, and more. This service starts at $60/month plus 2.6% + $0.10/per swiped, dipped, or tapped transaction.
• Square For Retail: Square for Retail is an advanced POS solution with features like advanced inventory, custom label printing, and more. This service starts at $60/month plus 2.5% + $0.10/per swiped, dipped, or tapped transaction. Read our full Square for Retail review to learn more.
• Square Hardware: Square also sells card hardware like mobile card readers, registers, and stand, which are the products that made this company in the first place. Visit Square’s website for product information and pricing details.

Cloud-Based Or Locally-Installed

Cloud-based. No downloads or installation required.

Hardware & Software Requirements

As a cloud-based software, Square Invoices works with nearly any device so long as you have an internet connection. However, if you are managing your invoices through the Square Point of Sale app, you’ll need an Apple device with iOS 9.0+ (9.1+ for certain card readers). Android users can use the Square Point of Sale app as well but support varies by device.

Specific Size Of Business

Square Invoices is ideal for small to medium businesses looking for an easy-to-use payment processing and invoicing solution. The software is ideal for product-based businesses and does not offer the invoicing capabilities or additional features needed to run a successful service-based business. Square offers location management and basic user permissions for employees (and you can have even more control over users access with the Square Employee Management add-on).

Square has a high-risk industry list and prohibits certain transactions. The company will close your account if they deem you high-risk, so be sure your industry is accepted before creating an account. Also note that Square is not ideal for users with large processing amounts, which is why we recommend it only for small to medium-sized businesses.

Ease Of Use

While it can be a bit confusing to learn everything that Square is capable of, actually using the software is a piece of cake. The UI is modern and well-organized. Features are intuitive and easy to navigate. There’s a Getting Started dashboard to help you get up and running, and there’s a built-in help center if you need any additional assistance along the way.

Features

Square Invoices offers an incredible number of features. While you won’t find all of the typical things we usually see with invoicing software, Square has some unique additions that you simply won’t find anywhere else. Here’s an overview of what the software can do:

• Dashboard: Once you finish setting up your account, you’ll see a home dashboard that highlights your deposits, gross sales, payment methods, invoices, payroll, top items by sales, and more. You can customize your dashboard with 15 different widgets, so you can quickly see the information that is most important to your business.

• Invoicing: With Square, you can send invoices directly from the Square Dashboard or by using the POS app. Square offers a single invoice template that you can customize the logo and color of. I usually like to see more template options, but the invoice template that is offered is very well-designed. You can track invoices, send automatic invoice reminders, and add attachments, discounts, sales tax, and even a spot for a tip. Square makes it easy to set recurring invoices or auto schedule invoices in advance. The only downside is that you can’t send estimates or quotes in Square.

• Client Portal: When you email invoices to your customers, they will have access to their own client portal where they can pay the invoice directly online.

• Contact Management: You can add and manage contacts into Square, or you can import contacts. You can save basic contact information as well as reference numbers, customer birthdays, and notes. Square comes with built-in customer insights that show you information like the number of visits from new vs. existing customers, visit frequency, customer satisfaction, and more. This sort of analytics simply doesn’t exist with other invoicing software. Top that with the ability to ask customers for feedback and create contact groups and this easily becomes one of my favorite features in Square Invoices.
• Employee Management: There is basic employee management built-in to Square. You can add employees, record employee information, and set blanket user permissions. For more advanced features such as timecards, advanced users permissions, analytics, and employee cash drawer management, you’ll need to purchase the Square Employee Management add-on.
• Sales Tracking: Square provides tons of insight and analytics regarding sales. You can view sales trends, deposits, disputes, cash drawer balances, and more. You can also run sales reports and look at specific transactions. Square gives you control over your business’s data by making it easy to filter the data and change the date range.

• Payments: You can connect your Square account directly to your bank in order to quickly receive payments from your customers. Deposits into your account generally take 1-2 business days, although you can opt for same day payments for an additional 1% charge. You can take invoice payments using the POS app, through your ecommerce site, or by emailing customers. There is also a Virtual Terminal where you can key-in payments (note: keyed-in transactions have a higher processing rate of 3.5 + $0.15 per transaction).
• Inventory: Square has incredibly advanced inventory features with a beautiful UI. You can manually add or import items into Square. You can add basic inventory information as well as a photo, SKU, default sales tax rates, and variations. You can also create modifiers to make custom orders faster, develop a dining menu, monitor comps and voids, and create item categories. Square makes it simple to set low stock alerts and connect your inventory directly with your ecommerce platform.

• Reports: Square offers 14 sales reports. You can also create custom reports using the report builder.

• Contracts: One of the coolest features Square offers is the ability to create contracts and attach them directly to invoices. Square offer 12 contract templates that you can customize to fit your business’s needs.
• Receipts: You can easily create digital or printed receipts in Square.
• Tax Forms & Support: Square offers 1099-K support.
• Sales Tax: You can add sales tax in Square Invoices, although this ability could stand improvement. You can only add sales tax to individual items, rather than adding a rate to the entire invoice.
• Importing/Exporting: You can import items and contacts into Square Invoices; you can export sales, contacts, custom reports, analytics, and items.
• API: There is API available for developers.

Square’s Tools For Online Selling

Customer Service & Support

Square offers several great support options and representatives are incredibly nice. Phone wait times are generally short (and enjoyable, so long as you like listening to the Beatles’ “Here Comes The Sun”). The only weird part is that you must have a code in order to use support, which was a big issue in the Negative Reviews & Complaints section where users whose accounts were closed complained that they couldn’t reach customer support because they couldn’t log in to their account to get the code.

The only other downside of Square support is that the in-software live chat is just a bot and the email and phone options are difficult to find. Luckily, Square gets the help center right and has tons of guides for using the software. Here’s a full list of what to expect from Square’s customer support:

• Phone: You can call Square for help. There’s a call back option if you don’t want to wait on hold.
• Email: Square does offer email support with responses varying from 1-3 days.
• Help Center: Square offers a help center with tons of great how-to articles and a nice search bar to help you find what you’re looking for.
• Community: There’s a Square community where you can ask questions to existing Square users and search old inquiries as well.
• In-Program Help: From within the software, you can access the help center or live chat with a bot who can answer basic questions. The bot will direct you with a representative via phone or email if it can’t answer your question.
• Guides: Square offers several guides on topics like accepting payments, managing your business, and more.
• YouTube: Square has an expansive YouTube channel with over 7o tutorials.
• Square Blog: Square maintains a blog with helpful business articles for small business owners.
• Social Media: Square is active on Twitter, Facebooks, and Instagram.

Negative Reviews & Complaints

While the many Square users report positive experiences, there’s a startingly number of negative complaints. There are over a thousand complaints on the BBB alone and the service receives 1.3/5 stars on Consumer Affairs. While many of these complaints are regarding the Cash App specifically, and while it’s important to remember the role of negativity bias in such reviews, these complaints still shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Here’s are some of the recurring issues users experience:

• Invoicing Difficulties: While many users like the ability to invoice their customers, there are a few areas where the feature could stand improvement. Users complain that you can’t add new items from the invoices page, sales tax can’t be added at the invoice level, and occasionally emailed invoices end up in spam folders. Some users also call for more invoice designs and customizations.
• Expensive: Several users find the transaction processing fee to be too high.
• Canceled Accounts & Held Funds: One of the most common complaints is users reporting their funds being held and their accounts being closed entirely. Some of these users ignored Square’s prohibited transactions list, while others say their transaction was normal and legitimate. Once an account is closed, many users report being unable to get in touch with Square.

Positive Reviews & Testimonials

Despite the numerous negative complaints, there are a good number of positive customer reviews. Square receives 4.8/5 stars on GetApp (based on 60+ ratings) and 3/5 stars on Trustpilot (based on 100+ ratings). Here are some of the things users love:

• Good Invoicing: Customers appreciate Square Invoice’s affordability and customizability. Users say the software helps them look professional and get paid faster. Users also appreciate the time-saving recurring invoice and invoice tracking features.
• Easy To Use: By far the biggest praise of Square as a whole is that it’s easy to use.
• Mobility: Users also like the mobility that Square provides and the chance to send and track invoices on the go.

Integrations

Square offers over 100 integrations that cover everything from accounting to ecommerce to inventory to healthcare management and more.

Security

Square uses data encryption and two-factor authentication to protect your company’s data. Data is stored in a secure, undisclosed facility. The company is PCI-DSS complaint as well. Square also uses risk visualization to “stop fraud before it happens.”

This feature, in particular, is a double-edged sword. While it’s nice that the company watches out for unusual activity, this often leads to funds being held or accounts being closed when the transaction was actually legitimate. Additionally, the company was subject to a phishing scam back in 2016.

What does all of this mean for your business in terms of security? Make sure any emails you receive are actually from Square and use Square Secure to help prevent your funds from being held. (Check out Square’s help center for additional sources on recognizing and reporting phishing scams.)

Square Secure

Square has a built-in feature called Square Secure which helps protect your company in the case of disputes or chargebacks. The way Square puts it, the bank fights for the customer, but Square fights for you — the seller.

This service is also incredibly important to help safeguard your funds. As we mentioned in the negative reviews section, users have had issues with their funds being held or accounts being closed entirely for abnormal or large transactions. You can use Square Secure to provide Square sample invoices and legal documentation about your business’s proceedings so they can better understand what “normal processing” look like for your business.

Final Verdict

Considering that there’s no monthly cost for signing up for Square Invoices, it’s amazing the number of features this software offers. The free point of sale app, advanced inventory, detailed customer analytics, and sales insights are valuable features that you simply won’t find in a normal invoicing software app. Square also offers an attractive invoice template and makes it incredibly easy for customers to pay invoices online. The autoschedule invoicing feature, the strong mobile apps, and the good customer support are icing on the cake. For product-based businesses in need of these features, we give Square two-thumbs up.

Something else to consider is that oftentimes, small business owners will purchase invoicing software and will integrate with Square in order to accept online payments. Square Invoices cuts out the middle man and saves you quite a bit of money in the process.

However, there are some downsides that have to be recognized. In terms of invoicing software, key features like estimates and project management are missing, which could be a dealbreaker for service-based businesses. There’s no expense tracking and no multi-currency support. The multiple reports of held funds and closed accounts are also concerning, to say the least.

In the case of Square Invoices, judging the software against other invoicing competitors is like comparing apples to oranges. Since Square Invoices is predominantly a payment processing solution with invoicing built-in, you lose some of the capabilities of invoice-focused software. But, you gain tons of great tools that may be invaluable for certain small businesses. In the end, it all comes down to what will benefit your business the most.

If Square Invoices sounds like a winning solution for your small business, get started with a free Square account and take the software for a spin. Make sure that your business isn’t considered high-risk and use Square Secure to safeguard your account. If you’d rather have a more traditional invoicing software, take a look at our comprehensive invoicing software reviews.

Get Started With Square Invoices

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Chelsea Krause

Managing Editor - Accounting

Chelsea Krause is a writer who has specialized in accounting for two years and is a QuickBooks Certified User. She has a BA in English & Creative Writing from George Fox University and studied at the University of Oxford as well. She has been quoted in Forbes and her work appears in Startup Nation, Small Business Bonfire, and Women on Business.

@AccountingMage

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