Everything You Need To Know About Setting Up Your Free Square Account

First, visit Square’s signup page and hit the “Get started” button.

The first step asks for your email address and prompts you to create a password and choose your country. You also must agree to Square’s terms, privacy policy, and e-sign consent policy. We strongly suggest that, as with any contract, you take the time to click on, read, and understand the details before agreeing to them.

The next screen is straightforward and asks if you are an individual or represent a larger business. Enter in your business name or another title that you would like to appear on your receipts. Just make sure it matches whatever you put on your IRS documents.

You’ll also be asked to give an estimate of your annual revenue.

Select your general business category from the list provided by Square. If you’re offering a niche service, you can probably file it under “Consulting” or “General Contracting.”

Next, you’ll be asked where you plan to sell your goods and/or services. Don’t think of this part as being a straightjacket; Square is just going to use it to make product recommendations to you.

You can select multiple sales channels.

Square famously offers a free smartphone-compatible magstripe reader to all new signups.

If you have an idea of how you want to take payments, you can select all the devices you play to use here. You can also skip this part if you aren’t sure yet.

Square offers a lot more than just payment processing. By selecting from the provided list, you help Square figure out which additional software you might need.

Now it’s time to enter the rest of that data we said you’d need earlier. When you hit continue, Square will verify your identity. You can also view Square’s privacy policy.

Note that Square is not going to perform a credit check on you or your business; it just needs the last four digits of your Social Security Number or ITIN, your legal name, street address, and phone number. Square uses this information to verify your identity.

You can skip this part if you don’t want to do it immediately, but eventually, you’ll need to set up deposits if you want to take payments. In the past, you’d have chosen between next business day transfer and same day transfer, but Square now offers a third option in the form of Square Checking.

I’m cheap and happy with my bank account, so I’m selecting the basic “next business day transfer” option.

You’ll then enter your bank account information or setup Square Checking.

Great news! By the time you arrive at the next screen below (three to five seconds, give or take), Square will have successfully verified your identity. Now it’s time to select a credit card reader to accept in-person payments.

Square’s magstripe reader may be a bit obsolete, but your first one’s free. On the next screen, select the version of the reader appropriate for your mobile device. You’ll then be taken to a checkout page.

Compatibility Note: Square’s magstripe and chip card readers and the Square Point of Sale (POS app) are compatible with most Apple iOS and Android devices running the latest software updates. After this tutorial, check out our Square POS review for more about system requirements, integrations, and a lot more details about Square POS.

Remember when we said we were interested in Square’s additional features? At this point, you’ll be given a menu of features that includes Square for Restaurants, Square Point of Sale, and others. Each has its own signup processes, so we aren’t going to go into them here.

Select the ones you’re interested in. As is the case with other Square features, you can skip this for now and come back to it later.

An online POS system works a lot more smoothly if create an inventory for it to work with.

Select Items from the setup guide or sidebar.

Square lets you not only create items, but variations on those items. By scrolling down, you’ll find Options, Variations, and Modifiers that can be selected by your customers.

You will find Square’s sales tax settings under Account & Setting > Business Information > Sales Taxes.

Square has an integrated tax lookup tool that can be used to get the local sales tax rate for any of your locations.

When you create a tax at your Square Dashboard, the tax will automatically sync to every device in your account, and you can specify which taxes apply to which locations. You can even build the tax into the price of the item if you prefer, rather than adding the tax to the price afterward. Square also lets you modify tax settings, allowing you to designate tax-exempt products.

In addition to multiple tax rates, you can create conditional tax rules, which are preset conditions in which a tax won’t be applied — whether you need that to apply to one item or the entire order. This is especially helpful for restaurants that handle online orders.

Now, let’s head back to the home screen and customize our Dashboard layout and then check out the reporting features!

The extensive, user-friendly, and (mostly) free reporting features are what make Square a fantastic, no-fuss choice for any small business. As you can see in the screenshot below, there is a long list of possible reports. Every business has unique needs, and Square does a good job of supporting a wide range of small businesses with various options and features.

All of the sales reports, such as Sales Summary, Sales Trends, Items Sales, and Modifier Sales, are free. Custom Reports is another handy and entirely free reporting tool that can help you combine and compare your reporting data. Custom Reports allows you to aggregate reports with multiple filtering options. This feature makes it easy work to create a report that breaks the data down for a single location, or you can pick and choose certain pieces of data and compare them across different locations. For instance, you could create one report that compares Gross Sales and Returns for a particular device and/or location.

Check out our feature on Square’s dashboard and reporting tools for a deeper look at Square’s feedback system.

Within the Dashboard,  under Staff > Team, you’ll find Square’s Team Management feature set. The basic version of this feature is free. If you want advanced customization and reporting, you’ll need to pay $35/month for Team Plus. Adding a new employee to your Dashboard is easy.

You can create job titles from this screen and designate whether or not the job is eligible for tips.

You’ll encounter numerous features along the way that require a Team Plus subscription, such as the ability to set individual permissions for your team members. The free version lets you set default permissions for all team members.

Finally, you’ll choose which access points your employee will be able to use the Square account from. Team members without personal passcodes will need a team passcode to access shared points of sale.

Note that one of the report types you can generate is for Team Sales.

There’s a decent chance you’ll need to invoice a customer or another business at some point. Select Invoices and you’ll be taken to a management screen. Select Create Invoice to begin making your first test invoice.

You can store customer information for repeated use.

There’s no fee to create an invoice, but you’ll be charged Square’s default 2.9% + $0.30 online transaction fee for each paid invoice.

You can also create recurring invoices for subscription services. Check out our full review of Square Invoices for more.

Square’s reputation was built on in-person transactions, but it also provides substantial value for eCommerce: you get a free (at the basic level, more advanced features will have a monthly fee) online store with your account.

If you’re afraid of HTML and CSS, never fear, Square has a text-driven setup for creating the layout of your store.

Depending on how important eCommerce is to your overall business branding and strategy, you can either build a full website or something simple but functional. You can even dodge having a site altogether by using Online Checkout Links, which take your customers to a hosted checkout page. You can share these in emails, social media posts, texts, or existing websites.

You can read more about how to configure and use your site, check out our review of Square Online.

A virtual terminal is one of those things you never want to have to use–your virtual terminal transaction fees will be higher at 3.5% + $0.15–but you want to have in your arsenal in case you don’t have a reader handy or need to take a payment over the phone. Select Virtual Terminal > Take A Payment.

Your virtual terminal essentially allows you to manually enter credit card information to make a sale. Square can also be used to manually enter gift cards, record cash payments, record miscellaneous payments, or send a payment link. You can even designate a virtual terminal payment as recurring, though you ideally want such a thing processed at a lower transaction rate.