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Square invoice template for small businesses

Square invoices is a free to lowcost way for small businesses to invoice customers there is no monthly fee for basic features all you pay are squares Payment Processing fees which at the time of this recording are 2.9% plus 30 cents for online credit and debit card payments or 1% on a bank transfer payments that you can unlock additional features for writing contracts and sending estimates for a low monthly fee but we'll get into all of those details later hi I'm Mary King senior staff writer at Pitts business and today I'm going to show you how to use Square invoices let's Jump Right In the very first step is going to be logging into your Square account if you don't have a square account it's very easy to set one up you just go to squareup.com and follow the prompts it only takes a few minutes from there you will get your Square Dashboard and in order to start an invoice you want to go to the invoices tab here in the menu on the left from your invoices dashboard there are two places you can start an invoice here on the menu on the left by clicking invoices or by clicking send an invoice up here on the right you click one of those and a new invoice will be prompted so your first step for starting invoice is to add your customer Square will prompt you to add existing customers though you can also just start adding a customer name when you can create a new customer by clicking here we're going to use an existing customer then you want to add your invoice details you can add an invoice title it's optional but it can help you tell what the invoice is for and it can remind the customer what the invoice is for you can also add a custom message that will go along with your invoice if you would like the date of service here refers to the date the product or service will actually be rendered and this invoice ID number automatically generates but you can always customize it if you have a certain numbering system that you like to use then we get down to frequency you can choose from a one-time or a recurring invoice let's take a look at recurring first this is what you would use if you have a subscription or a recurring event like a weekly catering or some sort of service that you do regularly for a client maybe you do a beauty or a wellness service in a client's home at every two weeks or every month or something like that if you choose recurring you then have additional options to schedule those recurring invoices you can start them immediately or you can start at a preset date you can then choose how often the invoice repeats every day week month year every two weeks two months Etc and you can choose to end the invoicing on a certain date after a certain number of invoices or set no end date and cancel manually uh when the customer decides you can also choose when the payments for recurring payments are due upon receipt Net 7 net 14 Etc you can also give customers the option to put a card on file for automatic payments and this can be really handy and it certainly saves you time but you'll want to keep in mind that the processing fees for card on file payments are higher 3.5% plus 15 cents at the time of this recording um so that might be something you want to keep in mind but right now we are going to do a onetime invoice so from there once you have all of your payment details settled you want to start adding line items this section is the same whether it's for onetime or recurring invoices you can add items from your existing inventory or you can create new items on the Fly you can also add discounts and you can customize them for a certain percentage or a preset dollar amount and you can also add service charges you can again add existing service charges or you can create service charges on the fly as needed the next step is to choose your payment options so if you had a credit card on file you could add that here um you could add it manually if the customer was visiting you in person or if you were talking to them over the phone or you could get a signed credit card authorization form that you can generate from Square itself and this is Gen definitely the safest way to go but keep in mind those card on file payments are that higher 3.5% plus 15 cents processing uh you don't have to add a card on file in order to send an invoice though you can simply choose which payment methods you would like the customer to have available whether it's a credit or debit card a bank transfer or gift card you can choose one two you can choose all three it's whatever you prefer um generally I like to select all of them if I have gift cards available that is and let the customer choose how they prefer to pay once they receive the invoice you also have the option to allow customer tipping and you can also prompt customers to save their payment information if you would like the next step is to update your invoice delivery settings square has three options for sending invoices you can send an invoice via email via text message or manually and what this setting does if you choose manually it will generate a custom URL for your invoice and you can share that URL with customers via text message via social media post via email however you prefer and they will see the invoice just like this just like it's on a web page they can add their payment information they can also download the invoice always has a PDF if they would like we are going to send this via email today once you've chosen how to communicate you can add additional recipients if there's more than one interested party um you can also set reminders this seven days before due date on due date one day and 3 days after due date those are squares defaults you can edit and customize those and you can also add additional reminders if you need them you also have more options you can request a shipping address or a delivery address if you are delivering rental materials maybe for a private event you can also attach contracts if you have uh pre-written contracts maybe for a catering agreement or for someone who's agreed to a service or if you have a credit card authorization form and you can add other attachments like photographs or scanned in documents and if you need them you can add custom fields to your invoice that does require the higher level Plus subscription and the Plus subscription is only $20 per month once you've completed all this information you will want to preview your invoice to see what it looks like to your customer and make sure that everything is exactly how you want it to look and that you have all the information correct and from there we're ready to send once you've sent or scheduled an invoice this will be listed on your invoice dashboard you can view and track the status of your invoices and you can also trigger reminders or make quick edits to the invoice from this page this dashboard even shows you when invoices have been viewed and it'll show you here in your feed um so you know exactly when to nudge customers with a reminder message you also have the option to send and manage invoices on your smartphone via the square invoices mobile app um you can get that mobile app in the Apple App Store or Google Play depending on your cell phone type um and the user interface is very similar to the desktop app you just create a new invoice and follow the prompts to add all the necessary information there is a third way that you can create invoices from Square invoices and that is to create estimates um the estimates feature is in the plus package at $20 per month the estimate generator is very similar to the invoice generator it has all the same Fields you add your customer you can add a custom title it will generate an ID for you you can add custom messages and add contracts and attachments if you need you can also toggle on the ability to auto automatically convert the estimate to an invoice when a customer accepts it another unique aspect of the estimate is that you can add up to nine package options so if you are a caterer or you are offering Beauty services or you doing construction for someone you can offer multiple package options and the customer customer can choose based on the estimate and you can add up to nine packages the other beautiful part about estimates is they can expire so you can set a predetermined time for them to expire this is really great for rentals and event spaces where you want to send out an estimate but you don't want to have to hear 30 days later that someone wants to book your space maybe you've already sent out several estimates and someone's already booked it so you can send an estimate with a cancellation date so customers know that this offer is not good forever so with an estimate with multiple packages the customer sees their multiple options and they are prompted by square to accept one of the options and then the invoice will automatically be generated based on their choices and if you input Milestone payment requests like a 10% deposit up front plus a balance due in 30 days Square will automatically prompt customers for those payments at the appropriate time so you can get on with the work you enjoy whether it's building cabinets or Catering weddings and not having to chase down payments from your customers if you've used square invoices let us know about your experience in the comments and until next time happy selling