Isn’t it great when your favourite things get even better? A few months ago, Square launched the Scheduled Invoices feature to save you time and help you get paid quickly by scheduling your invoices to be sent on days that are most convenient for your clients. Now, we’re pleased to introduce Recurring Invoices, which lets you send invoices and collect payments at regular intervals: daily, weekly, monthly or once a year.
Recurring Invoices can be used in a multitude of ways. If you’re a service-based seller such as a wedding planner or photographer, you can can set up a payment plan for customers to spread out the cost. Or you can send an invoice for a deposit and then one for the final amount. Recurring and scheduled invoices can also help businesses take full payments in advance.
“We usually charge our customers one day ahead of time,” says Jin Wang, owner of 360 Home Photography, based in Richmond Hill, Ontario. “Scheduled and recurring invoices are going to be very useful features for us.”
Setting up recurring invoices means you only have to do the task once, which saves you time and brain space to manage other aspects of your business. You can choose the dates that work best for you or optimize for dates that have the fastest customer response. For example, our research shows that invoices sent out on the 17th of the month take an average of nine days to be paid, compared to a speedy two days on average for invoices sent after the 25th of the month.
Recurring Invoices has its own tab in the Invoices section of your Dashboard so you can create and manage invoices easily. You can check the status of all invoices in the series and, in addition to setting the rate of recurrence, you have the option to add an end date or number of recurrences.
Once your invoices are all set up, and the money is coming in, wouldn’t it be great to get a regular update on how your business is doing without having to do anything? Our new Month in Review email does just that.
In the first few days of every month, sellers who have taken at least five payments, have $100 in GPV and have been active for at least three days in the prior calendar month will receive a recap email from Square. The Month in Review email is full of useful data from the month before, such as your total sales, your top-selling items and your busiest days. It’s a lot like the Year in Review email that goes out every January, but sent on a more frequent basis, making it even easier to track your successes, highlight what can be improved and plan changes and promotions to grow your business.
To find out more about the new features and how Square can help you save time and make informed business decisions, visit the Square site.