Set up and customize tipping
About payments and tips
Square makes it easy to accept tips digitally or with a signed receipt. You can customize how you collect tips and the options for your customers to give tips.
Before you begin
If you use point of sale modes, you can enable tipping and customize the settings from Square Dashboard and the Square Point of Sale app. Learn how to create and assign modes.
You can't use sign and tip on printed receipts with contactless (NFC) payments.
Sign on printed receipt is not available when Ask for tips before payment is enabled.
Step 1: Enable tipping
Step 2: Customize tip settings
Set tip amounts
Select Smart tip amounts or Set percentage amounts.
Click the drop-down options below for more details:
Set tip calculation
Select if you want your tips to be added After taxes or Before taxes.
Customize other settings
Turn on/off Allow custom amounts.
If Allow custom amounts is enabled and the preset amounts are all set to 0%, your point of sale app will hide these amounts and display only the Custom Tip Amount and No Tip options.
Ask for tips before payment is on by default. When this setting is on, the checkout flow becomes: cart → tip screen → card tap → done. The tip prompt appears while the customer is still at the counter, before they put their card away.
This applies to Square Stand, Square Terminal, and Square Register. The flow may look slightly different depending on your device, but the steps are the same.
Note: If you collect tips on printed receipts, this setting doesn’t apply to your checkout flow.
When ask for tips before payment is on:
- A separate tipping screen turns on automatically. Because signatures are collected after the card tap, the tip and signature screens must be separate. You’ll see a notification when this activates, no action needed.
- Sign on printed receipt is not available with this setting.
- Non-card payments are still accessible. Cash, gift cards, and other payment types are available through the All payment types link on the tip screen.
- The card reader remains inactive until after the customer selects a tip. This is expected behavior.
To turn off ask for tips before payment, tap ≡ More > Settings > Checkout > Tipping and turn off Ask for tips before payment. This returns your checkout to the previous flow, where the tip prompt appears after payment.
Turn on Separate tipping screen to show the tip prompt on its own screen after payment has been processed, rather than on the signature screen.
To enable a separate tipping screen, you need to turn on signature collection first:
- From the Square Point of Sale app, tap ≡ More > Settings > Checkout > Signature and receipt.
- Turn on Collect signatures.
- Select Sign on device.
Note: The separate tipping screen only appears when a digital signature screen is triggered. Signatures are requested selectively depending on the card and transaction.
Turn on Allow round-up tipping to automatically populate a tip based on transaction size:
- Transactions under $20: rounds up to the next $1
- Transactions $20 or more: rounds up to the next $5
Note: Round-up tipping is only available on iPad, iPhone, Square Terminal, Square Handheld, and Android devices.
Step 3: Enable sign and tip on receipts (optional)
After you’ve connected and configured your device to a compatible receipt printer, you can enable sign and tip from your Square Dashboard or Point of sale app.
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Settings > Device Management > Modes.
- Select the mode you want to enable tipping on.
- Click Manage under Settings.
- Click Signature and receipt.
- Turn on Collect signatures.
- Select Sign on printed receipt.
- Choose the receipt format:
- Use quick tips on authorization slip: Receipt shows three tip options for customers to choose by simply checking a box.
- Include item details on authorization slip: Receipt shows tip, total and signature line, allowing your customers to leave a custom tip amount.
- If applicable, select Print customer copy of authorization slip to automatically print a customer copy.
- Click Save.
- Open your app and tap ≡ More.
- Tap Settings > Checkout > Signature and receipt.
- Turn on Collect signatures.
- Select Sign on printed receipt.
- Choose the receipt format:
- Use quick tips on authorization slip: Receipt shows three tip options for customers to choose by simply checking a box.
- Include item details on authorization slip: Receipt shows tip, total and signature line, allowing your customers to leave a custom tip amount.
- If applicable, select Print customer copy of authorization slip to automatically print a customer copy.
- Click Save.