Get Started with Service Charges

1. From the Square POS app, tap Checkout > Library.
2. You can search for service charges by name or tap the Service Charge category.
3. Choose all of the service charges that apply to the sale.
4. Tap Review Sale to check the details of the transaction.
5. Tap Charge.

The service charge will show as a line item on your customer’s receipt and in your transaction report details.

1. From the Checkout screen, long press on a tile then tap Edit tile grid.
2. Under Add to page, tap Action.
3. Tick the Service charges action tile checkbox.
4. Select applicable service charges.
5. Tap Done.

From there, you can move the tile to rearrange or tap the Service charges tile to make edits at any time.

To check out a customer with a service charge:

1. Add items to cart.
2. Tap the applicable items, then tap Apply Service Charge.
3. Choose applicable service charges, then tap Save.
4. Tap Add to Cart
5. Tap Charge to complete the payment.

To remove the service charge from the cart, swipe left, then tap Delete.

1. Open your Restaurants POS app and select the order to which you want to apply a service charge.
2. Tap Actions > Service Charges.
3. Select the service charge you want to apply.

To create service charges for Virtual Terminal payments:

1. From your online Square Dashboard, go to Settings > Account & Settings
2. Click Business information > Service charges and choose Create service charge to enter the service charge information:

• Enter the name for your service charge (like a packing fee)
• Enter the percentage or amount
• Choose whether or not the service charges will be taxable
• Choose the location(s) where this service charge will apply, click Save and select Add.

To add the service charge you created to the sale:

1. From your online Square Dashboard, select Virtual Terminal > Take a payment. If you don’t see Virtual Terminal, select Payments > Virtual Terminal > Take a payment.
2. Choose if you want to charge an itemised sale or process a Quick Charge. Under Transaction details, choose the purchased items or manually enter the amount to be charged. Note: You can edit taxes to be charged for each item by clicking the item name.
3. Select Add service charge.
4. Choose the service charge you created or Create service charge. Important: Make sure to let your customer know about any service charges before you proceed.
5. Click Add to add the service charge to the sale, then enter payment details and customer information and choose payment method. Note: You can select Add additional service charge to add more than one service charge to the sale and repeat the process.
6. Click Charge to charge the total amount, including applicable taxes and service charges. The service charge will show as a line item in your customer’s invoice and receipt and in your report details.

You can enable or disable service charges from your online Square Dashboard by selecting Virtual Terminal > Settings > Checkout, and toggling on or off the Allow service charges option.

A service charge is an extra fee added to a sale to cover any additional expenses outside the cost of the initial goods being sold, such as a bagging fee or delivery fee. Service charges can be a single flat fee or based on a percentage of the total sale amount.

A surcharge is a fee added to the bill when a buyer pays with a credit card to cover the cost of payment processing fees. This varies from a convenience fee, which covers the costs of accepting payment outside of a merchant’s usual channel (e.g. by phone instead of in-store), no matter what payment method is used.

Common use cases include card surcharging (for the payment processing fee) and public holiday surcharges. Learn more about payment surcharges via the ACCC website.

A variable service charge as a feature allows you to edit the percentage or dollar amount during checkout.

Yes. You can create a non-taxable service charge, meaning the charge won’t be taxed at checkout. You can also assign one or more taxes to a charge, the taxes will be taken out during checkout.

You can create service charges from your online Square Dashboard via a web browser on your mobile device or computer. After you create a service charge, you can apply it to a purchase on the Square Point of Sale app, Square Restaurants POS app, Square Retail POS app (on iOS devices, Square Terminal and Square Register) or Virtual Terminal.

Service charges are not yet available for Square Appointments, Square Invoices, Square Online, Square Payment Links or Afterpay transactions.

Not at this time. You will need to manually add the service charge in the cart checkout during each sale via your Square POS app.

You can apply multiple individual service charges, but you cannot apply a single service charge more than once. For example, you can apply a pickup service charge and a bag service charge to the same sale, but you can’t apply the bag service charge more than once to that same sale.

Because the Square fee is charged on the total amount, rather than the subtotal, there will still be a small out-of-pocket amount for sellers using service charges. The processing fees will still be charged on the cart total plus new service charge. On a $100 GST inclusive transaction with a processing rate of 1.9% and a service charge at the same rate, the buyer will be charged $101.90, but the processing fees will be $1.93.

It will also not automatically apply a surcharge to all transactions nor can it be set up to automatically apply based on a specific time (e.g. Sundays, public holidays).