Settle payments and manage tips
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
You can settle signed open checks manually, or they will settle automatically after 36 hours. After 36 hours, all unsettled payments will be automatically settled with a $0 tip.
You cannot adjust tips after payments are settled.
You can't use sign and tip on printed receipts with contactless (NFC) payments.
Sign and tip on printed receipts cannot be used to pre-authorize or verify funds on a payment card.
If you’re using Square to manage your team, team members can only settle payments they’ve processed by default, and tips will be attributed to the team member that processed the payment.
Settled payments will appear in your next transfer based on your transfer schedule, and they’ll also appear as completed in your sales history and transactions. Learn more about how to set up and edit transfer options.
Step 1: Enable tipping
You can set up and customize tipping preferences on your Point of Sale.
From the navigation bar at the bottom of your screen, tap ≡ More.
Tap Settings > Checkout > Tipping.
Toggle on Collect Tips.
Choose Smart Tip Amounts or Set Percentage Amounts. See Step 2 for detailed information.
Choose to Allow Custom Amounts. If Allow Custom Amounts is enabled and the preset amounts are all set to 0%, Square Point of Sale will hide these amounts and display only the Custom Tip Amount and No Tip options.
Step 2: Customize tip settings
When Smart Tip Amounts is enabled, tipping works as follows:
- If a transaction is less than $10, the available tipping options are: No Tip, $1, $2 or $3.
- For a transaction $10 or more, the available tipping options are: No Tip, 15%, 20% or 25%.
Enabling custom tip amounts allows you to set three custom amounts, which you can adjust at any time. To create custom tipping amounts:
- Tap Set Percentage Amounts within your tipping settings.
- Tap each amount field to enter your custom percentage.
- To allow your customers to enter a tip amount of their choosing, toggle on Allow Custom Amounts.
Note: Setting your fixed percentage amounts to 0% will only give your customers the ability to enter a custom tip amount.
Step 3: Settle payments with tips
All signed receipts must be settled within 36 hours. You can settle payments individually or in bulk from Square for Restaurants POS or from the Square POS app. There are two options for settling your payments:
Add tips and settle transactions individually
Bulk settle multiple transactions
Individually
From the Square POS app with full service, quick service, or bar mode enabled or from the Square Restaurants POS app:
- From the Square Restaurants POS app, tap Transactions > then tap the card icon.
- Select the payments in question and enter the tip amount.
- Tap Add > Settle $ Total.
From the Square POS app with standard mode enabled:
- From the main navigation bar, tap Transactions.
- Payments awaiting settlement will have a clock icon.
- Tap a payment and enter the tip amount. Note: If you’re using Quick Tip, select from the tip options you’ve enabled. If you’re using Traditional Tip, manually enter the tip amount for each payment.
- Tap Add > Settle $ Total.
In bulk
From the Square POS app with full service, quick service, or bar mode enabled or from the Square Restaurants POS app:
- From your point of sale app, tap Transactions > then tap the card icon.
- Select the payments in question and enter the tip amount. If you’re using Quick Tip, select from the tip options you’ve enabled. If you’re using Traditional Tip, manually enter the tip amount for each payment.
- Tap Add > Settle $ Total.
You can also settle open checks by running your Close of Day report.
From the Square POS app with standard mode enabled:
- From the main navigation bar, tap Transactions.
- Tap the credit card icon in the top-left corner.
- Tap Tip next to each payment, and enter or select the tip amount.
- Tap Settle > Confirm Settle.