Best Practices for Square Invoices
Square Invoices is a great way to bill your customers without having to worry about manually entering in your customer’s payment card information. However, this gives you less visibility into how your customer is paying, so we recommend following these best practices.
1. Know your customer
You are in control of sending a Square invoice, so it is important to know who you are working with. Take additional steps to call your customer for large or unusual orders. If your customer is unable to speak on the phone or the phone number they provide does not work, do not proceed with a sale.
2. Send invoices directly to your customer’s email or phone number
Doing this ensures that the customer accepts and recognises each payment that is processed, reducing the likelihood of a dispute. If you want to keep a copy for your records, you can always copy your own email address or phone number to the message you send.
3. Attach a contract
One of the best ways to avoid misunderstandings or a late payment is to ensure you have a contract in place with your customer setting out the terms of the arrangement. Contracts allow you and your customer to understand exactly what is expected from your transaction and help minimise your chance of a dispute.
If you’re using Square Invoices Plus to get paid, you can attach a contract right to your customer’s invoice. While contracts are not appropriate for every business, they can be invaluable to businesses who work in wholesale or on a project basis.
Using Square Invoices, you can attach a copy of your contract directly to your customer’s invoice. If you are not familiar with creating a contract, you could start with a few contract templates to create a contract that is fit for your purpose.
Note: Square is not a law firm, a solicitor or a professional advisor in any industry. Square provides this template to individuals who choose to prepare their own contractual documents and does not constitute legal advice. See Square Contracts Terms and Conditions.
4. Review multiple attempts to pay an invoice
Your customer has a few attempts to pay an invoice. For your protection, Square cancels an invoice if the customer reaches a maximum number of attempts. If you receive this message, we strongly recommend verifying your customer’s identity, seeking an alternate method of payment such as cheque or cash, or declining to complete the sale.
5. Be cautious of in-person pickups
If someone is requesting to pay by Square Invoice but wants to pick up a product or receive services in person, this could be a sign your customer is using stolen card information. Verify the last four digits of the card by going to Sales in your Square Dashboard and selecting Transactions. Select the payment in question to see the card type and last four digits. Ask to see a copy of the card and the customer’s identification when you meet them in person.
You also have the option to request your customer pay their invoice in person.
6. Be cautious of requests for immediate or expedited delivery
Check to see if the delivery address makes sense for your buyer’s order. Mail drop locations, such as UPS stores and freight forwarders, are commonly associated with fraud and we do not recommend delivering to them. If you receive an order from someone claiming to be a business, but the customer requests delivery to a private or residential address, this could also be a sign of fraud.
7. Include your terms of service and any estimated delivery times
Make sure your customers are aware of your policies when they submit their payment. To help prevent any potential disputes in the future, include the following information in the body of an invoice:
Refund policy
Cancellation policy
Terms of service
Estimated delivery times
Learn more about best practices for accepting card payments.