Sell non-physical items with Square Online
About non-physical items
Creating items to sell non-tangible products (like online event tickets) is similar to the process of creating tangible goods (like bottled wine). The main difference is that you don’t need to set a fulfilment method for these item types. Instead, you can send an email to your customers with additional information on how to redeem their purchase. Non-physical items include the following types:
Event: sell tickets to events, and include an address/online link and times.
Digital: lets you sell a digital file for download, like an ebook or song, that you can manually send to the customer.
Donation: allow anyone to send donations to any cause of up to €4,000.
Other: Best for items you will fulfil manually.
Before you begin
You can create non-physical items from your Square Dashboard.
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These legacy item types are currently only available to Square Online sellers who had already created them in the past. Current sellers without these item types in their catalogue won’t be able to create them. Improvements to the membership item will come at a later time and will be made available to more sellers in the future.
Membership: collect membership dues and registration fees for clubs and classes.
Service: Best for services for hire, such as massages and hair styling.
Due to the different delivery methods for these item types, buyers must purchase them separately from items that can be shipped, collected, or delivered locally.
Create a non-physical item
Sign in to your Square Dashboard and click Items & orders > Items > Item library.
Click Create item.
Click Change in the item type menu and choose a non-physical item type.
Select Save.
When customers order your non-physical item, you’ll have to manually email them with details about redeeming their purchase. To send these emails automatically, check out our partnership with SendOwl in our Square App Marketplace.
Limit non-physical item availability
Customers outside of the shipping regions you set up in Square Online won’t be able to buy your non-physical items. To verify this, we compare their billing address to your shipping regions during checkout. If their address isn’t in the region, they’ll be notified that the item isn’t available. By default, shipping information isn’t required for the purchase of non-physical items.
To set up shipping regions to limit the availability of your non-physical items:
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and click Sales channels > Online > Fulfilment > Shipping.
- Under ‘Shipping profiles’, select Add shipping profile.
- Give the profile a name (like ‘Non-physical items’) and choose your profile type.
- Click +Add countries and tick any countries you want your non-physical items available in. This means non-physical items will not be available in any countries you do not tick.
- Click Add rate and choose a rate option from the drop-down menu. If you’re only selling non-physical items, you can use the free shipping option.
- Click Save when finished.
Repeat this process for other regions you want to allow purchases from.
To manage the worldwide availability of your non-physical items:
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard and click Sales channels > Online > Fulfilment > Shipping.
- Under ‘Digital item regional availability’, select Edit.
- Tick any non-physical item types you want available worldwide. If unticked, these item types will only be available for purchase in shipping regions you create.
- Click Save when finished.