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Split a payment and check with Square for Restaurants

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Who is this article for?
This article is for team members or restaurant managers using Square for Restaurants with a Square for Restaurants Free, Plus, or Premium subscription.

Before you begin

During service your team members may need to break up checks or payments among multiple guests or multiple payment types. There are two ways of doing this in Square Restaurants POS:

  • Split a check: By Item: When you split a check, you can select items and move them to a new check so guests can pay by item separately. This option is useful in scenarios where one guest leaves early and wants to pay for their meal before they go.
    By Seat: When you split a check by seat, any items assigned to a single seat will each move to their own check. This option is useful when you have seating enabled and each guest wants to pay for their individual order.

  • Split a payment: When you split a payment, you can only split by amounts (e.g. 2, 3, 4) and not by individual items from the check. This option covers scenarios where you need to split a single check into multiple payments, like when a large group of guests wants to pay separately.

You can split a check with Square for Restaurants mobile POS, but splitting an item (e.g. a bottle of wine split multiple ways) is not available.

Split a check

To split a check into multiple checks in Square Restaurants POS:

  1. Select the check to split.

  2. Tap Actions > Split.

  3. Choose the item(s) you’d like to move to another check.

  4. Tap Create New Check.

  5. Select Save All to confirm.

To split a check by seat or item, seat tracking setting must be enabled on your Square Dashboard for the specific device. You can review these instructions in the Support Center article Customize table management settings. Once seating is enabled and you need to split a check: 

Split by seat (or item)

  1. Open the check to split.

  2. Tap Actions > Split.

  3. Choose Split by seat.

  4. This will automatically create new checks for each seat that contains items in the check. For any items assigned to the table or that you’d like to further move, you can further move items between split checks. 

  5. Once the items are moved to their new Checks, tap Save. 

Note: When a check is split by seat, then any discounts, coupons, or service charges applied to specific items or configured to be item specific will be moved alongside the item they are associated with. If there are any cart level service charges, discounts, or promotions, then those would remain on the original check and can be moved manually.

Split a payment

To split a single check into multiple payments in Square Restaurants POS:

  1. Select the check you’d like to split and tap Pay.

  2. Tap Split Amount.

  3. Under Split into Equal Payments, select how many ways you would like to split this payment.

  4. Select a tender type and complete the transaction.

  5. Continue processing the additional tender types until the entire sale has been completed.

When you split a payment, make sure all payments are successful. If one payment fails, the entire transaction is voided and no funds are collected.

Next steps

Learn more about other ways to manage your restaurant’s checks:

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