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An Automatic Gratuity / Tip button for Point of Sale app would be great, please

An Automatic Gratuity / Tip button for Point of Sale app would be great, please

We add a mandatory 18% gratuity to all large parties in the restaurant, but there's no easy way to do this without getting out a calculator and doing the math (horror!) manually. 

 

I tried creating a new "tax" of 18%, but it only half-works. On the plus side, it automatically calculates what 18% of the bill would be. But on the minus side, it's listed on the customer receipt as "tax," which is a deal-breaker. 

 

For now, we define an item called "Gratuity" with an undefined price/percentage and then calculate it manually for every bill as described above. It's error-prone and time-consuming, both bad things. Surely Square Register is smart enough to figure out the tip on its own? 

 

1 Verified Answer
Verified Answer

Re: Automatic tip for parties of 6+

@MR_Cltuch @Gam1 I just wanted to let you know that automatic gratuity based on the number of guests at a table is currently available with Square Restaurants. Square for Restaurants is a separate app to the Point of Sale app and it's free to try for 30 days. There's more information about automatic gratuity and other check management features with Square for Restaurants in our Support Center too! 

 

 

71 Comments

@Mr_Clutch I would like this feature too but I have not find one.  We are currently doing it manually and had add an item that says gratuity for party of 6 or more but it would be nice if it's calculated automatically with just a touch of a button.  I hope there will be an answer to this soon.

Admin

@MR_Cltuch @Gam1 I just wanted to let you know that automatic gratuity based on the number of guests at a table is currently available with Square Restaurants. Square for Restaurants is a separate app to the Point of Sale app and it's free to try for 30 days. There's more information about automatic gratuity and other check management features with Square for Restaurants in our Support Center too! 

 

 

@Helen nice. I’ll look into it this weekend. Finding ways to make it easier for my employees rather than manually calculating it. Thanks for the heads up. 

Admin

You're welcome! 😀

Agreed! I don't understand why this has been so difficult to get implemented.

They now want you to pay for the Square POS for restaurants. $60 monthly fee (for 1 terminal), 2.6% plus $.10 per swipe. Add another terminal for $40 more! 

I currently pay 2.45% per swipe. Thats it. So in order to get a gratuity button, I would have to pay $100 a month (for 2 terminals) and then the higher rate at 2.6% plus $.10 per swipe. Total BS. 

I guess I'll keep my current system. That's why I choose Square in the first place...no monthly subscription!

 

Ridiculous. I don't need a whole freakin' restaurant management suite, I just need a simple service charge button. Make it happen, Square!

Square Community Moderator

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this @mzovadia and @gc1


The Point of Sale app alone doesn't support Automatic Gratuity, and there hasn't been any news around whether or not we're going to implement this in the future since it's available with the Restaurant specific solution we recently rolled out in Square for Restaurants. 

 

While the pricing is a bit higher than what you're used to seeing with Point of Sale, there are multiple features and 

benefits that helps run your restaurant more efficiently than Point of Sale ever could.

 

There's also a free trial offer so that you can test out the waters and see if it's a good fit or worth the spend.  

 

If anything changes with the Point of Sale app and automatic gratuity, we'll definitely update everyone since this seems to be a pretty popular ask among sellers. 

That's the thing though. Why would I pay that much, when it does what I need for free. Although, no gratuity button.

I'm not sure if the process I decided to use is better but instead of putting it under additional tax,  I created an item that says large group gratuity with a variable amount so then we calculate the 18% of the  total amount and just add it, then we don't need to add the percentage per item which is very time consuming.. Don't forget to remove the tax.  At the end of the night you will see how much was the total gratuity under items.