Recurring invoice setup creating unwanted confusion for my customers.

I'm sorry to hear about the confusion that your customers experienced.

The email notification that your customers received is intended behavior by the Recurring Invoice feature. 

Each time you create a scheduled invoice, your customers will be notified that this has been created and it also explains when the invoices will be sent and how often they'll receive them to avoid this type of confusion. 

I can see how disabling this feature could be helpful to certain businesses and avoid some confusion on the buyer side. I'll be sure to send this feedback over to our Invoice Team. 

Any update on this. The NOTIFICATION that is sent to customers when a recurring invoice series is created is VERY CONFUSING for the customer. There must be a way to turn this option off.

The NOTIFICATION email of a new recurring invoice series instead of the ability to send it immediately is causing undo confusion in my business and for my customers. The entire process of setting up recurring invoices needs to be more seamless. 

1. We should be able to set up a series and send the first invoice immediately.

2. The customer does NOT need to be notified of the invoice series. This is an unnecessary step and causing confusion with customers. Either they are expecting to receive an invoice and then they get something they don't know how to pay (because it's NOT an invoice). or... They are receiving a notification of something I am setting up for the future. WHY does my customer need to be "in on" my bookkeeping practices. 

No updates at this time, @TimeForYou. This is still working at intended for the time being, but we'll continue sharing this feedback with the appropriate team here. We'll update this thread if anything changes in the future, thanks again!

Just saw your other post as well @TimeForYou; I merged it here so we can track the request in one place. Thanks again. 

Hello.  I just had the same experience of customers being notified when I set up my recurring series.  One of them is irate and threatening to cancel services with me.

What is the status on this please?  I would not have done this if I knew it was notifying my clients in advance.  I setup the invoices to bill them in advance of their respective due dates and assumed that this would be their notification.

I agree with one of your other posters that informing clients of our internal bookkeeping practices is not acceptable.

For now, the damage is already done.  Going forward I cannot use the recurring series and risk having my clients upset and confused.

Could you please place a warning notice or flag of some sort in the creation of series process that will alert other users that their client will be notified immediately if they schedule it?  I wish I had known or had some sort of warning.

I'm really sorry to hear about this interaction, @dragonspirit. We definitely don't want our products to cause friction between you and your customers. If it would be useful, we'd be happy to reach out to your customer and help explain. 

Hi again @JHBoricua. Thanks for keeping on top of this request. I meet up with the Product Manger for Invoices pretty regularly. I'll bring up this request again next time we chat. I agree that this would definitely be a VERY beneficial change. 

I agree that this creates unwanted confusion and needs to be changed,  In particular, your reply addresses customers on "auto pay". I have customers who mail a check upon being invoiced.  When I change their invoice series, they get an early invoice and then a scheduled invoice at month end.

I talked with their support services and the person I spoke with was very stubborn and unyielding even though I pointed out that there are other ways to approach this.  My impression is that it was all about covering Square's liability and no focus was on how it could be improved for both us and the consumer.

I receive recurring notices from companies providing services I use.  They provide advance notice that the charge is going to hit which allows me to make changes if I need to.  I haven't needed to make changes but having the advance notice gives me enough time to make them if needed.  I believe that Square is over zealous, at least based on the interaction I had with the rep.  It was like talking to a wall and she kept reiterating Square's policy.  My guess is that she was too far down the food chain to say much else making an intelligent conversation moot.

After speaking with the rep, I deleted all of my recurring series. 

Something they might have changed as a result of my conversation with them is to notify the user that an invoice notification will be sent right away to the consumer.  I haven't checked to see if this has been done but I had the impression they were going to act on it.  My request was to at least generate a flag or a warning for us before a notice is triggered so we don't complete creation of the recurring series if that is a result we don't want.

I have ideas on how it could be better but Square doesn't appear to be interested.

Here it is December 2017, and this annoying behavior is still occurring.

Square people: PLEASE (I beg you) STOP sending my clients a notice that looks like an invoice when I create or edit an invoice series.

I have had several clients get very angry at this. Angry because they can't pay this invoice by clicking (because it is not an invoice, but it looks like one).

Angry because they pay it by sending me a check, and then they get ANOTHER invoice in their email (which is the real invoice, but they don't know that).

Angry because sometimes they end up paying me twice, and then it wastes their time (and mine) when we have to refund/cancel checks/adjust bookkeeping.

Angry because they get a notification which they think is an invoice every time I edit the invoice series, even if it is not supposed to be sent for weeks, months, or a year. (This one also makes me look like an idiot, so thanks for that.)

When my clients get angry at me, I get angry at Square. I am looking at alternate payment processors in case the next angry client call is the one which pushes me to go to switch. I'd rather stay with Square. Can this be fixed?