When sending an estimate, is it possible to have c...

CHallock · ‎01-24-2020

I am new to Square, I used paper/pen invoices before, figured it was time to catch up with today. I own a Home Remodeling Business so I send out more estimates then most. When I do business with new clients/companies, I require a 50% deposit when/if a bid is accepted. Is it possible to set it up that when they click accept on the bid, it requires them to pay a deposit?

If this is not possible, are their any suggestions on how I can make it work?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Jhm · ‎02-17-2020

I have had the same issue.

I love square but.. my customers get annoyed and are less likely to quickly pay the deposit if there are 2 steps to every work order. The Estimate should absolutely have accept & pay the deposit.

Especially with construction an estimate should stay an estimate until the work is closed out.

Customers always will refer back to the estimate over any small little change. The step that the estimate becomes an invoice make no sense.

keeping the deposit associated with the estimate from an accounting standpoint make more sence.

Any changes to the statement of work becomes a problem because you are editing the original estimate!

I have had to make a workround in invoicing which make things really complicated later on to write up an estimate in the invoicing section just to be able to streamline the deposit process.

That become an issue later on when you want to close out the estimate and add additional work or materials. Basically I have to duplicate the invoice and instead of the subject head saying estimate I change it to final invoice and have to reconcile everything.

help!

AshleyK · ‎02-18-2020

Hey @CHallock and @Jhm thank you for reaching out about this. I believe we are able to help with this, but please let me know if I'm missing anything. You should be able to move an estimate to an invoice from the Square Dashboard under Invoices > Estimates. Then, in the edit invoice page, you can "Add a Payment Schedule" in which you request a deposit up front. In the case of @Jhm 's example, you can request that 50% of the invoice be paid ASAP and the rest be paid within a designated time period.

Adding a payment schedule is below the total in the edit invoice page:

Then from there you can customize how your customers pay their balance:

I hope this helps! Please let me know if I can answer any other questions. 🙂

AshleyK
Community Moderator, Square
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CHallock · ‎02-18-2020

Thank you for responding Ashley. I am aware of that way but what I was saying is when they click the "accept bid" it will automatically bring them to paying the deposit. Instead they have to accept it and then I have to convert it to an invoice and then send them the invoice with the deposit info. What I'm basically saying is, when they pay the deposit, that means they accepted the estimate.

AshleyK · ‎02-18-2020

@CHallock ah, that makes a lot of sense and I can see how that would save a lot of time.

I will be sure to share this with our development team for sure because having it automated would make a lot of sense. Thank you for clarifying that for me!

AshleyK
Community Moderator, Square
Sign in and click Mark as Best Answer if my reply answers your question.

When sending an estimate, is it possible to have customer pay a deposit when accepted?