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How do I change owners under "Employees"?

This post has been created from a previous thread titled "How do I change owners under "Employees"?

 

Please add me to the +1 list for this issue. I help support Square for a client, and we ran through the sign up with an employee who has now left the business. We're in Australia, so the SSN factor doesn't apply, though there are other regulations, I'm sure. This could turn into a real pickle - I haven't yet let my client know the situation.

 

I've just checked, and the 'personal details' step in the sign up "Let's talk about you" doesn't mention that the owner cannot be changed in future. In fact, it doesn't even say that the person placing the application will be the 'owner' of the account.

 

Enter your legal name and home address, even if you're registering as a business. We will not use this information to perform a credit check, just to verify your identity.

 

By ticking this box, you agree that for the purpose of verifying your identity, we will give your name, address and date of birth to a credit reporting body to match against your credit information file. We will not use this information to conduct a credit check, and we will only use the match results to verify your identity under the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information. If you do not wish to have your identity verified in this way, please do not tick this box, and the credit reporting body will access other government sources to verify your identity, although your likelihood of successful identity verification may decrease as a result.

There are two factors here that affect us:

 

  1. It's not at all clear how important the choice of owner is when you make the decision.
  2. Having an individual account owner doesn't reflect the actual structure of the business who is the actual 'owner'. 

For us, closing and re-opening a new account is not a good solution, as the devices used for POS are not physically near me, so I'd need to be guiding client staff through the changeover. Timing is also an issue - we have Square all set up already (or at least, we thought we did), and we didn't factor in having to re-do all of this stuff before the next event we're running.

 

On the second point, I understand there's the regulation(s) behind the SSN/identity check limitations, but it seems like a  'responsible person' or 'account contact' matches how businesses are structured, rather than treating that first user as the 'owner'.  In this case, the 'owner' was an event coordinator that happened to be the first to use Square within the business (at my recommendation). That first event was a success, and the business would like to use Square more widely, but that's stymied by the fact that a) the owner no longer works there, and b) she was never any kind of 'owner' in the first place.

 

Employees leave and change position all the time. I think some 'transfer of ownership' process, presumably involving a re-check of the identity, etc. is really a must have, and in the meantime, at least say "You can't change this later!" in the sign up.

 

 

 

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Hey @benatcompanion,

 

Thanks for getting in touch and providing this detailed feedback.

 

While this is not something we're able to change in the immediate short term, I can certainly empathise with the pain points you've highlighted, in terms of account ownership structure and the way we on-board individuals as account holders. I have passed your feedback on to the applicable team as a good example of how our current account ownership structure could better meet the needs of our merchants.

 

All the best!

Seamus
Square, Australia
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Admin

Best Answer

Hey @benatcompanion,

 

Thanks for getting in touch and providing this detailed feedback.

 

While this is not something we're able to change in the immediate short term, I can certainly empathise with the pain points you've highlighted, in terms of account ownership structure and the way we on-board individuals as account holders. I have passed your feedback on to the applicable team as a good example of how our current account ownership structure could better meet the needs of our merchants.

 

All the best!

Seamus
Square, Australia
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No problems, and thanks for getting back to me. Sorry if that seemed like a rant - I do lots of this process and UX design stuff myself, and I try to give the sort of feedback I wish I would get!

 

Feel free to hit me up if you need any more details or have questions. Cheers!

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All good @benatcompanion 🙂 Appreciate the feedback and have passed it on to our on-boarding team 👍

Seamus
Square, Australia
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+1 for this problem.

 

I registered as the business owner, but have since moved, and now my old address is being sent marketing material (even though I have entered a few business addresses!). 

 

How can I stop this?

 

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Hey @jasons,

 

Square accounts don't currently support change of ownership, but I acknowledge it's a pain point we get a lot of feedback about from our merchants. I'll be sure to pass on your feedback to our product team as part of tracking demand for this feature. At the moment unfortunately we don't have an ETA as to if or when this may change.

 

Your shipping address can actually be changed though, by giving our support team a call on 1800 760 137. Lines are open Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm Melbourne time.

Seamus
Square, Australia
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+1 for me too.

 

This is very crucial issue that is still outstanding and requiring a solution ASAP. 

 

In addition to what have been perfectly outlined by benatcompanion, this ongoing issue has gotten us into trouble by the auditors. This issue were flagged by the auditor and marked as failure to comply with the ownership rules.

 

How much longer do we have to wait?

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Hey @Alexandrio,

 

Change of account ownership is certainly something we're looking at, though due to the way it would change some fundamental ways in which our account structures work, it's a bit of a complicated one from an engineering standpoint. It is something we will continue to explore though, as we understand this would be beneficial to a number of our merchants. 

 

The workaround for now would be to register a new Square account under a new name, if you need to have a different contact on the account. The key thing you want to make sure you've done is register the correct account to the correct ABN - if accounts are registered to the correct ABN then everything should be fine from a tax reporting standpoint. Multiple accounts can be created using the same ABN.

 

If you have any specific examples of how this has impacted your business, please feel free to share (send me a private message if it's not info you want shared publicly) and I will pass it on to our product development team for consideration.

Seamus
Square, Australia
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Hi @Seamus 

An example of how it is impacting our organisation: I am the bookkeeper of our small organisation, and originally setup the square account (using my personal email address). When I leave, the owner cannot be switched to someone else, and so I will continue to have perpetual full admin access to an organisation that I will no longer be associated with.

This is incredibly poor business practice, and exposes your customers to a great deal of financial risk.

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Hi Sheamus, 

 

How troublesome this can be for a business/organisation with high staff turnover. Let alone having to go through the account & business set up and accessing the report.

 

Apart from what have been shared by other community member here, the person who registered the account (owner) can easily claim their ownership and take over the account if they wish to.

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Hey @Alexandrio,

 

At the moment the owner of a Square account is the individual that entered their government ID details (eg licence, medicare card, passport) to verify themselves as the owner when creating the account.

 

Unfortunately there is not a way to change this, though I totally understand this is frustrating for some businesses who use Square, especially if the account has been set up by a staff member rather then a business owner. While we're tracking feedback on this request, we can't make any promises as to if or when it may appear in the future.

 

One possible workaround would be to register an account in the business owner's name, then add additional staff as Authorised Representatives so they can call in and talk about private account info if need be, or use Team Management features to delegate different levels of access to the Point of Sale app or your online Dashboard. I know this does not address concerns about having the ability to change the account owner, however it may something to look into if staff are being delegated duties that require access to the account.

 

 

 

Seamus
Square, Australia
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Hi Seamus, I have recently changed my legal surname, I want to reflect this in my Square account dashboard as the owner of the business, but it seems impossible: 

 

Validation failed: Last name cannot be changed because account owner name must match the name used to activate

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Hey @qldarcades,

 

At the moment there's unfortunately no way to change the activation name on a Square account - this is an ongoing feature request we're tracking. For compliance reasons, the owners name currently needs to match the name that we ran an ID verification on at the time the account was created.

 

An alternative would be to create a new account under your new name, however we often find that if you've recently changed your name it may be difficult to pass an ID Verification until you've built a credit file under the new name. Usually the simplest option is to keep your existing account operating under your former name.

 

Sorry I couldn't be of more help here! Please let me know if you have any questions!

 

 

 

 

Seamus
Square, Australia
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