Square Picks Up The Ability To Send Invoices

Square can do a lot of things.

Want to take credit cards from your taco truck? Use the portable Square Reader. Want to sell stuff through a little pop-up online front-end? Use Square Market.

But what if you want to invoice someone for a service (like, say, wedding photography) after the fact? Before today, Square couldn’t really help you there. But now it can!

This morning, Square is launching a new invoicing system that it calls — you guessed it — Square Invoices.

Like most things Square offers, Invoices is free to use (for an unlimited number of invoices, and without monthly fee) save for a 2.75% fee on credit/debit card payments. If your customers opt to pay in cash or check, there’s no fee involved.

Here’s how it works:

  • You punch in the details of the invoice (services rendered, a personal note, etc.) plus an email address for the customer
  • Square sends your customer the invoice, complete with a built-in “Pay By Card” link. (If they pay you in person with a cash, you’d mark that in the backend manually.)
  • They pay you. 1-2 business days later, the money is in your bank account.

The whole thing ties right into Square’s usual interface, so you can track invoices through the built-in dashboard along with any other sales you might make.

Of course, it must be said that this isn’t so much anything groundbreaking as it is something meant to round out Square’s offerings. There’s not exactly a shortage of online invoicing services out there, after all — from the smaller guys like FreshBooks to the goliaths like PayPal or Intuit, you’ve got options.

But it was part of the payment chain that Square was missing, and this helps keep both merchants and customers within their system — and when you’re charging per transaction, that’s exactly the goal.