Stop Losing Money To Fees – Use Square
If there is anything we have learned this year, it is that accepting paper checks as the only form of preferred payment is outdated. If your Tres Dias community isn’t accepting credit cards, you are only delaying your payment collection. In the past, fees to process credit cards were too much to justify. But, thanks to new developments with Square – that has changed!
The Problem
If your community is like mine, you have used a certain online payment system for years. You have also been losing thousands to fees. One company in particular charges 2.7% when you swipe a card or 3.5% plus $0.15 for manually entered transactions. My community attempted to offset by charging a flat $5 to cover the cost that fees would take out. The problem? We were always chasing the dollar. For one thing, we would have married couples pay together and then donate to cover someone else. That’s a total of $675 put on a card – bringing our total to almost $25 in fees.
Even for one person to pay for themselves – $225 * 3.5% = $8 of fees. We were always losing money.
The likelihood of our Assistant Head Chas sitting there with a calculator to figure out the appropriate fees to charge was not going to happen. But, we couldn’t just accept checks. For me, I haven’t written a check in over a year. I lost my checkbook awhile back; after using it to pay for an out of town Tres Dias community team fee. If you look back through my balance sheet, you’ll notice all of my past checks are only for Tres Dias weekends. Period.
However, our community needed a better solution – enter Square.
The Solution
Square’s transparent fees are just 2.75% per card-present swiped transaction and 3.5% + 15¢ for manually keyed-in card payments. This structure is very similar to other company’s fees. The difference? Square lets you setup items beforehand, so your team only has to click on the item to accept payment for it, and it automatically adds the transaction fee as a processing fee.
No more lost money on transaction fees.
How Does it Work?
You create a free account in Square and sync your bank and routing information – this way Square knows where to put the money it collects. The website and app are secure.
In our community, we have multiple items (products) within Square – team fee, candidate fee, candidate deposit, Tshirt, team payment plan, etc. I have built out each dollar variation as its own unique item.
Then under Taxes, I add in our 3% processing fee. Remember, if they swipe the card with a Square reader, the fee is less at $2.75. But, if you don’t use the reader and manually enter the card number, it’s 3.5% + 15¢ per transaction. In short, swipe the card.
Square also has a great Point of Sale (POS) system that is very easy to use. We can see who paid and when, which is makes it easier for end-of-the-year giving reports to our accountant. We can invoice team members as well as send immediate refunds for accidental charges. Most importantly, we get our monies quickly. Square has the ability to set up same-day deposits – no more waiting on checks in the mail.
The Results
The majority of our team/candidate fees in our community are collected via Square. Just for 2019, we have collected over $15k and lost zero monies to fees.
But, I wanted to see if attendees of the Tres Dias International Assembly last month would be able to use our Square system too with ease. Some attendees still insisted on paying by check but in total 75% of attendees paid via Square. Proof that anyone can use the system. That meant we had the money to buy food, pay our production guys and purchase goods for the Assembly ahead of time.
Our community uses JotForm to accept online applications for teams and candidates – JotForm has a free integration widget that can seamlessly link with Square. It was this same integration that I used when building the TDI assembly form.
I have created a sample volunteer form here, so you can see how easy to use the form is.
If you are interested in creating a Square account, click here. I would like to hear your successes and trials with payment gateways.
Get free processing! *Use this link & you will receive free processing on up to $1,000 in credit card transactions for the first 180 days* – https://squ.re/31YXcaJ
Excellent, helpful article, Samantha, thank you!
Awesome. We switched to Square for candidate fees this year for South East Texas Tres Dias and it has been great. One thing I also like is for refunds. When a refund is issued, it can go straight back to the card with no issues. Been using jotform, too, for candidate forms, and it has made the process much easier. Great stuff!
Great job Samantha, so if I’m understanding this correctly? You had to set up the square account to charge 3% for each transaction in the tax line? Then the square fees were added to their total ? We have been doing the five dollar fear in our community too! You’re right it doesn’t match a percentage! Thank you for all your insight. Blessings, Suzette
P.S. please thank your team again for all their hard work and special accommodations to some of us that attended! 🙂
Mostly correct! We can’t call it a tax, legally. So, we added it as “processing fee”. Which is an actual line item in Square. For some stores, they charge both. We can also legally add a processing fee since we still give the option for people to pay by cash or check.