10 Ways to Automate Square Payments with Zapier to Improve Your Business Operations, Fast

Square Payments is changing the way businesses get paid, for the better. As part of the Square family of products, this payment solution makes it easy for all businesses to get paid instantly and electronically. There are even physical payment terminals available for those brands that have the need. It’s all streamlined, automated, and ready to go with plenty of versions available. Or, you can customize a Square Payments solution to fit your needs. 

Square offers some of the most affordable payment processing solutions, with robust features and a reasonable price tag, regardless of the tier that you choose. Square can help you automate billing and invoicing, get more done in less time, and give your customers and clients the power to help themselves through payment portals set up specifically for them. 

You can use Square to send invoices and track billing, too, or you can just process payments and export the information to your accounting software. And when you add the assistance of Zapier, you won’t even have to do the exporting yourself. Zapier uses automations known as “Zaps” to perform tasks that are routine, mundane, repetitive, or that just don’t require the time and effort of a human counterpart. When you’re trying to improve business operations, streamlining and automating all the details is a great place to start. 

Top areas to automate with payments and invoicing

In all areas of business, several different could benefit greatly from automation. When it comes to payment processing, the devil is truly in the details. Human error, the time involved in some of the tasks, and the redundancy of doing the same thing, day in and day out, when there’s automation that can do it all for you—it's just a lot to invest when you have another way. 

If you’re embracing automation for Square or the rest of your payment and billing solutions, there are some definite areas that you’ll want to have at the top of the list when you’re considering what to automate:

• Receipts and Confirmations: It’s 2021. No one should still be sending manual email receipts or order confirmations. Even the most basic eCommerce tools have these features, and the more robust accounting and payment processing solutions can provide impressively dynamic solutions in this regard. Stop wasting valuable time and automate the after-sale steps like these. 

• Subscriptions and Payments: In addition to using automation, you should offer customer-facing solutions so that they can manage their payments and subscriptions with your brand. This will free up more of your time while also empowering your customers to feel like they’re in control of their relationship with you and in control of their spending. 

• Data Transfer and Sharing: It’s rare that you’ll find an occasion where it makes more sense to have someone taking care of data transfers between software applications. With the AI available today through tools like Zapier, all of the information related to customers, payments, and transactions can be shared between software programs so that information is streamlined and organized, and your team isn’t responsible for doing all the work. 

• Compliance and Taxes: Your payment processing should make it easy to automate things like calculating taxes and withholding information, as well as maintaining compliance with the payment processing guidelines and other regulatory guidelines. You can automate and standardize your invoicing and payment processing practices to ensure better compliance across the board and trust that you’re charging the right tax rates and more. 

93% of all payment processing functions stand to benefit from automation. The only question now is which processes you want to automate, how you’ll do it, and what Zapier and Square can do to help. Here’s a look at some of the most popular automations. 

And if you want to improve your payment processing even more, ask how our virtual receptionists can assist with payment collection, outbound calls, and other 24/7 chat and phone answering services so you can get paid faster without doing all the work. 

1. Add new Square customers to your AWeber lists    

AWeber is a great autoresponder and marketing tool and it’s going to take a lot of the work that you do off your plate when you automate it with the power of Zapier. All you have to do is set up the workflow so that your Square customers are automatically added to your lists in AWeber whenever a new one appears. You can even set it up so that information is updated when existing contacts make a purchase, ensuring that your information is always current and streamlined across all platforms. 

2. Add Square customers to Mailchimp lists    

Mailchimp is another popular tool among businesses today. When your team is trying to streamline marketing, why not use automation? Square makes it easy to get paid, too, so people will be more inclined to sign up for a mailing list when they have a seamless payment experience. With this automation, anytime a new customer makes a purchase or payment through Square, Zapier will automatically add their information to the corresponding Mailchimp list. This way, you can guarantee that your customers are getting the right messages at the right time and spend less time manually updating your lists. 

3. Save new transactions from Square on Google Sheets    

Google Sheets is a great basic tracking tool. With this automation, it will be simple for you to import all of your information and keep everything streamlined. Just set up the workflow so that it’s triggered each time there is a new transaction in Square. Then, that transaction’s details will be sent to the appropriate Google Sheet and put in a row so that you can track everything without having to do the data transfer yourself. You can choose to save all transactions or specific ones, and customize the workflow further if you want, too. 

4. Post Square transactions on Slack channels    

If your team uses Slack to communicate and collaborate, you will love all the ways that you can automate your business and your notifications. This particular automation makes it easy for you to keep the team informed anytime a transaction happens. Simply set the automation in place and when a transaction occurs on Square, Zapier will automatically post a notification to Slack based on your parameters. You can even pick and choose certain people to notify, or let the whole team know so that everyone can jump into action. This makes it easy for your team to stay in touch, whether you’re working remotely or just don’t want to walk across the office to let someone know what’s going on. 

5. Get notified via SMS when Square transactions occur    

SMS by Zapier ensures that you’re always notified, even when you’re on the go and not checking your apps. With the available automations and workflows, you’ll spend less time on busywork and more time letting AI do the job while you take care of real business. This simple workflow will allow you to trigger each Square transaction to create an SMS message through Zapier to notify you (or another team member) that a payment has been made or a purchase has been completed. That way, the next steps can be put into action. 

6. Add Square transactions as records in Airtable    

Airtable is a robust tool for database management, offering much more than the average spreadsheet program. It makes it easy for you to track your business, including storing transaction records from Square. Simply set up the automation so that whenever a transaction occurs, the information is Zapped over to Airtable as a record. You will enjoy how effortless it is to track everything in your business with all of the available automations today. Airtable databases can allow you to track sales, keep a customer history, and so much more. Airtable Alternatives is a reliable cloud collaboration software you can add attachments for any presentations or information. And when you use Zapier, it can all be done automatically so that your team can focus on other tasks. 

7. Create customers in Square from Gravity Forms submissions    

Gravity Forms makes gathering information easier than ever. You can use it for lead intake, customer surveys, and so much more. Plus, when you integrate it with Zapier, you can transfer information effortlessly into just about any other software that you’re using. In this instance, you can set up a workflow so that each new Gravity Forms submission triggers a new customer creation in Square so that you can keep all of your leads and customers organized across multiple platforms. Customers will love it too because it will keep them from typing in the same information time and again. 

8. Create Square customers from Acuity Scheduling appointments    

Acuity Scheduling is one of the most powerful scheduling tools available today and it offers a lot more than just basic scheduling functions. One way that you can make it work even smarter for your brand is to set up a workflow so that every Acuity Scheduling appointment is logged in Square as a customer. You can even set the automation for after an appointment is completed so that you can send an invoice or generate a customer for every appointment as soon as it’s booked, just in case. It's up to you, but it will take the tedious data entry off your team’s hands no matter how you use it. 

9. Send Gmail emails for new Square transactions    

Square has some of its own notification features built in, but in all honesty, most apps falter from time to time with notifications. Not only that, but they might not send them the way that you want, or they might not send them to the right people on your team. With automation through Zapier, you can create your own custom notifications, including setting up Gmail emails for any new transactions that come in. Then, you’ll know that every single transaction is notifying the right people so that the next steps can take place. You can have your own email notified or set it up so that specific teams or team members are notified, and more. There are all kinds of ways to put this workflow to use whether you use it as it comes or customize it. 

10. Create ActiveCampaign subscribers from Square customers    

If you use ActiveCampaign for marketing automation and customer management, you’ll find this integration to be useful in several ways. Simply set up this automation and every customer that is added to Square will also be subscribed to one of your ActiveCampaign lists automatically, allowing you to rest easy knowing that people are getting the important updates they want and the reliable marketing that they deserve. Plus, it’s all done without your effort when you use Zapier to handle the automations. 

Improve operations in several ways when you partner with Smith.ai

We are in love with the power of automation and we’re always looking for new ways to embrace it where we can. We also love helping your business run better, and when you hire our virtual receptionists, you’ll get a professional team that works as the face of your brand for all kinds of needs, from answering after-hours calls to live chat on your website and so much more. And, we’ll even help you come up with the perfect strategy to field all of those needs, no matter what you have in mind. 

Zapier’s ability to create smart workflows is what we love most. Anyone can easily set up simple automations between different business software programs in just seconds. And, with the assistance of Zapier, Smith.ai can integrate with more than 3,000 apps to help you keep every single call, text, and chat logged in the right place. Whether it’s invoicing, your CRM software, marketing automation, or anything else, we’ve got you covered. 

Check out all the apps and see how we can connect with Zapier! You can also check out Smith.ai’s Answering Service app on Zapier, and explore Smith.ai’s Website Chat app on Zapier.

If you’re ready to discuss our 24/7 solutions for phone and chat answering, schedule a consultation and learn all about things like new client intake, scheduling, after-hours and overflow answering, and more. You can also reach us at hello@smith.ai or (650) 727-6484.