Square Appointments: lapsed customer groups and filters

Square puts your appointment clients in the same Customer Directory as everyone who's ever tapped a card at your counter, and it gives you a ready-made group called Lapsed. It's a trap for a clinic, because Square's idea of lapsed is narrower than yours. The fix is a smart group of your own, and the honest news is that once you have the list, Square can't text it for you in Australia.

Labels below are quoted from Square's Australian help centre where an AU page exists. One step is only documented in a Square staff post on the community forum, and it's marked.

Square's default Lapsed group, and why it misses people

Sign in to Square Dashboard → Customers → Customer directory. Square's page: "Two smart groups are included by default in your directory: regulars and lapsed customers." The Lapsed group is "A smart group that includes customers who were regulars, but haven't visited in the last six weeks. You can edit the settings of this group by clicking Actions > Edit Group in your customer directory" (Create customer groups and filters, AU).

Read "were regulars" carefully. Square's default definition of a regular is someone who "visited your business three times in the last six months". So the Lapsed group is former three-times-a-half-year clients who've been quiet for six weeks. A client who came in once for a consult and once for a treatment, then didn't come back for eight months, is not in it. For a cosmetic or skin clinic that's most of the dormant base.

Build your own last-visit group

1. In the directory click + Add filter, set your criteria, click Apply, then Save as group, name it, and click Create group. The group is a smart group, so it keeps itself up to date (same AU article).
2. The filter you want is Last Visit Date. This one isn't in the AU help article, which only names channel filters. It's documented in a Square staff announcement on the community forum: "Click on the Filters button from your Customer Directory", set the parameters, Apply; or "+ Create Group" → "Smart group" → "Customer smart group" → "Last visit date" (Square Community, staff post, 31 March 2023). Official source, but a forum post rather than a help page, so it's marked as partly verified.
3. Set Last Visit Date to more than 90 days ago and, if the filter allows a range, less than 24 months ago.

A community thread from a Square user notes 100-plus customers showing "Never" under Last Visited despite having visited. Square attributes that sort of thing to how the visit was recorded; if your directory shows a lot of "Never", the group won't be complete, and the appointment history on each client's page is the fallback.

Export the group

Customers → Customer directory → Directory → Import / Export → Export customers, choose Specific Groups, pick your smart group, click Export, and download the CSV when it's prepared. Oddly, the only AU help page that documents this path is about exporting card-on-file data to another processor (Square AU, article 7871); the customer-directory articles cover import only.

What's in the CSV isn't documented on any AU or US page this build could find. Whether it includes the phone number and the last-visit date is not stated. Download it and look before you plan around it.

Sending: not from Square, not in Australia

Square Marketing on the Australian site is email. The AU product page lists automations to "bring back lapsed customers" and prices by contact count, "$20 per month" for up to 500 contacts, "$35" to 1,000, "$50" to 2,000 (Square AU Marketing). No SMS anywhere on it. Square's own Australian Local Economy Report methodology spells it out: "Text Message Marketing (US only)" (Square AU press). The US text-marketing help articles have no Australian versions; the AU URLs redirect to the support hub.

So on Square the workflow is list out, text from elsewhere. A person's phone for the first 50, a separate SMS tool, or someone who does the whole thing.

Consent: the line Square draws for you

Square's Australian help is unusually direct about consent. Its email-collection page: "You are responsible for ensuring the customers on your list have given explicit permission to contact them", with a pointer to "the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) website to learn how to avoid sending spam" (email collection tools, AU). And its campaigns page says emails collected via receipts, invoices or appointments "cannot be used to send email marketing through Square Marketing unless you have separately collected and recorded the customer's explicit consent" (automated campaigns, AU).

That's Square applying the Spam Act's logic: booking through you isn't consent to marketing. For a clinic, the Privacy Act adds the health-information layer on top. A recall about the treatment they had with you can usually rely on implied consent; a promotion to the whole group can't (the rules, quoted). Square's customer-facing help notes clients can "text STOP to stop receiving promotional text messages from that seller", which only applies where texts are sent, which in Australia means not through Square.

What to do on Square

Build the Last Visit Date smart group, export it, check the columns, and sort most-recent first. Text the top 50 from the practitioner they saw, from a number that can take a reply, with a STOP line (templates). Then answer. Square will keep the smart group current as people drift across the line, which makes the monthly repeat easy; the part it can't do is the conversation.