Hi everyone - I own a restaurant and cannot figure how to build automated funnels based on spending triggers. My current POS is Square for restaurants, and I use GHL for email and text automation. Here is where my problem lies - we have customers come in and pay through Square - customer data such as email and phone is often collected - I want to be able to connect that spend and transaction data to a marketing system that triggers different offers depending on the customer segment. Any suggestions are appreciated. Square for restaurants has basic text and email functionality, but no way to build multi step funnels such as GHL. I have tried to connect Square and GHL using Zapier with no success.
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Welcome @jjicha!
The Square + n8n + GHL combination is very doable. The key piece is Square’s webhook (payment.completed) that fires on each transaction - you’d register that in Square’s developer dashboard pointing to an n8n Webhook node. From there, extract the customer email and spend amount, use an IF or Switch node to split by spend tier, then call GHL’s REST API (via HTTP Request node) to tag the contact and enroll them in the appropriate workflow. GHL has full API support for contact management and workflow enrollment, so you won’t need Zapier at all.
Yes, this is possible, but Zapier is often limited for this kind of spend-based funnel logic.
A better setup would be to pull customer and transaction data from Square, send it into GHL, and then use tags/custom fields to trigger different email or SMS workflows based on spend, visit frequency, or customer segment.
For example: first-time customer, high spender, inactive customer, or repeat visitor.
I’d suggest using Square webhooks/API with GHL custom fields and workflow triggers so the automation is more reliable than a basic Zapier connection.
jjicha, the missing piece is usually not the trigger; it is the customer key. Before rebuilding the funnel, confirm whether each Square payment has a Square customer ID, email or phone that can map cleanly to a GHL contact. If that key is missing on many orders, spend tiers will be noisy no matter whether Zapier or n8n is used.
What does one Square payment payload give you today: customer_id, email/phone, and total amount, or only payment amount? Redact names/numbers and paste just those field names.
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I think this is what I was running into with Zapier. They needed a phone or email to create a new customer account in GHL. Not every transaction has an email or phone, but they do have customer IDs
That confirms the join key: Square customer ID is the stable thing here, not phone or email. Use that ID as the internal match key first; then only create or update the GHL contact when the same customer record also has a reachable email or phone.
Before rebuilding the funnel, check one GHL constraint: can your GHL setup store and search a custom field like square_customer_id, or does the current path only match contacts by phone/email?
I wouldn’t rely on Zapier for this.
If Square is already collecting the customer email/phone and transaction data, I’d use n8n as the middle layer and push everything into GHL with tags or custom fields based on spend.
For example:
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Total spend > $200 → add VIP tag.
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No purchase in 30 days → trigger win-back campaign.
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First purchase → onboarding sequence.
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5th visit → loyalty offer.
I’ve done similar setups with other POS systems and the main challenge is usually getting the transaction data into the marketing platform in a way that GHL workflows can actually use.
What exactly wasn’t working with your Zapier setup? Was Square not sending the transaction data, or was GHL not updating the contact correctly?
Hey @jjicha
Yes, this is absolutely possible, but I wouldn’t rely on Zapier for this use case.
A better approach is to use Square’s API/webhooks (or n8n/Make) to capture every completed payment, sync the customer and transaction data into GHL, and update custom fields like Lifetime Spend, Visit Count, Last Visit Date, or Average Ticket Size. Once those values are updated, GHL workflows can trigger automatically based on conditions.
For example:
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First visit → Welcome offer after 3 days
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Spend over $100 → VIP nurture sequence
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No visit for 30 days → Win-back campaign
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5th visit → Loyalty reward
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Birthday month → Special promotion
We’ve built similar restaurant loyalty automations where the POS acts as the transaction source and GHL handles all the multi-step email/SMS marketing. The key is syncing transaction data into GHL rather than trying to trigger directly from Square events.
Let’s schedule a call to discuss the details further.