Office Hours: Q&A with Adam about Square Online

[AdamB]

On Wednesday, June 9th at 10:30 AM PDT / 1:30 PM EDT, we hosted a Q&A about all things Square Online with yours truly. Regardless of whether you were already using Square Online or not, this was a great chance to get your questions answered about the platform. 

You were welcome to ask about any part of Square Online, too: from building your website to managing fulfillment or even just setting up Online Checkout links in your Square Dashboard. I greatly appreciated reading and answering your questions!

[Barchiew]

Adam, I am unable to print my items on one page.  How can I change the settings?

[AdamB]

Thanks for your question, @Barchiew. You may want to check the settings for your printer when you’re printing it to see if there’s a scale or zoom option. This can help if it’s just the amount of information pushing it to use more than one page.

[misSTEAKSmade]

What can be done to either convince, or collect a consensus that Square will recognize, to help steer minor feature developments?

The Square community page is great and all, but it's not a good enough collection point to crowd source useful and important feature developments that are taken seriously to develop. There are a lot of simple functions that Square lacks at this point, that their competitors do not. It seems like they're being ignored (which I hope isn't the case), or just not identified with enough focus in order to trigger a development task for the dev team.

   I am grateful that Square was able to quickly develop some COVID-response features to help sellers thru the pandemic, but they have a tendency to give us features they think sellers want and they want to create, not ones that are requested and needed.

[TRC2020]

I completely agree with this.   What I see is twofold; the first being what you said, the second being the issue of silos.  Square offerings are being developed in silos, and the teams are not speaking to each other.  There appears to be no overreaching management to ensure the offerings "speak" to each other. We worked through this in amazement the other day when trying to deal with something as simple as email/customer address collection.  Online doesn't talk to Invoicing which doesn't talk to square marketing, resulting in massive duplication issues which then need to be manually sorted and reconciled by the client (us).  And, you are charged by square marketing for the number of items in the list, but there is no internal/automated process for duplicate elimination. We decided to opt for a competitor product until Square Marketing gets up to speed with the basics.

There is also no apparent desire to reduce risk to the customer.  I find high risk structures at every turn, lack of information which limits effective decision making and process design by me, the customer, to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and offer smoother and lower cost service to my customers.  It's very frustrating. 

I'm actually moving backwards by using this system, but we are growing so much, we need to move away from our manual processes and invoicing to online shopping with automated shipping.  I also want a one stop shop or as close to it as possible.  So the options are limited.  So, I'm currently paying to lose money and offer a worse service than I currently offer because I need to grow.  That is not a good tradeoff. 

We chose Square because the invoicing is excellent and 98% of our sales currently move through invoicing. We also want as many services in one location as possible.  When we switched to square we were doing about $500,000 annually in sales.  We meaning me and a woman I have part time that does my invoicing, and someone currently helping me get the website and email marketing set up. So I need an efficient system.  I also think Square's concepts are wonderful.  I'd love to use Square Marketing (when it actually works), and the Loyalty Program (again when it's able to meet basic needs).  Unfortunately the execution across the board is currently lacking.  I'm hopeful that things will change, but as we dig deeper, I see basic business needs that have been requested years ago remain unaddressed. 

We thought that the advanced inventory management would be good, but it's also quite clunky, limited in what you can see, and extremely difficult when adjusting entries are needed. Overall, I'm quite disappointed, particularly when the advertising leads you to believe one thing, and you get inside and the basics are not there.  

I'm retired and this is my hobby business for retirement.  I started it 2 years ago.  My prior life I led turnaround, restructuring and re-engineering initiatives for start up to fortune 500 companies, so I do have some knowledge regarding the basic system/process needs of growing companies.

[AdamB]

Thanks for taking the time to write out your thoughts, @TRC2020. Given the depth of your career experience, it adds background and authority to your comments - I appreciate it. 

Deeper integration between all of our products is definitely something we want to increase. While we have a broad selection of products to meet the needs of many Sellers, we want them all to work and communicate together seamlessly. As I mentioned to @misSTEAKSmade above, we’re in the process of revamping feature requests within the Seller Community. This will make it a better experience for you and other Sellers making suggestions, and also improve how we manage these with other teams at Square.

I look forward to seeing your suggestions, whether they’re specific to an individual product or span multiple products.

[AdamB]

This is really great feedback, @misSTEAKSmade, and I’m glad that you said this. We’re currently in the process of reviewing feature requests within the Seller Community to address both the experience itself and concerns like yours as well. Updates to come soon!

[Theburgernazi]

I too want to emphasize on what misSTEAKSmade said. I have asked, pleaded and even begged Square to make some essential features that all other competitors have, and have not at all succeeded. Over eight months of doing this without results can only mean they are ignoring basic common sense requests businesses are asking for.  To make things worse, Square proposes "solutions" to overcome the situation that are neither practical nor realistic.

I'll give just one of the many problems I have with Square. We are a busy restaurant, and there is a constant stream of customers even after we close. Right now, in order to stop online orders, I have to manually go and turn off online ordering in order to stop the orders. If I am busy at closing time, as we often are, and forget to turn it off, orders keep coming in, and automatically get scheduled for the next business day. Result? Angry customers who I give refund to, and hear abuse from. Customers say, and they are right, "why take orders if you are closed?".  And it's true, I do not have this problem with Doordash and even Uber. Orders automatically stop at the posted business hours. Also, nowhere on our Square page does it say "Closed" after business hours.

What I need is two- or three-hour window where orders aren't accepted after closing time. Orders for next day can resume after that window.

[Guerotaquero]

I had this same problem. A workaround is to create time-based menus. In this way, your customers will not be able to order any later than the set time that you have for the particular menu. It isn't a formal "Open" or "Closed" option, but it does prevent people from placing an order outside of your business hours. You can open a menu an hour or two before you actually open, so people can order early. Hope this helps!

[zder]

@Guerotaquero ,

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@Guerotaquero wrote:

You can open a menu an hour or two before you actually open, so people can order early. Hope this helps!

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Have you successfully set up Time-Based Categories to work this way?

In our experience, although the user interface for the Category: Availability: Set pickup & delivery order windows feature allows you to set a starting pickup time earlier than your regular Pickup & delivery hours, it won’t actually allow a customer to place an order for an item in that category until your regular Pickup & delivery starting hour.

[AdamB]

Hi, @Theburgernazi. Having worked in the food industry in my youth, I know exactly what you mean about people showing up right up to close and being really busy during that time. Are you using time-based categories as suggested by @Guerotaquero below? You could make all your categories time-based, which would prevent people from ordering from them outside of the times you scheduled. Not quite the same feature as what you’re looking for, but it would help prevent orders during your busy close.

[Theburgernazi]

Thank you Guerotaquero and AdamB for the suggestion. I had called Square support when we initially set it up, they too had suggested this. It created another problem, and actually made things worse. When I set up the time-based categories, it says on our ordering page something to the affect of " This product next available at XX hours". Now, that lead many customers to interpret that they had to come back at that said time to place orders. You can imagine the flood of orders at that said hour. Whole another set of problems, I cannot possibly explain to every customer how it works. So, I'll hope Square will implement more choices for customizing to individual business needs, and until then just deal with it. 

I'll even be happy with Square giving a choice of opting to turn online orders off automatically at posted business hours. I don't have a problem with having to turn it back on at my own time.

[sfcsu]

I need to be able to print multiple daily packing lists for shipping.  Is there any way to do this without individually bringing up each order and printing them individually for shipping?   There are days I need to print out up to 50 packing lists and it can take me over an hour to do something that I set up on Ebay in literally just a few minutes.

[AdamB]

Hi, @sfcsu! Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to print packing slips in bulk. This would be a great feature addition, though - I can absolutely see why you’d need this and how it would save you time. Hopefully this is something we can add!

[specialtiesgame]

Please address category nesting.  As I currently see it, I can't have more than one sub-level and I need at least 3 to allow customers to focus on the specific area they are interested in. for example -

Shop by category

     Games

           Board Games

                  Kids Pre-Readers

                  Kids Age 5-12

                  Family Classics

          Miniatures Games

                 Warhammer

                  Flames of War

And so on.  Currently, I have Games as a category with one level of sub categories, would like to have those with a level of sub categories.  We're a specialty toy and hobby game store, and need to help customers find items without having to wade through pages of items not relevant to them.

[AdamB]

That should be an option for you, @specialtiesgaming. After clicking the button to rearrange your site categories, simply drag a category on top of another subcategory to make it a third level subcategory. You can even go deeper than that - I created 4 levels of categories just now by testing.

[Linkgina]

We've been using Square Register since 2012 and recently moved our website to Square Online.  The integration is wonderful and really simplifies things for us.  I intended to start using the Marketing and Loyalty programs, but it seems that there is no/limited integration between those programs and Square Online?  I feel like I've been punched in the gut.  Is the integration coming soon?

[AdamB]

Thanks for your question, @Linkgina, and thanks for being with Square for almost 10 years! Loyalty is already integrated with Square Online. Customers can choose to enroll the phone number when checking out, and if they’re already enrolled then the buyer just needs to enter the phone number they have set up with Loyalty. 

Square Marketing also does have some integration with Square Online. For example, you can use Square Online coupons with Square Marketing. Additionally, customers from Square Online are added to your Customer Directory, so you can use them with marketing campaigns.

[TRC2020]

 I'm going to ask for a process chart for the shipping calculation in RTS.  No one seems to be able to explain the actual internal working of the system, which takes priority when (weight to X, then box size, how is box size used in determination of final required box size when multiple items are in an order, etc.).  Someone somewhere should be able to accurately tell me how this works so that I can make informed decisions about how I want to set up my shipping within your limitations, but no one can. 

[AdamB]

Great topic to bring up, @TRC2020. There are a few different factors that are used to determine which box sizes are used for an order. Per our real-time shipping instructions:

The default box will be used for items that don’t have a specific box assigned to them. If a customer places an order where more than one box size is needed, RTS will use multiples of the largest box size needed to accommodate the number and weight of items purchased.

To put this into something closer to a real-world example, let’s say a customer places an order with three items. The first two use a smaller box, and the second uses a larger box. Real-time shipping will use a single box size for all items, and will go with whatever the largest box size needed is for any item in the order, that way the boxes will always fit the items in the order.

The actual number of boxes will depend on the weight and number of items you say the box can hold.

[TRC2020]

 Again, this explains NOTHING and makes me even more concerned.  Let's give you a real time example:

I'm selling 2 items a pea sized item, let's call it a Pea.  Pea weighs 1 ounce and a baseball sized item, let's call it a Baseball that weighs 8 ounces.
I offer 3 box sizes.  6x6x6, 12x12x12, and 24x24x24

Box 1 can hold 120 peas.  120 peas would weight 7.5lbs

Box 1 can hold 1 baseball. 1 baseball would weight 0.5lbs

Box 2 can hold 12 baseballs and 1440 peas. 

Bax 3 can hold 36 baseballs and 4320 peas (this variance occurs because box 1 is actually too big for 1 baseball but not quite big enough for 2)

You system asks for the number of items that can fit in a box.  So what items do I use?  If I use the smaller number (baseball number) then it will overcharge my customers shipping peas because it will assume a larger box size than needed.  If I use the larger number, it will undercharge my customers shipping baseballs because it will assume 120 baseballs will fit into a small box.  If I use an average, 50% of the time it will overcharge, 50% of the time it will undercharge.  This is TREMENDOUS FINANCIAL RISK TO YOUR CUSTOMER.  Your system doesn't work.  Priority mail cubic is the cheapest rate and is a combination of both size and weight.  So if you overestimate or underestimate either of the two components, your calculation is wrong.

This is why you should have ITEM sizes and weights.  Then the system can actually calculate the box size needed.  Whoever came up with this shipping design really didn't think this through, at all.