Square for Restaurants & KDS: What features or improvements would you like to see in 2022?

[rajatdeva]

Hello Seller Community 👋🏼 My name is Rajat and I work on the Square for Restaurants team here at Square.

As we look into next year, we’re hoping to hear from you all on what you would like to see in development for our Square for Restaurants product, which include the Restaurants Point of Sale app and Square KDS!  

                                                    

 

 

These can be suggestions that have already been mentioned on the Square for Restaurants feature request board, but that you’ve identified as your top feature request that you’d like to see developed in 2022! Think of it as a Square for Restaurants and/or a KDS ‘wish list’. 

Please reply below with some feature suggestions or product improvements that you’d like to see. Your comments will be recorded and reviewed by our Square for Restaurants Product Team. 

 

[lgmbts · Accepted solution]

A more robust way to manage inventory, on the fly.  We "retire" inventory and produce new inventory all day, every day.  Being able to click on a tracked item in the POS and adjust inventory on the fly would be HUGE!  Having to stop using the register as a register, log into the dashboard, and adjust inventory is clunky, inefficient, and not possible in the middle of a rush.

[johngray2]

We are a restaurant that has implemented 4 KDS iPads in our kitchen and we run Square for Restaurants on Square Register. We are fast-casual and do not use seating or coursing features.

We need some things to make KDS work well for us.

• Ability to hold tickets is crucial. We often take orders by phone for much later pickup. Right now these tickets are parked on the KDS screen for hours then it messes with the kitchen. Would be ideal to have the Register allow us to schedule the pickup time and send to KDS when appropriate.
• Ability to mark items done on one prep station but doesn't remove from the next prep station screen that finishes the next step in the prep process. For example if the person stretching pizza dough passes the dough to the topping station, currently if the stretch person marks the item complete it removes from the topping station's screen too. 
• A few things that might help regarding the previous bullet is instead of the little gray dots that show an item as done (like seen on expo), they show the initials of the prep station that marked it as done. So for example someone at the Expo station can see which station is at what point on each item. Or simply bump items from one screen to the next screen.
• Another alternative that may be easier to handle building for now would be to allow some prep stations mark their items as done but not remove that item(s) from other prep station screens.
• A HUGE help would be to allow the registers to act similar to how online orders have the pickup time shown. Yes, we can manually calculate and type the pickup time in the ticket name at the register, however the order in which these appear is then out of whack. We serve our in-house guests more quickly than online orders so tickets are all out of order of when they need to be made.
• Perhaps a "two rail" system that can have dine-in and in person to-go orders on one rail, and another rail for online orders and phoned in pick up orders.
• Ability to move a ticket forward or backward (left or right) to manually arrange their order. Especially useful for the Expo station.
• A better indicator of the fulfillment method. Perhaps with colors or icons to maximize space for other info.
• Option to remove of all the delivery details on the KDS screens for delivery orders. The kitchen does not need that info.
• Easier way to recall a single item on a ticket at Expo. For example if something goes wrong in the oven, quickly re-fire that item. Currently it seems i need to complete it, then go to completed screen and then recall it. When you have tons of tickets it's really confusing to remember which ticket is what.
• Currently you can have a screen show or not show Online orders vs. Register orders. Much more useful would be dining option
• Ability for Expo station to automatically print a ticket when it's marked as complete (to hand over the meal from the kitchen to the front with a printed ticket or maybe better a label). Yes i realize Expo can manually hit print then clear the ticket. Just one less step can be nice in a rush.
• Fix a bug where if a customer calls in an order and we save as an open ticket, when they come in and use a gift card as the payment option, it sends a new ticket to print and KDS for the order that was already placed. This did not happen with Square POS, only with Square for Restaurants. Does not happen with other payment types.
• Another help would be to mark a variation as out of stock across same food types. For example if we are out of small pizza dough, all our pizzas could stop offering the small variation. We don't need inventory tracking at all. Just ability to turn off variations without removing them manually from each and every menu item. Then adding them back with prices when available again.

[Ginkhao]

We have the exact same issues. I had to switch to Fresh KDS to fix some of the problems, but it did not fix all of them. 

[MrTaco]

We are a Casual Fast Paced Mexican Restaurant, and all of your issues are valid at our place as well.  i\Instead of the stretch station, We have a fry station, prep station and grill station, as well as plating station.  Great post.

[nhienannguyen]

We see freshKDS integrate with Chowly, and Cuboh. We want to see it works with Otter too (tryotter.com). Because we are using the Otter and we want to take advance of  FreshKDS to print labels, cross screen communication, and order tracking to all of our orders in the restaurant and online. Please, add this to your list. Thanks,

[JayBirdsChicken]

Please fix the modifiers issue. We should have the freedom to sort our modifiers with the way that works for us, not based on your progression / conditions.

Also, allow for side dishes that can be served as a combo for an entree to be hard-linked to the Sides category so you can track this and also avoid using modifiers to accomplish this. 

Please. I know you can do it! 🙂 

[kmacmmurchy]

Yes please! I agree with the modifiers, as well as being able to inventory them.

[akalous]

We are more of a bar environment and really need the system to swipe/hold credit card numbers for open tabs so we don't have to keep stacks of credit cards behind the bar. Also the ability to suspend a tab and pay at a later date when someone leaves an open tab. Right now we have to void it at the end of the night and then when they come back to pay (usually the next day) we re-enter all the items again so they can pay - it's a real pain!

[mksavage]

Being able to hold credit card numbers would be super helpful! We've also thought this could be useful for phone orders -- take the credit card over the phone, but then close it out when the person is actually present to sign.

[BittersweetRal]

We second this! 

[FortressMelb]

Split / Partial payments on Tables

Currently if a table needs to have a split payment, the entire table needs to be competed and fully paid in single transaction and can only be split by items.  With regular Restaurant POS you can make ongoing partial payments of any amount (not tied to items), and these payments just reduce the balance owing.

[DSander]

please fix this! If a guests wants to pay $50 and leave, you have to pay the rest of the table at that moment or lose the $50 transaction. A really weird bug/feature. 

[JamesSandbar]

KDS - Print When complete!

The improvements to KDS with printer has been great But would love to have a toggle for the printer station option to print check when complete. This way the Kitchen, Service bar, Etc. would use the KDS to make the items but when bumped off as complete it would print the ticket for food/drink runners. Of the course users would have the settings already setup like which item print, or if its just a ticket stub etc. Basically just like tapping the print button on the KDS tickets but automating it to reduce buttons to push and streamlining the process.

[Rizzo]

Two things come to mind right away. How about the ability to dupicate modifiers when you are setting up a menu and also the ability to prioritize the modifiers as to how they show up on the screen or order ticket. Another issue is the ability to print or not print an order ticket. When we save the ticket or when we add someting new to it it prints automatically. We don't always need to print it at that point. Would like the option to print as needed. 

[Dulcedo_Coffee]

I might request being able to push through the Customer Name from the Order Process.

KDS currently pushes through names saved on the Loyalty account, but not names collected during the Order Process.  We take the Customer Name just before accepting payment, I believe this might be a printer feature (I forget exactly).

The collected name prints on the ticket (thus my belief that this is a printer/order feature).  Bu it would be great if the KDS could take in that name as well and optionally (checkbox option) display it next to or below the Loyalty name.

Most of our Loyalty members sign up with a phone number only and the phone number is listed in the name field.  So given our increased reliance on the KDS over the printed ticket, we are sometimes at a loss when attempting to deliver food and beverage to the customer...though we have been tempted to call out their phone number and see turns around.

We do not opt to correct the name on the Loyalty account at checkout, because it is not always easy to do so (especially when you have a line of customers).

[PizzaCo]

Several things I would love to see added that I have seen mentioned by others as well are:

1) An option to take call ahead orders and schedule them for a certain time (like online orders) so they don't show up on our KDS hours before they are due. This causes much confusion in the kitchen by filling up the screen with things that aren't due yet and also can be forgotten if we move on to the next page of orders and don't have time to keep looking back constantly. It could be done just the same as the online orders where you choose how far before the order is due to show up on the screen so it gets in line at the right time.

2) The ability to add multiples of the same modifiers and charge each time. I know you can do 2 times the amount with the conversational modifiers but I am needing to be able to do 3, 4, and 5 plus of different toppings and charge each time.

3) The same as mentioned above but for discounts so the same discount can be applied multiple times if they order multiples of the item that the discount is on.

4) Some sort of differentiation on items that have more than one ordered like 2 of the same pizza, maybe making those show up as a different color just to alert the kitchen that it needs to be made more than once. We have missed the numbers quite a few times so far and I think a different color would really help those stand out.

Thanks for any help with these matters, they would be incredibly helpful for our pizza restaurant! 

[crystalimages]

Is there a way you can send those orders to a different screen? You'd have to remember to look at it and keep up the orders when needed, but it wouldn't clog up your main screen. I'm trying to remember if that's possible, splitting types of orders to different screens. Of course, you'd have to have another screen...

[PizzaCo]

I think that the orders can only be routed by categories instead of times so I don't think I would be able to route them to a different screen unless there is a feature that I'm not aware of which is totally possible!!

[mksavage]

Totally agreed about needing to be able to schedule phone orders to show up at a certain time -- this is a huge challenge!

[BRB1]

A way to look at Mondays/Tues/etc for the last 6 weeks/months with hourly breakdown.  This is imperative to running a business that needs to schedule for busy times, or change hours based on sales.

[Rizzo]

I can't imagine this hasn't been brought up, but if it has, it bears repeating. We need a way to adjust the prep time for an order as it is placed(online ordering). Any restaurant is going to go through busy times and slow times and the prep time is going to differ drastically depending on when the customer orders. We really need a way to change the time as the order comes in. Also, the first question that comes up when someone is ordering, is this for here or to go? Why is that not the first thing that comes up on new orders? 

[lgmbts]

I couldn't agree more!  Adjusting prep times on the fly is crucial - especially when it's busy.   This should be  available to adjust on any point of sale, KDS, online or not.  If anyone would like this solved they should call Square Online Support and tell them they want it sent through as a feature request.  The more they hear it the more important it becomes to them.