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📣 Calling all sellers—submit suggestions for the POS-sible Hackathon!

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Hey there, Seller Community!

We’re pleased to announce that the Square: Build What’s POS-sible Hackathon is now live. Developers will be able to utilize one or more of our customer point-of-sale APIs to build useful tools that help sellers scale and grow their businesses. Customer point-of-sale APIs include: Customers API, Gift Cards API, Invoices API, Loyalty API, Team API, and Labor API.

 

Plus, participants are also free to use a wide array of the APIs available within the Square developer platform to build more robust apps and integrations–as long they’re building with at least one of our customer point-of-sale APIs to be eligible for the hackathon. Build what’s possible for a chance to claim your part of $100k in prizes–including a $20k grand prize.

We would love your help to get started. There are two ways to participate:


Option One: Share a challenge prompt for participants to solve


If you're a Square Seller, please tell us about the types of use cases you’d like to see solved to improve your day-to-day workflows. Reply to this post below with your suggestions through November 10 and we'll make sure they're represented in this event.

 

Option Two: Participate in the Hackathon


If you're a developer and interested in participating, submit your entry by 4:59pm EDT November 22, 2021: Square: Build What’s POS-sible.

 

Excited to hear from you!

️ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
Find step-by-step help in our Support Center
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4 Best Answers

Best Answer

TEAM: we would love to be able to request time off by the hour, not a whole day. If workers could request time off by the hour we would use the scheduling functionality of team/timecards.

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EDITING THE MENU GRID / ADDING ITEMS on RESTAURANTS POS (with admin or managerial rights)

Not sure why this can't be done as it seems like a very necessary option for people on the fly.

 

GIFT CARD ISSUE when comping a gift card using the Actions Tab -> Comp Check

The gift card retains no value when doing this.  The only way you can comp a gift card and still have it retain value is by clicking on the item and then selecting "comp" in the drop down.

 

RESTAURANTS KDS to be more consistent - too many refires/repeat tickets or missing tickets vs other KDS platforms.

 

 

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The ability to do an exchange (1 transaction) instead of having to refund an item, then reselling another (2 separate transactions).

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Admin

Best Answer

Screen Shot 2021-12-20 at 4.13.43 PM.png

 

Hello and happy holidays, everyone! I'm reaching out with an exciting update: The hackathon winners have been announced! And there were quite a few of them, too. 🏆

 

Grand Prize: Cadence (Most creative use case for Gift Cards API)

Cadence is an automation platform designed to help small business owners get more done and grow without needing to hire more staff.

 

Second Place: Dingo

Dingo leverages Square APIs alongside the Dingo team’s own machine learning algorithm to generate recommendations for customers at a store, and then contact them with discounted recommendation options to select from.

 

Third Place: Refer-a-Friend

Refer-a-Friend is an app built on Square's customer point-of-sale APIs (Gift Cards, Loyalty, Customers) that lets Square customers buy gift cards for their friends – from their favorite Square merchants – and get loyalty points every time their friends use those gift cards!

 

Fourth Place: Cyborg Squared

Cyborg Squared uses an AI voice answering technology to process incoming calls for businesses, whether it’s booking appointments, ordering food, or making reservations.

 

Fifth Place: Flash Order Gift Card Ordering

The Flash Order Gift Order integration leverages the Gift Cards API to issue and redeem Square gift cards through the Flash Order self-order kiosk.

 

Honorable Mentions:

  • CashEAR: CashEAR is an audio-based point-of-sale assistant–eliminating the need for cashier handling when accepting cards at checkout.
  • Goodpoints (Most creative use case for Loyalty API): Goodpoints uses Loyalty API where customers can use loyalty points earned from purchases at seller businesses to donate to social causes and charities.
  • Square Phone: Square Phone is a simple VOIP adapter that connects any regular landline to a SIP domain.
  • Square Starbot: Square Starbot enables Square sellers to integrate their Discord community with their Square loyalty program.
  • smart retain: smart retain helps small businesses understand their customer base through a better view of their customer data.
  • Snapsdeal (Most creative use case for Gift Cards API): Snapsdeal allows sellers to create a no cart and no queue store, making it easier for customers to purchase products in the app and pick up in store, without the need to find or queue for carts in store.

 

Click the blue button below for a full debrief and to see the complete list of developers' presentations on our technical blog:



ANNOUNCING OUR HACKATHON WINNERS



Thank you to everyone who submitted challenge prompts and congratulations to all of the participants! Looking forward to seeing more solutions next time around.

️ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
Find step-by-step help in our Support Center

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122 REPLIES 122

Challenge: 
Add some additional fields fat POS checkout. 

 

Situation: We are using this to collect reservations for a class reunion. We have a dinner option dropdown for each  sale of $xx, but it would have been nice to have a field for "Names of attendees", and "Optional dinner requirements(Kosher, Vegan, etc)"

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I'm still rather new at this, and not certain if this is along the lines of what you are looking for, but:

 

1.  On the Square Register, create a way to display a specific item/option combo when searching by sku number.  Right now, it displays just the item, and you have to manually search through the options to find the exact product you are looking for.

 

2.  On the Square Register, develop more functionality with the reports.  For example, what do I have in inventory right now, compared to what we have sold over the past three weeks.  (Right now, in order to display that info, I have to jump between two different tabs, with the separate info in each tab.)  Bonus points if you can create an ordering process to go along with this:
  What we currently have      |      What we sold over the last x weeks       |      How many to place in a PO

3.  CREATE THE SAME DISCOUNTS ONLINE AS ON THE SQUARE REGISTER!!!!!

 

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Great ideas! Adding to #2-include also the last time it was received, so therefore you're easily aware of how fast an item is turning over.

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Low stock alerts are great. But its irrelevant if it is an item with low turnover.

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4.  Add a recipe function.  Raw material 1, Raw material 2, Raw material 3, etc.   Recipe takes x amount of 1, y amount of 2, z amount of 3, to create a product XYZ, which is then sold.  Useful for bakeries, cosmetic production, etc.

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Right up out ally.  We ha e pilot kits and we take certain inventory and put it in the kits.  We would love to take those items and show they are in the kit.  Instead as we sell them we have to subtract out each item from the kit.

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Enable column sort for Item table so we can sort by SKU to determine next assignment.

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it would also be helpful to see both quantity and sales in the same table FOR SALES REPORTS and be able to sort by individual sales or quantities as well as totals

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Enable $ Discounts to be applied to line items (e.g. $ discounts appear in discount search box and can be applied on single line items.

 

Additionally, would be great to have discounts on shortcut list be able to be applied to one or more line items selectively

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Yes! Definitely the availability to give discounts to line items instead of just changing the price. Something that you can click a percentage off or $ amount off. 

Volition Owner
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I believe this is already available.  Click on the item in the transaction and scroll to the bottom of the pop-up to find discounts available.

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You would have to create an individual discount for each amount. For instance one for 5%, 10%, 15% etc or $ amounts. You definitely could but having it as an option on checkout to just quickly apply to a line item seems more efficient. 

Volition Owner
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You can create discount codes in the dash board. When you click on a single item you can scroll further down and your discounts should be there. You can also create a % or a $$ amount. 

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You would have to create individual discount codes for each percentage and dollar off. In a previous system I’ve used there was a section that had a discount box and you could put the % or $ instead of having to make an individual code for each. I suppose it is doable your way but just looking for a quicker way to discount a line item. 

Volition Owner
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To be able to record a deposit as a form of payment vs. discount. This would also prevent having items in the system twice, without deposits and with deposits. 

 

I was putting it down as a discount, throws off my discount info.

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A feature in Appointments to allow certain services to only be scheduled/available on certain dates, or limit which services could be scheduled on certain dates.

 

This is needed for photographers who host mini sessions or services at events/festivals. I'm sure other industries could benefit as well.

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This would be great for those in the spa and salon industry too!

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Have customer names in last name - first name fields so they can be searched by last name.  Do you have any idea how many "Mark"s there are?

 

Have a registry or wish list capability.

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YES PLEASE MAKE A WISH LIST FOR THE POS AND WEBSITE

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I would add in here too to add the ability to search customer by a customer number

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