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

[Tom]

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!

[PIVO_Brewery · Accepted solution]

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.

[shybear · Accepted solution]

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.

[Kellykc · Accepted solution]

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

[KTOR]

How about Square address the top requests from users for the past five years that still haven't been implemented? Better yet, provide this list and let the users vote on them. Here are two I have repeatedly asked for:

1. Allow the ability to charge a credit card tied to a ticket without needing to re-insert a card that has already been captured when the ticket was opened.
2. List items that were created without a category -or- give a warning when an item is created without one. Square lists 'uncategorized' sales in reports, yet you can't locate what items these are unless you export your entire product library and sort it looking for blank category.

[4x4Images]

As a photographer I need to be able to sell multiple sizes and finishes directly from a photo gallery. I can't take the time to create individual store items for every single photograph (literally thousands of them). Instead I need to create a photo gallery and attach a price sheet to the entire gallery that will apply to each individual photo. I would much rather build my website within Square but this limitation makes it impossible to do so.

[mythicrunning]

Hi-

We have several functions that will help us.

1) We are located in a beach destination area so a way to add notes to sales reporting data would be very helpful.  We are impacted by weather, in-store events, community events (some bring in business, some don't), holidays, school/federal closings, state sales tax free weeks, and so forth.  For instance, the Columbus Day/Indigenous People's Day weekend was a 3-day weekend; locals travelled out of the area and few visitors came to the area. 

2) We place special orders for our customers (different colors, sizes, etc that we don't keep in-stock).  We need a way track those special orders by associating the customer(s) with a Purchase Order, shipping notices, and when notifying a customer that their order has arrived, 2nd notice contact, and stocking the item when they don't pick them up. We currently use a spreadsheet for this.

3) A way to have different unit costs for the same item.  Often, we book items a year out and get a greater discount than when we do At-Once orders to fill in or when we do special orders for customers. 

4) Adding Shipping In/Fees to purchase orders other than a line item called shipping because it's not a physical item and it changes from vendor to vendor

5) We also need the ability to Flag certain customers who require, uh, special attention or who have maliciously charged back purchases (our experience is that credit card companies will always side with their customer; not the business).  The entire team needs to be able to refuse that customer service & goods.  

6) The ability to sort columns in the items variations

7) A field in the item/variation table to indicate when inventory was first added to an item/variation.  Again, we often add items and variations up to a year before we have them in stock.   

[TheDapperDude]

I'd really love to be able to set a discount to item cost. It's not like the system doesn't know what the COGS is.

[GreggL]

Allow multiple of the same modifier to be selected.  Many other systems can do this.  We are a bagel shop - currently need to have 13 modifier sets (Bagel flavor 1, 2, ....) with our 7 different flavors in each one.  This means when I want to see how many of each flavor I have sold I have 91 numbers that report and I need to manually add!  Also gives 13 lines on the customers order and them (or staff) having to select up to 13 different modifiers instead of 2x this, 3x this, etc...

[4x4Images]

I sort of have the same problem with photograph sales. I need individual images with options for multiple sizes (4x6 through 30x40), finishes (glossy, matte, etc), type (print, gallery wrap, metal, etc.) with sales totals just for the image. Setting this up for thousands of images is so complicated I've moved to a different platform.

[YourMoms]

The ability to accept Bitcoin/crypto for payment within the square dashboard. 

[Anthem]

I do hope this is on the priority list. Square bringing the ability to accept bitcoin as payment, to the independent retailer, would bring legitimacy to the value of bitcoin, as a retail possibility, as much or more than any other solution I am aware of. 

[Anthem]

Any updates here? Would still like to see the ability to collect crypto payments in Square. 

[douglsmith]

A way to take payment in person with the POS and then capture the customer's shipping details to ship their purchase. Sometimes the whole order needs to be shipped and sometimes it just an item or two that is out of stock, so there needs to be a way to specify which items are to be shipped. 

[douglsmith]

The ability for a POS sale to cause a webhook to contact some external service that can return a code based on items purchased.  That code is then printed on the receipt or a separate print along with instructions for the customer. Use case: selling an item in person that comes with an online component or benefit.

[richrep]

It would be nice if the "sub" option does not charge the modifier when using conversational modifiers. If I am subbing say strawberries for mango in a smoothie I do not want to charge the customer the cost of the strawberries.

[lgmbts]

Add the ability to use a common inventory for multiple items/modifiers.  Example:  We sell bagels as an item, and also as a modifier to other items.  Right now we have to create several separate inventories in order to sell bagels as a modifier for different items, and a separate "bagel" inventory to sell bagels as an item.  This causes us to show "out of stock" bagels and/or bagel modifiers when in reality we may have inventory.  Having a common inventory that tracks all items no matter what they are sold as would be huge!

[anjikaizen]

Adding an automatic service fee for credit card charges to payments / invoices! Just sat down today and realized that my business has lost over $500 of our income so far this year in credit card fees, wish there was an option to charge the customer for those upfront during payment so we're not being charged on the back end. Thanks!

[ArrostoDeli]

Just factor that into your sales price. Assume everyone is paying with credit card and then offer a cash discount of 2 or 3%. It is a much better look to discount for cash than it is to "punish" your credit card customers. 

[GourmetOnWheels]

In California, it is illegal to add fees to credit card transactions, unless you give a discount to those who pay with cash or check.

René

[ShellBellFL4]

The ability to split an item across checks, for example, 1 bottle of wine amid 4 people.  I would do cartwheels in the yard if this was possible!  Thank you!

[Tom · Accepted solution]

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.