📣 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).

[CottageOven]

POS and website: For reports, have additional date-range options of "Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4" (with the ability, for those who need it, to define a fiscal year rather than a calendar year).  Also, things like "last quarter" and the various quarter options for previous years, including the ability to compare totals (dollars, units, whatever) along the lines of "2021 Q1 vs 2020 Q1." Such quarterly reports could be useful for accounting and tax purposes, as well as for sales analyses.

In addition, I'm a one-person operation setting up in different locations on different days of the week.  There have been times when it would have been handy to look at the POS report for the site where I was selling on Sunday versus the site where I was selling on Thursday but, since they are set up as separate locations (in order to be able to generate separate reports), the Thursday-location information is not available when logged in at the Sunday location.  It would be okay if this kind of location-vs-location report would require a manager password, or the like.  For me it wouldn't matter, since I'm on my own, but I could see where the report could be handy for a manager but for a manager to want it protected from other employees.

[RuckusDonuts]

CUSTOMIZED PRE-ORDERING:

We're a small, family owned donut shop in midcoast Maine. We need to be able to offer the following to our customers for pre-ordering donuts:

Cumulative Control: The store/interface must be able to add the total amount of donuts pre-ordered and, once a threshold determined by us is reached, turn off pre-orders for just that day. So if we set a limit of 3 dozen donuts available for pre-order on Friday the interface has to be able to (from a menu of individual donuts) add Tim's 12 donuts and John's 16 and Susan's 2 and Mike's 4 and Glenn's 4 and then, seeing we have 38 donuts for Friday, stop accepting Friday pre-orders. This would hold true for every day of operation.

There is no inventory of particular flavors to start. Every donut starts the same to us until it's finished. So we cannot say there are X of this donut and Y of this one available. They're just donuts.

Help?

[jacobdickson]

We desperately need multiple level categories to aide in reporting.  The current single level category structures are not sufficient for easily being able to run reports by business unit. 

If actually adding a second tier of category is not possible at this time, than allow for designing custom reports that group categories together.

Our example would be  that we have a have both retail and restaurant in our store.  We want to be able to easily see how each business unit is doing at a glance.  We currently have 20 categories making that impossible.

[CottageOven]

Don't know if this would be sufficient for your needs, but how about defining the retail and the restaurant as two "locations"?  Each would have it's own separate numbers.  From the website dashboard you'd be able to have reports that combine both together.

Just a thought.

[jacobdickson]

We use a printing scale for our butcher shop.  The POS scans in the items by the lb perfectly.  But it cannot handle fixed priced items that are multiples.  Example : a burger is $5.   If we put one burger in a package and barcode it, it scans it correctly into the POS. But if its a multiple burgers in the package, it does not understand the barcode.  Our last POS could recognize the multiple items on the barcode and convert.  It should work in the same way youre backing into the weights for the by lb items.

[ArmstrongValley]

1. After you search for an item in the library and select the item, remove the search criteria automatically.  Right now, I have to use the "X" to remove it.

2. Change the "Charge" wording when checking out, to "Checkout" or "Pay".  Charge is associated with charging someone's credit card.

3. Would like to be able to start/open a ticket with a credit card, as well as their name and notes.

4. I would like to be able to put transactions, connected to a customer, on 'account', to be paid at a later date (opening a ticket is not a workaround).

5. Don't like the random receipt "code".  Would prefer an incremental numbering system.  The code is too odd and can be misunderstood ( zeros look like 'ohs').

[ArmstrongValley]

6. Also, be able to change the price of an item at checkout...where the percent difference is indicated.

[CottageOven]

POS: On the transaction screen, add the ability to search by product name or SKU.  That way, if it's necessary to find a transaction where a certain item was sold, it's easier to find.

[Ag91]

Ok that’s awesome 

[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.

[Kippian]

Allow the printing of 2 receipts (one for customer, one for bookkeeping) from the Square hand-held Register.  It's too time consuming to go back in to ask for a duplicate receipt...would like that to be an option.

[fanboycomics]

When using the POS system in our store and our Square Terminal (hand-held) at a convention, we need to have some way to differentiate the separate sales totals to track sales between the different locations.  Also we need to be able to use different sales taxes between our store location and the remote location.

[susanmaguire]

There may be a solution to this already in play but I haven't seen it.  I sell lip balms, multiple flavors.  I have the lip balm product item set up with the different flavors listed as variations under it.  It would be really nice to be able to ring up a sale of several different flavored lip balms without having to go in/out of the product in order to choose a different variation - if this makes any sense.   There is a way to charge for multiple of the same lip balm flavor but not for say a purchase of 4 lip balms, all different flavors.   It increases the time it takes for me to check someone out.  I sell a lot of lip balms!   

[StudioM]

As an independent hair salon, I need the ability to calculate the tip on SERVICES only, not the whole total sale which could include RETAIL purchases. I don’t always have the time to break down and separate their totals and they shouldn’t have to pull their phones out to do the math without being worried they’re over/under tipping! 

[NAHs]

Working in POS Retail, when I open a cart and make changes, I would love to have it save automatically. It used to, but now if my ipad goes to sleep and I forgot to save the cart all my changes are lost. So frustrating for a long complicated order.

[Ria]

Hi @NAHs - Welcome back to The Seller Community.

I can absolutely see the need for a feature like this and how beneficial it could be for long orders. I'll be happy to move this over to a feature request board so that our engineers have visibility of your suggestion. We appreciate you sharing your request. While there is no time frame for when it will be implemented, i'm happy to make sure our engineers have eyes on your request. 

As always, feel free to stop by The Community with question, concerns and even feature requests. We are more than happy to assist. ✨

[Cloud_Factory]

I would love to be able to merge items together that are in my inventory. When first using the system I didn't understand how to use variables so if I had an item that we carried in say 10 different colors I would put the item in 10 different times with a dash after each one and then the color. Fortunately I discovered the variant option and how to use it but now a lot of the older items in my system are still like that. Having an option that would allow me to select them all and merge them together would be absolutely amazing! It could basically pull up a screen after selecting them all and you could edit the main item name and it would show all of them under variant options and then allow you to edit those (basically erasing all the item name parts and just leaving like the color) and then hit "okay" and it would merge all into one and keep all the info in the system for cost and sale price etc. The only way to do it now is to go in and erase all but one and then go in and them all back in as variants which ends up looking in the system like a bunch of inventory loss, not to mention having to find the old invoices to put it back in which is an absolute nightmare.

It would also be great if the Square barcode reader would read QR Codes bc a lot of our vendors are starting to use QR over SKU numbers and now I have a ton of items I either can't scan or have to create SKU labels for, which is very time consuming.

Third, it would be great to be able to edit the name of a Category in inventory.

Fourth, I hope in the near future they change the system so that if you accidently forget to put in the cost for an item when creating it that you could go back in and add the cost and it would add that info into the amount you put in with no cost so it could show up on the report. Or maybe it could give you the option when putting in the cost to where it would pop up and say "this many of this item currently have no cost. Would you like the system to apply this cost to these items already in the system"

Lastly, It would be nice to be able to type in the reason for taking away inventory instead of having to choose from a preset answer as there are many different reasons for removing inventory.

The system has worked great so far and is superior to any other I have used in my career! You guys are doing a great job and it is awesome to see that you guys interact with the community using your products and are open to suggestions as there is always room for improvement. Thank you for all that you do and keep up the great work!

[479WINE]

• have a way to process consignment order on POS
• Fix google product listing issue
• Include area for signature on online order receipts 
• create a way to convert website into a mobile app to download from app store
• have subscriptions setup for actual physical inventory 
• Allow for client logins thru website so they can see previous orders, create a profile and save payment info. 

[Kellykc · Accepted solution]

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

[Cloud_Factory]

If you are using the POS system then that feature already exists. I'm not sure about on the app though. If on the POS system all you have to do is either go in and hit the "return or exchange" button and then select or scan the item to return and then select or scan the item to sale. if the items are the same amount just hit the charge button and click the cash button $0 and it will wash and finish the transaction. if the new selling item is more then they will owe you the difference and if the new selling item is less then you will owe them. The other way is to scan or punch in the receipt and then select return and follow the same directions as above. I hope this helps.

[Falafeltaco]

Is it possible to make upgrade to pos so that customers can have a terminal with out scraping everything and buys the register?  Looking for a way to let customers see prices, add tips on a screen.