Order Prep Time: What is a business day?

[kbc]

I'm trying to understand what a business day means to you in terms of order prep time.

We open for curbside pickup 3 days a week (Wed 4-7, Fri 4-7, Sun 12-3) and I have set prep time to "1 Business Day". My expectation was that orders placed by 7pm on Tuesday would be set for pickup within the Wednesday 4-7 window and orders placed by 7pm Thursday would be in the Friday window and orders placed by 3pm Saturday in the Sunday window.

Instead, at some seemingly random point on Monday, orders are getting slotted for Friday and sometime well before the 24 hour mark on Thursday, orders are set for Sunday pickup. This is confusing and frustrating to customers which is frustrating to me.

So, is a "business day" something other than 24 hours before the end of the next available pickup window? I'll join the chorus of requests to allow for a custom prep time because there's no way you can add every desirable option, but I'd take 24 hours in the interim.

What would be even better, is if you added an "order cutoff" to pickup and delivery windows.

[Valentina]

Thank you for providing this level of detail, @kbc - we'll want to take a closer look at your account to pinpoint the cause of the confusion here, as the root cause may be account-specific. I've gone ahead and escalated an email case for you that will put you in touch with our eCommerce team. They should be able to provide some clarity here!

[ReverieRoasters]

I am curious about this, too. We do bulk orders for baked goods, so we need to collect them over a day and bake them fresh the next day. We bake the same times every day, so as long as orders come in and are scheduled for the beginning of the next business day, we are good to go. But they seem to only allow customers to schedule pickup 24 hours after the order is made, not Next Business Day. We are only open 8 hours per days, so if a customer were to place an order with an 8 hour prep time, we could possibly capture those next day sales. But alas, as I'm reading by multiple customers, we cannot adjust this enough to successfully capture orders in time to produce them with our window. We need to be able to bump the prep time to at least 8 ours (currently it goes from 5 hours to next biz day), OR, be able to have a true Next Biz Day that is adjusted to allow for orders taken up to 11:59PM daily to be ready for scheduled pickup the next day in our normal hours of operation. Until this is fixed, we cannot easily accommodate customer and staff schedule requirements. Thanks for fixing this. The solution cannot come fast enough.

[CookieGram]

I've set my store hours for Wed, 12pm-5pm so all orders can be picked up on that day/time but when customer Adds to cart, it shows order will be ready tomorrow. Or is there something i am not understand or missing. Please advise. I run into this issue every time and it's so frustrating and confusing to my customers.

[JustinC]

Hey @CookieGram - sounds like your prep time is set for 24 hours. Even if your biz pickup hours are set for one day out of the wk, customers will be notified that their order will be ready the following day. 

Set prep time to No prep time or maybe 5 mins depending on how long it takes to fulfill the order. 

[FleitzPumpkin]

Does one business day equal 24 hours? We're open on weekends, so if someone places an order on a Friday they could pick it up the next day. I'm afraid this setting will send them to Monday.

[isabelle]

One business day will be 24 hours @FleitzPumpkin.  What the actual business day is (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc.) will depend on what your actual business workdays are.

Does that make sense? To be sure, I would suggest publishing your site temporarily, and doing a brief test to confirm that everything is working as intended. 

[FleitzPumpkin]

Thank you!

[zder]

@isabelle ,

You state, “What the actual business day is (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc.) will depend on what your actual business workdays are.”

What I still don’t understand is how Square views a “business day”. You say a business day is equivalent to a workday, but does a workday assume the business is open that day? We have 2 production days a week when we are not open to the public.

Square is assuming that production hours are equivalent to open-to-the-public hours. Most food-service businesses do not operate in this way. Businesses should be able to set a separate production schedule from their open for business hours schedule, and the prep time date calculations should be based on the production schedule and the open hours schedule.

[isabelle]

Hey @zder-

You would like to have internal business hours (production hours) and public hours for customers to pick up or get delivery. Is that correct? Let me know, as I want to make sure I'm understanding this, as I believe it might be a feature request at this time.

Thank you! ✨

[zder]

@isabelle ,

Yes, that is correct. A big vote for a production hours schedule that, along with a Pickup & delivery hours schedule, ensures a consistently applied prep time. In our case that’s 2 business days. We currently have to reset our Prep Time setting 5 times a week, right when we close. That takes time and effort away from running our business. 

Thank you for looking into this.

[ParkwayPies]

Hello @isabelle, 

The internal business hours and public hours would be immensely helpful.  Please request this feature.  I have had orders be pushed to the following week because my prep time eliminated all of the time I am open.  THANK YOU!

[goldburger]

How about instead of "business days" you just have a "days" option

[goldburger]

hello?

[Valentina]

Thanks for the suggestion, @goldburger - at this time, we don't have an update to share in regards to this feature request. There is currently not a way to make a distinction in your settings between business days and non-business days for orders. We'll be sure to post an update here when we have one!

[lelulosvegan]

Anxious for this feature to be made a reality.  This is a major drawback for my business, having to change the prep time for specific items daily just to make this line up correctly with the schedule.  Is this any closer to coming to fruition?

[spinningjchicag]

@isabelle @Valentina - Yes please! Being able to set production hours separate from open-to-the-public business hours would be extremely valuable.

[bottosbbq]

Preface:  I'm a restaurant open W-Su that uses Square Online for day-of and for future order menus. I also offer special menu items on specific days (Brisket on Sundays only, for example). For my future order menu items, I use the per-item Order Prep: 1 Business Day setting to prevent customers from placing future orders day-of. For my daily specials, I use category-based per-day availability settings to prevent customers from ordering daily specials on the wrong days.

ISSUE 1:  Customers ordering on Mon or Tue (when I'm closed) from the future order menu (items set to 1 Biz-Day prep) cannot order on Wednesday, the first day I'm back open. They are pushed to Thursday at the earliest. I could remove the 1-biz day prep, but then Thursday - Sunday, I couldn't restrict future ordering. If there was an 8, 12 or 24-hour setting--something greater that 5 hours--this wouldn't be an issue.

ISSUE 2:  Customers ordering specific day specials (ex: Sunday Brisket) from the future order menu can't order on the next Sunday available, but are forced into the Sunday after that. The Order Prep: 1-Biz Day setting combined with the Category level day-based availability settings. The next available Sunday counts as the 1-Biz day prep, instead of my overall business hours counting toward the business day. If there was an 8, 12, or 24-hour setting, this wouldn't be an issue.

[studio87]

Hello -  We are experiencing a similar issue as others in this post. We are closed Mon and Tuesday and require a 2 day prep time. So if a customer orders on Mon or Tues they are being pushed to a Friday pickup. Our customers become frustrated and cancel their order or call us for scheduling, which is not optimal. I did see someone suggest maybe Square could change the business days to just days. I would second that option as it would give more flexibility for scheduling pickups.