📣 The 2021 Square Unboxed Hackathon — results are in!

[Tom]

Hi Seller Community!

For the second year in a row, we hosted a hackathon for developers to build software applications for Square Sellers. New for developers in 2021: There are special prizes for the best solutions for Square Terminal, Square Snippets API (which allows developers to modify Square Online), and Web Payments SDK.

Participation worked the same as it did last year. In order to ensure that this competition produces solutions that help solve real challenges sellers are experiencing, we needed sellers' help. There were two ways to participate.

Option 1: Share a challenge prompt for participants to solve

If you're a Square Seller, please share the challenges your business is experiencing. For example, here are some of the challenges that have come up over the last few months:

⚙ Some shop owners may need more streamlined fulfillment solutions to accommodate online ordering and shipping trends.

⚙ Some restaurants may have to manage fluctuations in seating capacity due to changes in local health guidelines.

For those that replied with suggestions by May 27th, we made sure they were available to the hackathon participants as they built their submissions.

Option 2: Participate in the Hackathon

Developers interested in participating submitted their entries by July 12, 2021: The 2021 Square Small Business Hackathon.

It was great to see sellers' suggestions and developers' solutions! 🤩

[IndianaSoapCo]

I would love to be able to run a report and sort by customer.

Thanks!

[cyerges]

We offer meal kits that are produced on a specific day. I need to be able to set the fulfillment date to a specific calendar day instead of 2 days, 1 week, etc. 

[Trish_Yarn]

Seconding this; I do a lot of pre-orders for items that launch on a known date and it's time-consuming to have to go in and adjust the fulfillment period as time passes.

[ABGbake]

As a bakery, we would love this option too. To select a specific date for fulfillment would be very helpful for our bake days as well as holidays. 

[Sbs216]

Add a feature where service providers can have more than one appointment calendar

[TrueHealWellnes]

Few things to fix in Appointments:

1. Services Page - Allow to display services by Category. Today they are all displayed on single page which is not ideal for sellers who are many services.

2. Allow appointments to ONLY book at customer's location - Today it required you to have at-least physical location.

3. Appointment Calendar - Allow to see all the appointments for all location under one single view without to have login on each location.

[HoneyCreekFarm]

I second the appointments at a customer's location! I travel to customer's homes and would love for them to book an appointment time with their address. Or to be able to deliver to them when the item is complete and not have a pick-up location of my address. I understand there is a option for delivery right away, but some items take days and I would love to have a future delivery appointment at the customer's address! 

[Tribus]

Add in a feature that allows us to filter "out of stock" items from the inventory. We have some one of a kind items that will not come back in stock and other items that we sell for a few months then remove.  It is not beneficial for us to remove these items from inventory. Can you please add in a feature that either automatically "archives" these items or at least allows a filter option. It would simplify the All Items list in the applications for the users that have difficulty with technology. 

best,

Tribus

[JJS1]

I would like to see a feature where you can save tickets from the square online dashboard. We take a lot of orders over the phone. When the register is busy and the terminal is being used elsewhere, it would be great to be able to log in to the online dashboard to create a ticket and save it. Then when the customer comes in, the saved ticket can be opened at the register or our Square terminal. 

[Connecting_IRL]

Perhaps there would be a broad benefit from a sales report comparison option in the app by which the current sales day/period could be compared against a date/period of choice in the past.  For example the day before Thanksgiving is always a Wednesday, but it does not necessarily occur on the same date or same week of the prior year.  With the option to select a specific comparison date from the past, coarse analysis of sales trends can be done instantaneously.

[jtrac429]

Category and Item Inventory Upgrade would be useful.

Our shop has a need for some "Super-categories" like Apparel.
Ideally under Apparel would be a Brand Category, followed by Items.

Another example: Home Brewing > Hario, Aeropress, Chemex, Fellow > Product(s) & Variations 

[Minion]

I'm not sure if this would qualify or able to if it doesn't already exist but...

The ability to integrate Square Marketing with Wordpress/Woocommerce/Shopify etc.

As I'm a one man band, and before jumping on board with Square I built/designed my website some years back. Having the amount of time I do into it, I don't plan on giving that up (nothing personal 😉 But it would be useful to integrate/Sync Square marketing from my website 

[blackboxhacker]

Alert the account owners when their accounts are being highjacked or hacked over all. This would be a good hackathon and  add on on.

[IndianaSoapCo]

Allow different shipping pricing on each product.

[PV4U]

A feature that would allow to mark items on sale by selecting multiple items at one time. A box in the item in square to add it to online automatically. A weight feature in square. This is needed for online. It would cut out on lots of duplicated steps. Also making items "on sale" by selecting multiple items or a complete category. Goin in to each individual item is very time consuming. 

[ToddZ]

Allow add-on shipping pricing at checkout. For example in summer months, we use cool packs for our food products. Depending on their location, a buyer may choose the ice packs or not. Right now, we just increase the shipping cost overall for everyone. That's not really fair since some folks do not need or want the ice pack.

[ToddZ]

One more: a text-based notification to the seller when an item is purchased in their shop. Yes, notifications are already in the app but if you don't have it open or if you do not refresh constantly, then you might miss an order. We promise to have our orders ready in 15 minutes or less.

[JUYBoutique20]

I would love to be able to do even exchanges from my square terminal. 

For our online store I would love to be able to offer sezzle, quadpay, etc for my customers..... 

[LYSESTHETICS]

I would love to see Square have a form integration similar to an EMR system.

[kiediddy]

YES! I agree