📣 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! 🤩

[cyerges]

It would be helpful ifan audible notification could be heard when an online order comes into the POS. If we are not looking at the POS when the notification box pops up, we often miss that an order is in for our restaurant. Our staff spends a lot of time waking up the POS to see if there are new orders that have come in. 

[GWTS]

I AGREE WITH THE AUDIBLE NOTIFICATION. 

[goodgrounds]

Have you considered https://join.bumpkds.com ? You can select any sound from our 17 chimes!

[kiediddy]

1. To be able to create a contract in the form of a questionnaire for clients that is multiple choice and fill in the blank.

2. Form similar to an EMR

3. Be able to set up automatic emails to send contracts to first time clients when booking online for a specific service.

[YodieLadyWho]

We have two businesses running out of the same building now, and orders typically contain items from both stores.  Currently separating these two has to be done by hand and it's creating a tax nightmare. It would be wonderful to be able to ring up orders that contain both stores on one ticket, yet maintain books for both stores separately.

[todaymovers]

Contracts - we really, really, really need an option to cancel contracts if a customer changes their mind or just never signs it. 

It would also be wonderful if there was an option for checkboxes or the like - so they could choose option 1, option 2, decline all, etc.

[ABGbake]

Our biggest struggle is needing to have item summary totals for each fulfillment date.

We are taking tickets and using excel to add up totals for our night bakers. This takes a long time and also is prone to human error.

Square has now allowed sorting orders by fulfillment date HALLELUJAH. But that next step would be able to run an item summary report for each day so we know what we need to have ready on the pickup day.

THANK YOU!

We all appreciate your hard work and continued support.

ex)

(25) Chocolate Chunk Cookies
(12) Loaves of White Sourdough
(14) Butter Croissants

[cyerges]

This would be great. We manually go through the orders to take note of the items we need to

prepare for our pre-ordered meals. 

[IndianaSoapCo]

I would LOVE to be able to run a report showing what items my clients order. Currently I have to look at every transaction and take notes.

[naileditdiyorl]

I would love to be able to run a tip report! This would speed up my payroll day dramatically. I would like to be able to run this report by day, time, transaction, and customer.

[ICCRUZ]

Allow for a return type "store credit/even exchange" 

[Trish_Yarn]

I'd like the option to great smart groups of customers based on items they've purchased. This would be helpful for targeted marketing campaigns, for example. I currently have to add customers manually which is obviously cumbersome and time-consuming.

[Trish_Yarn]

Also: we need the option to change an order from pickup to delivery or vice versa.

[Trish_Yarn]

From either the Weebly or Square order interface, it would be great to be able to print several orders at once, rather than having to go into each order individually.

[HDD]

We would like a build your own service prompt for square online and square appointments online booking. When a customer goes to book an automotive detailing service. The workflow should ask them about various aspects of the job. Size of vehicle, nature of the work to be performed, how dirty it is on a scale of 1-5 etc. Each of these prompts should be customized by the business and allow for the service duration and price to be modified based on the selections made. Customers should also be allowed to attach images of the vehicle to the service request to give the team a better idea of what's coming into the shop.

[USSMissouri]

Hotel/Motel room reservation system.

Showing rooms available, booked rooms, rooms to be cleaned, and rooms out of service.

[jatodd]

I sell a lot of one of a kind items and being able to have a hierarchy of Subcategories (and sort them) within Categories in Square POS would be SO helpful. And then link them seamlessly to Square Online.

Also, being able to print a label right from the item screen when creating or editing an item would be nice.

[NatCo]

Hi Tom!

Perhaps a trivial thing to code but maybe a feature that automatically hides out of stock items at locations so that I don't have to scroll though dozens of outdated categories during checkout (I still want to keep them in the system for if I do get them in later I dont have to recreate them). For a more open ended question maybe phrase it like: More dynamic and modular inventory options for shop owners with constantly changing inventories.

Thanks!

[Banquet]

Retail items that are exchanged. I was told to be able to do this without giving a full refund is to charge them for the new item with a full/100% comp (which I don't like, it interferes with my donations) then go back and adjust inventory for the item that was brought back.

[DesertOffRoad]

A cart option for the customer as the project goes on to add or subtract items and have a faster in person checkout in the end. 

[AubreysMenag]

I would love to be able to link all of my locations to a single square card account.

I just have one business with one inventory, but I sell out of my home and also at farmer’s markets, and need to have each location separate for tax collection/reporting purposes. However, I would really like to have all of my funds in one place when it comes time to re-order inventory, supplies, etc.