Is there a way to place a future order for pickup on the pos?

[RS4]

We sell some itesm, like cake, that people like to order and then pickup at later date.  In the pos is there a way to schedule a future pick up for the item?

[isabelle · Accepted solution]

Hey @RS4-

There currently isn't a way to originate/create orders from the standard POS. You could create an open ticket, but you'll have to let your customer know when the cake is ready manually. 

Unless you have Square for Retail, then you can create orders, but it's mainly for retail businesses. 

[HDB]

How about for restaurants?

[ashc]

Heya @HDB,

This Support Center article goes over how to adjust pickup times for Square for Restaurants with our third party integrations here.

[HDB]

I meant how about over the phone orders?

We get more phone orders and future pickups then online orders. 

What do we do then?

[ashc]

@HDB The article I provided does go over that.

Advanced pickup options like you're looking for here would require a Square for Restaurants subscription so you can mark orders as in progress/ready/etc.

Please read through the article for more details.

[Tom_Herman]

So, in order to solve the problem in the question.... is there a  way to take a future order on the phone, schedule it in the system so it operates just as if the order was placed online. Would Square for Retail be the solution, or would Square for Restaurants be the solution. This problem is so common to us in the baked goods business. Customers call and walk in to order for future dates. Square POS does not have a solutionf for this other than the notes section.

As another part of this problem: we have a kitchen printer that needs to receive all "orders", but not transactions. As it stands now, if we set the kitchen printer to print "inperson orders" it prints every transaction. (Gripe: nowhere else in Square is a transaction referred to as an order. Square doesn't even call a saved transaction an order.) A saved transaction has to be reprinted and physically taken to the kitchen. Is the solution Square for Retail or Square for Restaurants?

[Tom_Herman]

The article you provided does not cover the situation. We need to be able to take an order over the phone or in person, schedule it in the system, and get an order ticket printed, even if the order is not paid for yet. A third party integration is not what is needed. A saved ticket does not put the order into the future orders system that online orders are in. It's not that we really need to mark the progress of the order. We need to be able to go to the Orders screen and see upcoming orders, regardless of whether they were online, on person, or over the phone. They need to contain the pertinent information: Customer name, date ordered, date for pickup, phone number, notes, and the actual order items, and paid status. You know, an order. Then it needs to be printable, as an order, not a receipt, or a stub. An order.

Then again, it is very frustrating to want orders to print, but not every transaction. When the printer setup screen has a setting to print in-person orders, what it really means is print every single transaction, because there is no such thing as an in-person order..... yet 🙂

[Tom_Herman]

I wanted to add that a most frustrating lack of feature in Square is there no onscreen order report.  The edit page only allows bulk "Mark as complete", not mark as in progress. An order cannot be printed unless switching to online. Yes, there is an export feature, but the information/fields it exports cannot be configured. I just need a simple report showing what's due on what day. I can print the Orders screen, but it doesn't show the items in the order. The export orders from the online screen has like 45 fields, about 30 of which are useless information when all you need is who, what , when. I cannot simply export all active (pending)

orders, that is not a choice.

So that's it, A request for a order reporting

<end rant>

[c9c]

We are a carry-out kitchen who takes future orders as well via phone & in-person. Has there even been a solution to this found?

[RS4]

I don't think there is a solution for the regular pos.  It seems like they might have made this a feature in the Square for Restaurants.  Square for Restuarants just so many features that we don't need.  We just encourage people to use the website to place future orders and then we also take orders in the store (and have to manage & organize them ourselves).

[HDB]

We use both square for restaurants and the regular POS and TRUST ME the regular POS is better (for take away) which is kinda saying a lot. I have been begging for a future orders feature for EVER! I am willing to pay for it too or transition to fully using the restaurant POS if that was a feature (like the Square for Retail).

All the solutions that they have given me just do not work. We do the standard save the ticket but some people order almost a week in advance so I have their ticket in my "open tickets" and KDS (making my KDS number never accurate). The biggest problem we have been having recently is people paying over the open. When we ring in the order we lose the "re-print ticket" feature after an hour...drives my kitchen staff wild. 

If anyone can help us better navigate the square for restaurants app or use this system for our take-away business I would greatly appreciate it. 

[Tom_Herman]

After all that has gone on, I figured I would post my summary of what Noble Pies needs in an app. 

Functions – Most available in Square, some require workarounds

• Take orders* in person
• Take orders* over the phone
• Take orders* online or integrate with another online system Set up discounts
• Gift card program
• Print receipt-sized ticket of each order with name, due date, and items, from both POS and online orders
• Inventory
• Loyalty program
• Integrated social media and email marketing program Labor clock-in/clock-out
• Payroll: clock in/out for employees, automate payroll payments and taxes
• Sales tax automation, make the payments automatically Integrate with QuickBooks online
• *Orders means orders, not transactions, not saved tickets. Entered as part of the order stream, just like online orders

Reports – Most are NOT available in Square (see OrderNova.com)

• Orders Due to Fill – as a spreadsheet or a line-style report
• Number of each item due on a specific date(s)
• Integrate online order system with in-store order system to combine orders and totals
• Standard history reports of income, item sales, etc.

Products – all these functions are available in Square

• Offer multiple options for each product (size, crust, dietary)
• Offer modifiers (with ice cream, with whipped cream, etc.)
• Control stock of each item.

Online

• Handle all the above product requirements
• Multiple page website, not one single continuous page
• Text or POS notifications when orders come in
• Prints tickets for kitchen when orders come in
• Seasonal pages can be temporarily removed/added to site menu
• Seasonally change background images Feature some items over the regular menu Multiple images of each item
• Item may or may not be sold online Switch product on or off season to season Show item even if out of stock

The biggest challenge in finding an ordering system is our need to control when customers can pick up their orders. We need to set the hours and the days separately from the hours and days we are open. E.g. we open at 10AM but do not allow online orders to be picked up until 2PM. We need to block out certain days of pickup. We are normally open on Thursdays, be we need to block orders for Thanksgiving day. The same for most holidays. These blackout days need to be set well in advance. People start ordering for holidays a month or more ahead.

For in-house order tickets, Square works but not well. Each person entering an order has to remember what information needs to be added to each order so the ticket prints out properly. It would work better if, when taking an order, there were fields for name, due date, time and extra notes. These are mostly orders for a future date, normal takeout order formats do not work.

I was hoping Square would address this in their Square for Bakeries (AU), but they haven't. The HUGE need is something that will take ORDERS on the POS. 

Any and all additional comments are welcome.

[Opf]

It would be extremely helpful to schedule a pickup order, and allow customers to pay at pickup. 
for example

Using square point of sale

someone calls in an order for 20 sandwiches to be picked up Friday at noon. He will pay at pickup. 
when creating the ticket and choosing “schedule a pickup” the customer has to pay at the time the order is creating. This is especially difficult for someone who is going to pay cash. 
I have to create a saved ticket with no pickup time, and risk the ticket getting lost or forgotten about, or force the customer to pay at the time of placing the order so that I can save it as a scheduled pickup. This is particularly difficult with my customer base. 

please please please, add a feature so you can schedule an order and have the customer pay at pickup!

[Tom_Herman]

The only kludgy workaround I have tried is to enter an order as an in-person order, then "fake pay" using cash option. It will enter the order stream like an online order. Just make sure to put a note in of "Not Paid". 

Still, there is no Orders report. The "export orders" option creates a messy spreadsheet that has to be whittled down to usable information. Particularly irritating is the use of a line with First Name, Last Name, Phone, followed by lines for the actual order. To be able to sort this list in a spreadsheet you have to copy the First Name, Last Name, Phone to each subsequent line. Sort on pickup date, then delete all the First Name, Last Name, Phone lines at the end because that line has no date. Can't create a macro to do that......

[JustinC]

@Tom_Herman thanks for sharing your workaround. Although it's not ideal and feels clumsy, we appreciate you helping other sellers who are looking for suitable solutions while we work on improvements. 

@Tom_Herman

[Tom_Herman]

It would be great if Square could address the order export situation OR offer order reports online. The .csv export has a ton of frustrating obstacles. If we need a report listing how many of each item we need for each location on a given date, it takes a LOT of editing by hand to get that sorted out in an order download. The same is true if we need a report of orders at a location sorted by customer.

Square exports the data with the customer info on one line, with subsequent lines containing the items. There isn't a way to sort this without manually copying the customer info to each item line. 

When a product has options, each one needs to be in a separate field, not lumped together in one field with commas.

Square items needs to contain a field for a short or "internal" name. When we want a fancy name for a product, say "Savory Scone Of the Week- Basil Goat Cheese, Swiss" for the customers to see, we need a short name that appears in the reports, like simply "Savory Scone"

Here's a stupid thing: when we specify a 9" pie, or a 6" pie, the exported data shows 9&quot and 6&quot. Really useful. Luckily an Excel macro can fix this to make it useful.

There are a bunch of small annoying things that macros can fix for us, but we shouldn't have to. E.G. Variation : 9&quot;, Top Crust : Crumb Topping should be two different columns, Size and Top Crust. Why would this not already be the case? They are two COMPLETELY separate options, they should be separate colums.

Why isn't "Billing Name" broken into First and Last names like the Shipping names? 

Ah, well. I am tired. Spent 2 hours in the middle of the night editing all the orders so we could get them out to the markets this morning. Please improve the order export, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE fix the in person ordering so that we can take an ORDER that is not paid for. Saved tickets are absolutely useless, and so are invoices, since there is not invoice report. Andd the invoices do not show up in the order stream. 

[JustinC]

All great ideas. Sorry I don't have a timeline to share on when these features will be available. 

However, our Product Team is aware. 

@Tom_Herman

[AngelicakesSanJ]

I am looking for this same feature, has anyone found a different platform?

[matzohfund]

@Tom_Herman We share many of your issues and gave up talking to support after tens of wasted hours. Would be interested to know whether you are still using square or another platform and whether you are happier now.

[JJ_]

Item pre-order or scheduled pick-up is a known feature request right now @AngelicakesSanJ. I will make sure to pass your request over to the product team for their visibility.