Prevent online orders being placed during non-business hours

[Amanda_Bierock]

I would like to prevent online orders from being placed during non-business hours. We have our online store set-up for pick-up and curbside pick-up of food. I have our business hours entered. Someone can go to our online store during non-business hours and place an order, but won't receive a pick-up time until we reopen. However, I would like to prevent people from even placing an order during non-business hours. I can do that by manually toggling the "Accept online orders" button under Checkout on and off, but I would prefer not to do that twice a day, since it is easy to forget to do and people could be prevented from placing orders if we forget to toggle it back on.

[pessosices · Accepted solution]

@Amanda_Bierock 

Good point!

Maybe that's 2 feature requests as potential solutions this problem:

1. Having the option to only allow orders during Open times

2. When making an order past Open times, have something big & red & un-missable telling the customer that the shop is closed & when the pickup time is

Great perspective! Thank you!

[pessosices]

Hey @Amanda_Bierock , - Any particular reason why you don't want them to order at all during closed hours?

Before they finish checking out, they will pick a timeslot for pickup for times that you are open, and your tickets will print before the designated pickup time, according to your prep time.

I find it very useful that customers can place orders when we're closed, since it's still orders coming in and we're closed for just as much time as we're open - more time to order means more orders!

[Amanda_Bierock]

I don't want someone to order food at 9 pm, after we've closed, thinking they can come in and pick up their food that night because they didn't pay attention to the assigned pick up day and time at check out.

[pessosices · Accepted solution]

@Amanda_Bierock 

Good point!

Maybe that's 2 feature requests as potential solutions this problem:

1. Having the option to only allow orders during Open times

2. When making an order past Open times, have something big & red & un-missable telling the customer that the shop is closed & when the pickup time is

Great perspective! Thank you!

[Amanda_Bierock]

Ok, I'll put that in as a feature request

[pessosices]

Tagging @kellyj - the magnificent Square Beta Community Manager!

[kellyj]

@Amanda_Bierock

Thanks for your input on this. I responded in your Feature Request thread. I'll keep you updated if we make a change to this in the future.

[TCSeattle]

@Kelly Is there a way our business can also be notified if this feature request goes through? The fact that we can't limit online ordering to a certain times creates a mess for our restaurants. 

[Joh555]

Yes, this is also very important to our restaurant.  We close on weekends and just about every weekend we get orders pop up.  If I catch them in time, I call the customers and notify them so they do not make a trip to our restaurant.  And, over Memorial Day, we closed and I even put a big sign on my website homepage, but customers still placed orders.  

[Joe]

Thanks for reaching out and let us know how this specifically impacted your weekend, @jon555 - this is frustrating indeed. I'm getting eyes from our Product Teams here for visibility. We will hit everyone back here as soon as we have some more info to share. Thanks, again! 

[mara]

We just had this happen today! We are closed but it still allowed a customer to place an order for delivery TODAY. We want them to be able to order ahead for Monday so we don't want to turn off our ordering, but now we have upset customers who are expecting a delivery.  Ugh...  Please help.

[Joh555]

I am not a software programmer, but this seemed to be a quick fix.  Perhaps, if enough of us put pressure on square, they would put more priority on this feature.

[Roots19]

This exact scenario plays out every weekend for me as well. I operate an restaurant that’s closed during the weekend (Due to Covid). Customers do not pay attention to 3 separate warnings to read their Fulfillment times. Then I have to go back and refund orders during times we are closed!    Worst is sometimes there are customers who are planning ahead and are reading careful but just placing their orders in advance...these people often have to place orders twice. It’s terrible from a customer service perspective.

If the fulfillment time wasn’t AUTOMATICALLY filled in for the customer...this issue would never arise. Alas here we are. 

[TCSeattle]

This! Customers are notorious for not reading all the information. We 4 have restaurants and  would also really appreciate having the option to limit placing orders during non-business hours. More specifically it would need to be limited to a certain time before opening and before closing, which would technically be different than business hours. Please add this feature Square!

[kellyj]

@TCSeattle

Thanks so much for your input on this. You can fully shut off your Online Store from taking orders, although you do need to do this from the eCom Dashboard.

eCom > Settings > Checkout

This will allow you to turn off all online orders outside of your work hours and you can toggle this back on when you are ready to accept orders the next day.

This does require a few different steps though, which I know can be time consuming, and we have a few feature requests to simplify the on-off function of your online store. eCom does default into allowing your orders to go to the next available day, as most businesses have wanted this feature, but to turn it off - as in your case - you would just go to the above.

When we have a simpler way to navigate to accepting orders page, I'll update the thread, hopefully we'll see some updates around this soon! 

[fonuts]

Yes, please let us know when this feature will be added, so we can set to automatically stop accepting orders (default to shop open hours, or customizable as previous replies have requested)

Thanks!

fonuts

[Joe]

Thanks for adding your voice here, @fonuts - we appreciate you reaching out and joining us her eon the Seller Community.

While we don't have a specific timeline to share on this feature just yet, we will update everyone here when we have more solidified information to share. We appreciate everyone's patience! 

[championssf]

PLEASE keep us updated also cause this is a crucial feature that we NEED.

We are using appointments to book basketball/volleyball courts and we have issues where people will book a court at 11pm at night for 8am the next morning and we may not have a reservation until 11am so the staff may not catch it and be here to open the facility. 

I would love to limit the online booking hours to a customized time frame to make sure we are able to catch these. 

Luckily I get the text messages of the appointments but that means I get woken up at all hours to make sure it is caught and the staff is notified. 

[pgeremia]

This feature is critical and prevents very angry customers who ordered outside of business hours expecting to be able to pick up the order.

Do you have any ETA on this?  This seems like it would be VERY simple to add.  I would just default to the way it is NOW (so people dont suddenly get a change in behavior) and then allow them to turn it ON to limit ordering to business hours only.

[pgeremia]

Another point here.  Toast supports this.

If Toast supports this and many of their customers USE this maybe you need to push this up in rank?

Thank You,

Peter Geremia

[Peixoto]

Yes.  Please, Please add a simple toggle option to disable checkout of orders outside of the specified business hours!  We use our online store ONLY for curbside pickup and come in every morning to a pile of orders we can't fulfill, and customers who are upset we can't.  Thank you!