Q&A: Ask us anything about Square Online Fulfilment

[tranguyen]

Hello Seller Community!

On Wednesday, August 18th at 5PM BST, we hosted a Square Online Fulfilment Q&A with :

• Kevin Taniguchi, an engineer on the Shipping & Store Setup Team 
• Alex Smith, the Product Manager for the Shipping & Store Setup Team. 
• Faheem Zaman, the Product Manager for Pickup & Delivery
• Lisa Fong, the Product Manager for Self-Serve Ordering

Together, they have answered all your questions about Square Online Fulfilment settings, from shipping to pickup, delivery and self-serve ordering.

You can learn more about Square Online here. 

 

Ask us about Square Online Fulfilment

A few example questions:

• How can I restrict my shipping destinations?
• What’s the best fulfilment setup for a retail business/restaurants, etc.?

We’d also love to hear what new shipping & fulfilment features would you like to see! 

Note on account-specific questions: For your privacy and security, we are not able to address issues related to specific account status details in our public forums. If you need account assistance, please contact our Customer Success team and they'll be able to take a deeper dive.

[tranguyen · Accepted solution]

Thank you everyone who participated in our Q&A yesterday and special thanks to @alexws @faheem @ktaniguchi-sq and @lfong for joining us. You’ve given us great suggestions on how we can improve Square Online site and our Square offerings as well, and we’ll be sure to share this with the wider team.

To wrap up, here’s a summary of a few themes I saw in the questions:

Integration with Royal Mail
We completely understand that fulfilling shipping orders without an integration with Royal Mail is very tedious and laborious. We don’t have a firm date that we can share at the moment, but it is a feature we are actively scoping. We’d love to include you in our beta of this integration once it is ready to get your early feedback.

Order email and customer communication
While Square Messaging is not available in the UK at the moment, you can add a personal touch to your customer communications by editing your store emails.

Automatic discounts & more coupon types
We are actively working on allowing for group discounts, automatic discounts (similar to how discounts work on Point of Sale app) and specific coupon types for fulfilment methods. We do not have a firm timeline for when these will be available, but I would encourage you to check out our Beta Community to join and potentially get access to new features first when we test them out.

More granular fulfilment settings
Features like setting fulfilment at an item level, charging by postal code, pre-order or setting cut-off time have been requested by a number of sellers. We’re actively working on rolling out a number of these, so please keep an eye for future Product Updates (and don’t forget to join our Beta Community to test our new feature as well).

[signature_home]

Hi Alex, 

Thank you for the update - I would be extremely happy to participate in the Beta once its ready! As I am sure quite a few others would also take up that opportunity also! 

Again thanks for getting back to us on this topic - it is appreciated! 

Craig

[Diversified]

This is such a massive issue. Now into October...is there further update on when to expect this feature?

[barlo0611]

Feature request:

1. Be able to add a photo to a customers order as proof of delivery. (In weebly or square app)

2. Increase text box modifier limit from 150

[namastewatford]

Is there an option of delegating tasks like "On/Off delivery", temporarily marking items out of stock etc to users/team members?

At present I think it is only possible for account holder to login and change these.

[lfong]

Hi @namastewatford, you can currently grant access to your Square Online settings to specific staff in Square Dashboard > Team Permissions. However please note that they will have access to all Square Online settings, we are working on providing more granular settings in the future.

[Rick-PFC]

Automatic online discounts, the pos does this, when will it be synced across to online so all discounts works on all platforms automatically?

currently having offers like 2 for £10 etc work great on the pos but this can’t be done online which is a massive drawback to to the delivery/pick up etc features which make online ordering impossible for people like me who have numerous offers that need to be identical to those on the pos

[lfong]

Hi @Rick-PFC, thanks for the feedback and I’m glad you’re finding the automatic discounts helpful on the POS. Having these discounts also work on the Online Store is certainly something we are working on but we are not able to share any timelines on availability just yet. However, we would love to include you in our Beta whenever that is available.

[ryanwanner]

Hi @tranguyen ! I have a few questions:

• For self-serve ordering, can we get a way to disable the QR codes outside of operating hours? We have had customers order an hour after we're closed from outside tables then get mad at us when we can't fulfill the order.
• Having the capability to have the customer order via the QR code then hand the payment off to us to process on the Point of Sale would be amazing! This would give us the capability to accept cash sales and help the older clientele who have enough problems entering their order much less figuring out the credit card entry
• As @Rick-PFC mentioned: automatic discounts would be very nice to have on the online environment!
• Big Big request: the ability to turn off the online store from the Point of Sale!!!

[lfong]

Hi @ryanwanner, thanks for the feedback!

• For the Self-serve Ordering hours, could you help me understand what’s the best case scenario for you? Would you like the Self-serve Ordering hours to sync with your Square Business hours and automatically shut off ordering when you’re closed, or would you prefer to set specific Self-serve Ordering hours? Additionally, what would you like to show your customers when they cannot place orders outside of these business hours?
• This is a great feature request and we understand having that flexibility in payment is an important part of dining in. We’re working with teams on this so stay tuned!
• As mentioned above it is a work in progress, but would love for you to join the Beta when available
• Great request - are you looking to turn off the online store in one go (e.g. all pickup, delivery, self-serve orders), or would you find it helpful to be able to to turn off each individually?

[ryanwanner]

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@lfong wrote:

Hi @ryanwanner, thanks for the feedback!

• For the Self-serve Ordering hours, could you help me understand what’s the best case scenario for you? Would you like the Self-serve Ordering hours to sync with your Square Business hours and automatically shut off ordering when you’re closed, or would you prefer to set specific Self-serve Ordering hours? Additionally, what would you like to show your customers when they cannot place orders outside of these business hours?

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That's a tough question to answer to be honest. I think that it really depends on the business. For me, my rule is if the guest is inside/at an outside table before the closing time, we take care of them. So in my case I think that having the self-serve ordering hours match our business hours would suffice. I can imagine other scenarios where the merchant may want to limit hours (close the patio early for example), so this would probably be best as a merchant-defined setting. Hmmm... my example opens a can of worms... does each self-serve section need to have defined hours....?

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• This is a great feature request and we understand having that flexibility in payment is an important part of dining in. We’re working with teams on this so stay tuned!

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That will be awesome when you get the two sides of this connected fully.

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• As mentioned above it is a work in progress, but would love for you to join the Beta when available

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Me? Beta the self-serve? Naaahhhh.... 😂 I'm on it. 🤘

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• Great request - are you looking to turn off the online store in one go (e.g. all pickup, delivery, self-serve orders), or would you find it helpful to be able to to turn off each individually?

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That's a good question. With self-serve ordering, it would be really tough and awkward to close the online store while the customers are sitting in the restaurant. I think that at least the self serve part would have to be separated. One idea I had was to emulate the DoorDash tablet: have the ability to pause orders from 5-30 minutes first, then if the merchant still needs time they can then turn off the ordering as needed.

[lfong]

Thanks Ryan, this is super helpful feedback and I will certainly incorporate it in as we continue to improve the product! I noticed you’re an active Self-serve Ordering Beta tester so thank you for that!

[tonydow]

When a new online order is received that is being delivered to someone else, the order details show the customer as the receiving name but doesn’t show the name of the person placing the order. As the contract is with this person it is important that this is shown too.

[faheem]

Hi @tonydow. We’ve recently launched a feature that allows you to collect the name and address of the person placing the order as well; would this help?

To turn this feature on, from your Square Online dashboard, go to your Checkout Settings, and click the button to Edit customer inputs to always collect the buyer address for your fulfilment types.

[tonydow]

Thanks, I will do that. However, orders going to a third party currently show the third party as the customer when this is not the case, e.g. person A places an order and enters the address for the recipient B. It is Person A that is the customer paying for the order and it should be that person shown in the order details

[Diversified]

When will integrated shipping come to the UK? Currently having to manually export orders to then import into MyHermes/Royal Mail. It would be much easier and less time consuming being able to do that directly through Square. As far as I understand its available but not in the UK? 

[alexws]

Hi @Diversified, you’re correct that we don’t yet support integrated shipping for our UK sellers and I completely understand that fulfilling shipping orders without this feature is very tedious and laborious. We don’t have a firm date that we can share at the moment, but it is a feature we are actively scoping. We’d love to include you in our beta of this integration once it is ready to get your early feedback.

[ParkmellowScent]

A way to use the group discounts. This can only be done using items and doesn't sync up. Makes zero sense. Being able to offer buy 3 get 1 free. Having customers having to use codes all the time puts them off. And they can only use one. 

Have the ability to pre-order with a deposit will be helpful too

[lfong]

Hi there @ParkmellowScent, we are actively working on group discounts to work on both the POS and Online Store but do not have a firm timeline for it just yet, but understand that it’s very important to your business!

We did recently launch the ability for you to create a coupon link or QR code in Square Online > Coupons where you would be able to add it directly to your marketing campaigns. If your customer clicks that link, or scans that QR code they will be taken to your site and the coupon code will be automatically applied to their cart! So no more searching, copy & pasting the codes anymore for your customers.

[Parisfinery1]

I have a jewellery business and I want to know how I can add an automatic option for someone to purchase a set. E.g if I sell butterfly earrings I want like a tick option for them to add a butterfly necklace at a discounted price to make it a set?

[lfong]

Hi @Parisfinery1! Currently there isn’t a way to do that automatically, the best way to go about this would be to create a new item (the set) and apply a Sale price to it.

[Bethmcdonald]

Hi,

Will you be getting Klarna or Clearpay added at any point?