Q&A: Ask us anything about Square for Restaurants

[tranguyen]

Hello Seller Community!

On June 15th, 2021, we hosted a Square for Restaurants Q&A with 

Ask us about Square for Restaurants

She’ll be online on June 15th at 3PM GMT to answer all your questions about Square for Restaurants with Linda Ling (@pastalavista) the Product Marketing Manager for Square for Restaurants.

As Product Marketing Manager, Linda helps sellers to understand the benefits of Square’s features and product.

A few example questions:

• How can I optimise Square for Restaurants for outdoor dining? 

• What’s the advantage of using Square for Restaurants Plus?
• How can I use the new KDS system to streamline our workflow in the kitchen?

[AKA]

Hello

last week I had a problem of the bills were double counted due to different staff have closed the check in different station within 2 mins. So it added up the final gross and net sale and we only realised in next day.

but the only way I clear it was to refund in the next day. But then it recorded a refund.

is there anyway, i can void these entries instead of refund?

thank you 

[pastalavista]

Hi @AKA! Thank you for your question. Unfortunately you can only void a bill that is still open, so if it’s been closed, refunding would be the only option.

[tomadams7757]

Hi,

KDS coursing would be great - As with Fresh where you could have C1 C2 and so on.

KDS ticket joining. - The ability to join tickets together when customer order from the same table separately.

KDS ticket accept - Be great if when a new KDS order arrives its flashes and keeps playing a sound until one of the staff accept it.

KDS - The ability to block certain iPads for sending tickets to KDS, with Fresh you set the KDS up as a printer so in my set up where I have 3 bar iPads that I don't want to print KDS drinks tickets but my 4 floor iPads I do I had that option.

Table ordering - As well as the QR code it would be great if you could have a landing page where the customer could select their table from a drop down list?

Other than that great system. Thanks

[pastalavista]

Hi @tomadams7757! Thank you for your fab feedback on KDS, this is all super helpful, and we’re so glad you’re using KDS so thoroughly! I will pass this feedback onto our product and engineering team to make sure it’s on their radar when it comes time to look at our roadmap. 

Lastly, that is great feedback on table ordering that we will pass back onto our product team. Thank you for sharing!

[MJAYS]

Hi

1.) Is there a date for when restaurants plus will be available on the register ?

2.) Is there a date for a label printing feature for individual items on the square KDS ? 

Thanks

Mike

[pastalavista]

Hi @MJAYS! Thank you for your questions. For your first question, by the end of 2021, we are planning to have full functionality of Square for Restaurants Plus available on Square Register. In the meantime, we are releasing Plus features as we finish engineering work on them, which means new features will be continuously rolled out through the year. Currently, the Plus features that are available on Square Register include item availability, table timers and colours, category rollups in sales reports, and live sales. Keep in mind that all Dashboard features, including shared settings and advanced reports are compatible with Square Register.

For your second question, we’ve heard this request from other sellers as well, and it’s something that our product and engineering team are looking into actively. We can’t share a specific timeline right now, but stay tuned for more updates!

[3pigeons]

Hi 

Since last week I have been unable to differentiate which categories print through to our kitchen printer.

Is there something I am doing wrong?

Also I am enjoying the self serve/order aspect of the POS. I think it is something that our industry will heavily rely on in the future to keep overheads down, and especially with finding new staff so hard in these current times. Just wondering, as a lot of my customers struggle with QR codes, are there any small table top kiosks that square integrate with?

Many thanks 

[pastalavista]

Hi @3pigeons! Thank you for your questions. For your first question, we did have a bug last week that was affecting how tickets were being printed. A fix was implemented that prevented old items from being printed when new ones are sent. However, if you send more than 10 courses at the same time, they will appear out of order and course lines won’t be bolded anymore. This issue will be addressed in an upcoming release. If you’re still encountering an issue, please try troubleshooting or resetting your printer. 

For your second question, we do not currently integrate with any small tabletop kiosk partners, but that is great feedback that we will pass onto our product and partnerships team. In the meantime, one possible workaround would be to create a very restricted set of permissions within Team Management that would basically only allow someone to place an order and checkout, and then deploy iPads at your customer tables that would allow them to self-serve. 

[artizansty]

When will it be likely for Restaurants to work fully (premium plans) on Register?

When will there be a way to allow custom sorting of modifiers in items, instead of by alphabetical.

Will we ever have more flexibility with table timers? We use them to guide staff when to offer more rounds of drinks but right now that runs out after 2 rounds. Would be good if the timers could reset when new items are added to the bill, or be given the choice to manually reset it, or the choice to trigger a timer from a preset selection of times (eg I would set up 5 and 30 mins, that way if a table wants 5 mins to decide on their order but the staff member currently dealing with them is ending their shift during that time, someone else can attend to it). Having a more visual notification of a timer being reached would be good, perhaps a notification bar along the top that could optionally persist and be tapped to hide?

[pastalavista]

Hi @artizansty! Thank you for your questions. For your first question, similar to what I told @MJAYS, by the end of 2021, we plan to have full functionality of Square for Restaurants Plus available on Square Register. In the meantime, we are releasing Plus features as we finish engineering work on them, which means new features will be continuously rolled out through the year. Currently, the Plus features that are available on Square Register include item availability, table timers and colours, category rollups in sales reports, and live sales. Keep in mind that all Dashboard features, including shared settings and advanced reports are compatible with Square Register.

For your second question, thank you for your excellent feedback. I will pass this onto the product and engineering team for their roadmap consideration. 

[namastewatford]

Few Questions/Feature-requests..

1. Reservation system - Square appointment should be more Square-for-restaurant Table booking friendly. At present only option is to get licence for as many users as many tables we have in restaurant. I would prefer this licence to be part of Square-for-restaurant-plus or any other package.

2. Square-KDS: Can KDS we available for Android screens as well? We prefer more and more screens to be added inside Kitchen and adding so many ipads inside kitchen is not economically feasible. Also there is limit of connecting ipads to biggers screens.

3. Discounting feature:

- Square for restaurant do not have features of adding discount based on the need/criteria. Only option to add doscount based on criteria is for automatic discounts. Can we not get a feature same as automatic discount, but to get an option to trigger them based on need. In restaurant we need to provide discount on full menu based on demand. e.g. 2 for 1 on food and non-alcoholic drinks on certain days when presented a tastecard. 

All these discounts are on demand or on certain criteria based. Hence these can not be added as automatic.

[pastalavista]

Hi @namastewatford ! Thank you for your questions. Let me address them in the order you asked:

1. We are aware of the request for some sort of reservation system, and we are evaluating if this is something we will be able to support. Stay tuned!
2. Similarly, we’ve also heard from multiple people about the request for KDS to be available on different device types. This is something our product and engineering teams are actively evaluating. 
3. We’ve been working on creating new types of discounts over the last year. Check out “Create a Limited Time Discount” from this article, and let me know if that helps suit what you’re looking for 
4. Thank you for the feedback on gift cards. I understand this can be a bit confusing. I will pass this onto the product and engineering teams to make sure they are aware!

[namastewatford]

So happy to see that Feature request#2 is fully implmented now and KDS has become Android only application. Might be not convinient for some who liked iOS KDS. but I love the feature opened up for more device and screen sizes due to Android.

Feature-1 and 3, Yet to see more refinements. Still not using Appointments for Restaurant table booking. Would love to see if someone has implemented it well.

[namastewatford]

Is it 3pm GMT or 3pm BST (current UK timezone) ?

[tranguyen]

Hey @namastewatford, thanks for flagging that! It'd be 3PM BST rather than GMT actually. I'll make sure to note that in the original post. 

[namastewatford]

another Question I have regarding Gift Cards handling. This might be for all Square system as well.

I will ask this using a scenario

1. I issue a gift card to a customer worth say £20. There was no amount taken from customer (100% discount)

2. Customer uses this gift card against a meal and drink. £10 meal and £10 drink and pays using the gift card.

3. System based on the items setting,

     - shows 5% VAT for meal - £0.50

     - shows 20% VAT for alcohol - £2.00

4. End of day report shows this £20 as sale.

    -- I can exlcude £20 from sale by looking at the gift card sale.

5. Tax report shows £2.5 of VAT in the total. There is no way to distinguish this £2.50 from the tax report

Now I have to pay £2.5 to UK Gov for a transaction which was effectively a no revenue for us.

My question is how do we overcome this kind of situation when we can not control which gift card is used for what.

One way this can help us if we are able to create report against all gift-cards, transactions and applied taxes against those. So we can include/exclude those in VAT submissions.

any other suggestions welcome

[namastewatford]

what is joining link ?

[tranguyen]

Hey @namastewatford, the event is text-based so we'll be sharing all the answers here on this thread! I'll make sure to tag you in so you'll get a notification as well. 

[tranguyen]

Hi everyone, apology for the short notice but we're running a bit behind today. Thank you for all your questions so far, we'll be sharing the answers shortly. Stay tune! 

[pastalavista · Accepted solution]

Thank you everyone who participated in our Q&A today and I hope your questions were answered! You’ve given great suggestions about how we can improve our Square for Restaurants and KDS product that we’ll be sharing with the team.

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

Square Register and Restaurant Plus

We know many of you are looking to use Square for Restaurants Plus on the Square Register. By the end of 2021, we are planning to have full functionality of Square for Restaurants Plus available on Square Register. In the meantime, we are releasing Plus features as we finish engineering work on them, which means new features will be continuously rolled out through the year. Currently, the Plus features that are available on Square Register include item availability, table timers and colours, category rollups in sales reports, and live sales. Keep in mind that all Dashboard features, including shared settings and advanced reports are compatible with Square Register.

More functionalities for KDS

Thank you for all your feedback on KDS. There are a number of features that our product and engineering team are evaluating. We’ll be sure to share all your suggestions with the team so they can be looked at when we’re considering our road map.

Again, thank you for your participation. If you have any additional questions, please check out our guide.