Beating a Dead Horse but it needs to be: Preauthorization

[FarmAndBar]

We need to be able to preauthorize credit cards when running a tab. Period.  We really enjoyed the low buy in and easy menu development and a couple of the other features, but a bar/restaurant needs to be able to run a tab and preauthorize a credit card.  I've gone back and looked at conversations about it and it appears that this has been a CONSTANT request by users that has gone ignored.

I'd like to know why it isn't available.

[#2]

Pre-Authorization for Bar Tabs Update ⭐
Hi everyone - I'm Hadley, from the F&B product team. First of all, thank you SO MUCH for continuing to share all the feedback here over the years, we know how important the Bar Tabs feature is. For anyone who is not aware, this feature is currently in beta in the US for Square for Restaurants POS. 

➡️ You can join the beta community here and our beta team will enable feature to your account. You can find the support article for getting set up on RST POS here. 

As a reminder, when a feature is in beta, there is still some engineering work happening to iron out the smaller bugs and optimizing the experience for our sellers and their customers. If you choose to participate in the beta testing, please share any feedback (good or bad 😄) to our beta team at betafeedback@squareup.com so we can learn how it is working for you and your staff.  

Thank you!

[ryanwanner]

Hey @katieand, I think I can give you a use case from my dark days of the Aloha POS...

Busy bar setting, people getting up and down and ordering from bartenders and servers.

On the initial order, the bartender asks for a credit card to hold a tab open. With Square, we have to keep the card in a holder or the register until the customer is ready to "tab out." 

Flash forward to later in the evening: many drinks have been imbibed, and the customer doesn't remember they have a tab open and wanders out to catch their Uber. With Square, we can still run the card to close the tab, but we now have their card. And usually the customer doesn't come back to get it. So the customer is now inconvenienced and has to get a new card, and we end up with a pile of dead credit cards in our safe. Or, worse, we don't hold a card because the customer doesn't want to give it up, and we end up eating the cost of their evening when we comp out the tab to close out our day.

With Aloha, we were able to save the customer's name and card info with one tap (Save tab) and swipe. We had the card back to the customer along with their drink, and they just had to give the bartender or server their name for their next rounds. If they leave before closing out their tab, we just have to charge the card. They still have their card and we got paid.

The biggest challenge with the Card On File option Square has is that in the heart of the rush, we don't have the time to set up a new customer, put the card info in, and remember to attach the customer to the order. Seconds count when you have a bunch of rowdy drunks wondering where their next drink is. 🙂

[Tom]

Thanks for checking in here, @Nukebrewer. I went to look for any further developments on this request and there aren't any updates that I can share out right now. Please do keep in touch.

[Helen]

Hey @ryanwannter, Helen here stepping in for @katieand to say thank you very much for your post — this insight is really useful to the Payments team. I appreciate that time is of the essence for any busy business! 

We'll keep advocating for an efficient way to pre-authorize cards with Square POS for you, and we'll post updates as soon as they're available.

Thanks again!

[redplum187]

Hello,

I just started working for a new bar in my town and we are using square.

Tonight we had our soft opening and I'm trying to figure out if theres a way to NOT need to run the clients card when they are ready to close out (since its already been previously scanned/inserted)

For example, they order beers, we then take their card and insert it to keep an on going tab. But when they are ready to close out, the card needs to be inserted again to close out.

Is there an easy way to avoid dealing with this?

Thanks!

[ryanwanner]

Unfortunately there isn't a way to hold the credit card information currently. You'll have to physically hold onto the card or set up the customer with a card on file. There's another thread here talking about the same thing.

For Card on File setup Square has an FAQ page that can help you get started. Hopefully the ability to hold card data will come sooner than later...

[BigBearBoards]

Wow, I just brought my Rental Business over to Square and paid for equipment expecting this to be a standard in the industry.

This is now the slowest link in my business to saving card on file to a customer and create a group called rentals it works, but wow is this process is very time intensive, when I can have 2 registers open and a 15 person back up in each line while wait for them to enter their email and put them in a group.

I am about to hire an IT to make a scanner that can save as group numbers into memory to get a run around since a lot of credit cards can't be imprinted anymore or have it scan and print each customers card and staple it to their file till return then shred. But this is risky and not 2001 anymore.

[Captainship]

This is so dumb. Weekend nights at my bar, we’ll have 150+ open tabs. Square expects me to hold, file, then find 150 or more customer credit cards because they don’t do a pre-auth? FAIL!

[Tom]

Hey @Captainship, thanks for taking the time to share your insight here. I went to check for updates on this request, but there isn't anything that I can share out right now. Rest assured that I'll be surfacing your post internally and I'll point out how the scale of having to hold that many cards is cumbersome for your business. Apologies for the frustration—please keep in touch as we'll announce any updates. 

[MadTack]

This reply was created from merging an existing thread: Any chance in the future Square will allow me to pre authorize a card?

At my business, we allow saddles to go out on "Trial"  My old CC processor allows me to place a hold on a person's CC for the purchase price.   Then after the trial is over I can switch the hold to a sale, or release the hold.  This is the only reason I am keeping my old company and cant go to Square 100%.   Is it going to be something available in the future? 

[Helen]

Thanks for your interest in using Square for your business @MadTack. I'm afraid I can't share a timeline for when you'll be able to pre-authorize cards with Square in future. I appreciate how important it is for your business.

I've added your post to this thread. We'll let you know here if we have any udpates and you'll automatically be notified.