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!

[CarlooHeartsBee]

I expect this post to be deleted as Square is deleting most of my posts... I expect my entire Square account to be deleted at some point but with 10K on insta and another 6K on other channels I don't think they want the bad press. 

See below from Jeremy. I have twice asked him to confirm the feature - I am not a rental company looking for deposits. I have two taprooms that I'd like to set up Tabs using the touchless reader. At the very least I'd like to swipe a customers card and give it back. ONCE. Not keep it in a card box touching other cards like we need to do with setting up Tabs.

He suggested I look for other companies. This is after responding over email in Dec 2018 that this feature was in progress and telling me on the phone Jan 2019 that this feature was in face coming in Q4 of 2019. 

AND NOTHING has happened but censoring. 

Hi Carly,

My name is Jeremy, and I am apart of the Appointments specialist team that has been merged with our Loyalty/Marketing/Directory team here at Square. I would first like to apologize for how long it has taken for you to get response. We have not been ignoring you, that I can assure you of.


To answer your question, and to be honest, we still at this time do not have deposits. Unfortunately, you may have to look into other companies. 

Please let me know if you have any other issues, I am more than happy to help. In the meantime, I hope you have a great day. 

Jeremy
Square Customer Success

[FlaDumpster]

This reply was created from merging an existing thread: How do I charge a Security Deposit and how I return it?

Hello, we have a dumpster company and we need to charge for the dumpster as soon as we leave the dumpster in the property and charge to for a deposit.  How do I do that?  How does the client sees that on his end?

Thank you!!!!

[buyersremorse]

We've waited longer than we should have for this capability, but in a COVID world, I simply cannot hold cards anymore. We're on track to do more than $2M in credit card processing through Square this year, pay subscriptions for Restaurants and use Payroll. This migration will be painful, but is now compulsory for our business.

[cmusicshop]

There's a couple approaches that might work.

I created an item in my POS checkout called 'Deposit' (I do layaways).  I set it up non-tax because I charged the tax on the whole balance so this is just a piece of the total.  You could have it be taxed if that applies.  So in this case I hit the Deposit item, add the amount and process.  You can email or text a receipt or print if you have that set up

If you need a more advance method try using Invoices.  You can request a deposit and show the total amount due.  This would allow you to charge the deposit and apply it towards the total.

Your title said about returning it.  I'm guessing refund the deposit?

[SilverCliffInn]

Currently, we take reservations for our B&B by taking a credit card.  We run an authorization to ensure it is good before the customer checks in.  Is there a way to do this with Square?

[AshleyK]

Hi @SilverCliffInn and welcome to the Seller Community! This is a popular feature request that we are tracking, so I've merged your post with an existing thread to keep all the requests in one place. Thank you!

[SilverCliffInn]

Guess I have my answer.  I would like to use Square but without authorization it won't work for us.  Too bad.

[Spindrift]

We own a rental/retail shop. We have been pretty fortunate in that most people take care of the gear they rent. Recently we have had a few items come back severely damaged and we need a way to insure we don't get burned again. A quick easily refundable deposit function would be great. Can this be done?

[Joe]

Hi there, @Spindrift 👋 Thanks for reaching out to us here on the Seller Community! We are happy to have you join us!

I've gone ahead and merged your post into an existing thread of Sellers who were also inquiring about information regarding deposit authorizations. While a pre-authorization is not identical to the scenario you have described in your post, it would categorically act similarly for charging a customers card in the event that your gear returns damaged.

Feel free to sift through workarounds that Sellers on this thread have suggested, but my personal suggestion for you would be to simply charge the customer a rental fee and refund that rental fee if your products are returned unharmed. Square refunds can be submitted for transactions up until 1 year after the original transaction date, and return all funds - including fees - to your customer once issued.

I hope this information is helpful! Feel free to reach back out if you have any clarifying questions! 

[Ocfc]

We have the same business... we have been charging a separate security deposit  fee and have been refunding it upon return and no issues.... sucks there’s no hold option yet because people are not happy about funds being tied up until the refund posts.