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!

[thdpr]

So... since it's been 6 years since this topic was opened and all of us on here have been promised this feature and it hasn't happened, I would love to hear from folks about what other companies they have researched for these features? I'm thinking my company will end up switching and I'm curious if other bars have found a better tool that I should look at. 

[BlominA2]

@thdpr - We switched from Upserve, which did have this functionality and it worked seamlessly. Unfortunately, during Covid there were just other things that Square excelled at over Upserve (online menu maintenance, inventory management, QR ordering, appointments, etc). Now that we're back to relying more heavily on in-person tabs, it's a bit of a toss up. 

[ryanwanner]

@BlominA2 , @thdpr You are correct in your frustration, but from my experience with open tabs here I can say that it looks like Q4 2020 was supposed to be a launch window for tabs, but because the majority of foodservice facilities in Square's service area were in various stages of lockdown, Square re-prioritized features for the more mobile side of things. I do agree that now that we're all back to some semblance of "normal" this needs to be more seriously developed. 

I don't know if you saw my pinned post that Open Tabs are available on the Square system right now via the QR Code self-ordering functionality. I've been using it in my store as both a beta tester and now in general release mode, and for the most part it's really slick. And the few little nitpicks I have with the system can be overlooked for the simple fact that tabs are available. Should this be made available on the in-person points of sale? Absolutely. Gut feeling is that there are engineers hard at work making that happen. Please understand that taking a system that was really coded for one-and-done transactions and making it capable of storing credit card information (and alllllllll the security procedures and credit card network negotiations that are needed to make that happen) will take time to get right: imagine how infuriated you'd be if the system stopped working correctly in the middle of a weekend night! For now, if open tabs are a make-or-break thing, I recommend exploring the QR Code option before jumping ship. It's your business though, and you need to make the right choices for you. 

[thdpr]

@ryanwanner Yeah I understand how tough it can be to code and recreate a software but in the midst of a pandemic where no one wanted to touch anything, I had to take credit cards and put them in a cute little coupon holder behind my bar. It was a tough sell for my bartenders. I don't plan to use the QR self ordering function because that removes a huge part of our business - the personal interaction with my knowledgeable bartender. And the fact of the matter is, other platforms are doing this securely, square isn't inventing the wheel. I guess my biggest beef here is that all of our sales reps promised us the moon and six years later there is no clear confirmation from the company that they care or are actually working on it.

I have been using square basically since they launched in 2009. It works great when you are traveling from place to place at festivals but there have been some significant humps here when it comes to utilizing it in my bar. We have customers who leave their credit card with us and people who stiff us if we don't take their card.

It's 100% valid that after six years of requests and lots of empty promises from our sales reps, that the natives are getting restless. 

[Martydo]

They have been bs ing all of us about the critical feature for years and no progress. I was recently told they will never do pre authorize cards because the core of their software is not secure enough and that the CC companies won’t allow them to do it. So they have apparently been hiding the truth all along. 

[FarmAndBar]

Clearly you are not listening to us.  We are considering leaving square for another system that allows us to preauthorize cards when opening a tab.  Clearly this thread was started three years ago and you have yet to implement it.  Even with the new Beta Restaraunt and Bar on the hand-held device you seem to think that we aren't serious.  It is key to running our business.  Our bank has been pressing us hard to adopt their system.  I've dropped a $1000 on our system and we are about to expand.  We will not expand with Square if this is not resolved.

[DrumBrew]

Bruh it’s not going to get resolved. Square doesn’t care. They wooed many of us back from other services that had pre-auth with the promise of it coming “soon”. As others have mentioned square is incapable of providing this service because of the way the system is set up. So long story short, square will never get us this service. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when folks leave again for other services, because we won’t be wooed back with false promises of pre-auth…that’s for sure.

[cantrellr]

Amen!!

They are literally the last POS platform that doesn't support this. We hook into Square reporting in our accounting, inventory and reporting systems, or we would have already left Square. We are currently evaluating several platforms with a goal of migrating this summer. If Square fixes this problem, we would drop the hunt, but that doesnt look likely. Thanks for all the extra hassle dragging this request out for years

[cantrellr]

Kick that horse EVERY **bleep** DAY!!

[Deuces]

We moved to Toast and it is simply amazing.