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!

[AmyHBC]

Someone from development just told me "there is no timeline" for this which sounds to me like it's not a priority. This is a huge disappointment and makes us want to switch POS systems. We need the whole seller community to keep pestering them!!

[birdhouseinn]

Not having this feature just cost me $650!  I had a guest I was getting suspicious about and went to try to figure out if their card was legit.  There was no way other than actually charging the card, and we don't usually do that until check-out.  By the next morning they were gone early and of course the card was declined.  This will probably be enough to prompt me to look into other credit card options.  Sad, when it is so clearly needed, and the service is good in so many other ways.

[EJ_]

Hi @birdhouseinn

I'm sorry to hear you had to go through this. 

While you can't pre-authorize a card at this time, we do have some information available that might help you in preventing these situations from happening. 

Check out this existing article for some information that could help you moving forward:

Protect Yourself from Scams and Fraud

[rmtpro]

Square - you have known about this customer request for over a year and have not offered a solution. Poor customer support. I can no longer use square because you do not offer this feature.

Alternative merchant services:

https://www.merchantmaverick.com/top-7-square-alternatives/

[Helen]

We hear you @Caneland760 @AmyHBC and we understand how important this is to your businesses!

Thanks for sharing your interest in here — we don't have a timeline to share but this thread will be updated as soon as more information available! 

[Tom]

Hi @rmtpro, thank you for taking the time to reach out and I'm sorry for the frustrating experience.😕 I went to check for any updates, but we do not have a timeline that we can share out. Please do keep in touch as we will circle back to this thread with any developments.

[twinkelman]

Please add us to this request. We need this feature

[Pat1970]

Square, you are loosing customers because you are lacking the option of a refundable deposit. You will lose me too.

Do you have more important things to do then keeping your customers?

Helloooo!

[Helen]

We hear you @Pat1970 and thanks for posting your interest about this, it helps our team to understand what you need for your business!

I know you have to do what's right for your business but as soon as this feature is available we'll update this thread to let everyone know. 

[EJ_]

Thanks for voicing your interest in this feature @twinkelman

I don't have anything new to report around this, but if anything changes we'll update everyone since it's one of our more popular feature requests.