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!

[March71214]

This will be our fourth year using square at our bars in our Banquet Facility. We have had great sucess with them and are very thankful. However, I would also love to see this feature!! It doesn't happen to us often either, but when it does it is very time consuming to track the person down, or worse loose the sale. These issues may seem small to a large company such as yourselves, but to a small bussiness/ family owned business it is a big issue. I hope the team will make this a priority soon. Thank you.  

[jmack056]

There are many other POS vendors out there that do. I am to the point of dumping square myself.

[ravenkwill]

I'm thinking of trying the Square Appointment route. Not sure if the prepay deposit would fly with the various booking engines we use (booking.com, Expedia, etc). And my belief is that the people who aren't going to show also aren't going to answer if I try to get in touch with them (that's the case for this weekend's no-show - they didn't respond to our pre-arrival email or the text or phone call during the day of arrival).

And I hope this thread will encourage the Powers That Be to provide pre-authorization sometime in the near future.

Thanks for your ideas!

[EJ_]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts @ravenkwill

The ongoing thread How can I pre authorize a card? has a few workarounds from your fellow sellers. 

There's nothing new to report, but if anything does change we'll be updating that existing thread. 

[ravenkwill]

Given the lack of response, do people have suggestions for processors who do provide preauth?

[BWH]

I use PayAnywhere for my pre-auth. It last a maximum of 7 days before it expires. I imagine I'll need to start doing the pay transactions through them however or they will eventually cancel my account. For now though, it works well enough and I haven't had any issues.

[BWH]

Square needs to get with the program though.

Does anyone know if you use a square terminal if you have the option to do pre-auth? (Their custom POS hardware vs an app).

[PREMIERCAR]

I gave up on square and got a merchant account with my bank. 

[SingleSpeedCafe]

Put us on the list of businesses wanting a way to take a refundable damage deposit!

[sixcarcolin]

Is this seriously not available at present for Square for Restaurants? If not then you failed.