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]

So sorry for the confusion here, @Amanda_Bierock @FarmAndBar and others!

Pre-Authorization recently became available to all users of Square for Restaurants (Free, Premium, and Plus), and you should be able to turn in on by following the instructions in this support article, via the Dashboard and device settings.

Enable and Configure Pre-Authorization Bar Tabs

If you are using Square for Restaurants and aren't able to enable Pre-Auth by following these steps, please reach out to our support team for assistance.

For businesses that use Square Point of Sale, there is not currently a way to access Pre-Authorization.  While we did run a Beta test last year for Pre-Authorization on Point of Sale, it has been discontinued and Square for Restaurants is the only application that currently supports this functionality.

The team developing Pre-Authorization decided last summer to focus their efforts on Pre-Auth within Square for Restaurants and discontinued the Beta and development of Pre-Auth for Point of Sale.

Some testers who participated in the Point of Sale Beta we ran last year may still have access via their open tickets settings on individual devices (like @ryanwanner) but accounts that were not enrolled in that Beta feature last summer can no longer be added.

@nika I hope this context is helpful when these questions come up - it can be confusing because at times we had a POS Beta on the way.  It's understandable when it's been a request for so long 🙂

Andy
Beta Specialist

[#3]

Hello all! We are so excited to let the community know that this feature is now available for Square for Restaurants! For more information on enabling and configuring preauthorization for bar tabs, check out this help article. Respond here if you have any questions, and thanks for your patience while our team built this out. We appreciate you!

️ Kristen
Square Community Manager
Product Engagement

[#4]

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!

[BWH]

Please move this up the priority list. Its is a requirement for so many industries.  

[scooterjoes]

What is your definition of “more seller interest”?  Please consider that a majority of sellers do not take the time to complain about a missing feature or post to this forum.  This feature has more than enough interest at this point, and is super simple to implement; I know because I have implemented this very feature in the past as an application dev manager.  Put it on the short term roadmap.

[DeniseAck]

There are 7 pages of people requiring this functionality plus many others who don't take the time to get on the seller forum!  I mean, really now!  As ScooterJoe says, how many people do you need!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jmack056]

Hello,

We have an occasional issue (like most places do) when a customer wants to open a tab rather than "Pay as you go". I can use a card to create a ticket for them, but that does not store the card information for later in case they forget to pay or leave without paying. We would like to be able to use a card to start a ticket and also have the card information so that we can be sure to close that tab at closing. Is this a possibility within square?

Thank you

[jmack056]

I just wrote a post about this before I found this thread. This post was written nearly a year ago and this still isnt avaliable to customers?!?! Wow!!

[HPC_Shop]

Hey @jmack056,

You can store a customer's credit card by setting them up with 'Use Card on File.' Basically you'd have to setup the person as a customer in your system first or at the time you swipe the card, but then you can attach that card to your customer in Square, build up their tab, then run the charge at the end of the night (if that's what the customer wants). More details can be found here.

Hope this helps.

[dp1]

I would like to add my request for this feature.  Come on!

[katieand]

Thansk for adding your voice @dp1! Can you share a little bit more about your use case so I can share it with our product team?

[dp1]

when a customer hands you his card to start a tab, they don't expect to have to give the card back to you to pay.  if they give you a card you would want to be able to add items to the tab and close it out without getting the card back.

[berobi]

Using our woocommerce store, we have Square set to authorize only, and capture after we manually run the capture action.  HOWEVER, we are getting captures for the full authorization, despite editing the order, and reducing the total, BEFORE capturing.  I echo the dozens and dozens of comments posted:  this is standard CC functionality for the most part, really needed by lots of different businesses, and has a ton of support for a feature request.