Appointments is deleting our customers' addresses - how can this be stopped?

[amjessey]

Appointments is overwriting our customers' addresses - how can this be stopped?

Hi @tranguyen 

When creating an appointment, whenever we enter a new address this deletes the customer's address saved in Customer Directory. This is of course not wanted as we need to always keep their existing address intact. How can this be done please?

We need to enter new addresses in the Appointment because sometimes the appointment will take place at an alternative address, i.e. not their primary address, as saved in the Directory. 

Thank you

[amjessey]

I have sent a request to Support.

[tranguyen]

Hey @amjessey, I just want to follow up on this and let you know that this is actually a known issue. Right now, customers can only have one address on file so that's why the addresses are being changed anytime the service is moved to a different location. I'm trying to get a bit more clarification as to whether there's a timeframe for when this issue will be fixed. I'll be sure to update this thread when I know more. 

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

Thank you for making the enquiries your end.

The issue and a workaround:

We have clients that wish to regularly see us at various addresses alternating between them, e.g. his home and his place of work. As we know, the Appointments overwrites the existing address in Customer Directory with the address written in Appointments, so we have to spend time preventing this from occurring.

The current workaround for this, which is not practical in the medium/long term is to create new custom fields (address type), as many as required for the number of different address the client regularly uses and then copy and paste the existing address into one of these custom address fields (which is actually five fields, one for each line of the address) and write in the other addresses into the remaining address fields. Then in Appointments, when we create the appointment and it presents the default address, if that is the one that the client wishes to use for this appointment great, we save it. But if it isn't we have to go back to Customer Directory, copy and paste the relevant address from there back into Appointments. Appointments overwrites the default address in the Customer Directory and the whole process is repeated the next time we book an appointment for the client. It's all very time consuming.

Another thing - Appointments doesn't provide the County field of the Address, therefore, every time an appointment is created the County value in the Customer Directory is deleted. 

I think Appointments is good overall and we are using it daily, like I'm sure many other Square users are. There are some areas it could improve, and I have submitted feature requests for these, however, the problem described in this post is causing us real trouble.

I hope this is fixed soon and any information you can provide as to when this will be would be appreciated.

Thank you 

[tranguyen]

Hi @amjessey, thanks for sharing this!

The other workaround I can think of is to perhaps use the Appointment Notes fields. When customer makes a booking, any information they enter in the notes will be accessible to yourself.

So instead of making the appointments at the customer's location, you can change it so appointments will be at your locations and direct customers to enter their addresses in the note fields instead. With this, the addresses won't be overwrite but you'll still be able to get a record of where the appointments should be. 

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

Thank you for making the suggestion. It would work, however, the compromise would be the email the customer receives confirming the appointment would have null as the address. When he saves it to his calendar, eg Google Calendar, this would also show nul. This will be confusing as a calendar event that shows not address is not helpful.

I think it may be the lesser of two evils following the workaround I have suggested. 

Thank you.

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

Have you been able to obtain any further clarification as to when a fix will be implemented?

Thank you

[tranguyen]

Hey @amjessey, thanks for following up on this! I don't have a timeframe for this right now as it's technically a feature request and has been filed as such. I've followed up on the ticket to check with our team as well so hopefully I'll be able to share an update soon.

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

There's another problem - Address Line 2 is not being sent to to the linked Square Appointment calendar in Google Calendar. We have noticed this with two appointments this week. I have checked the Customer Directory and Address Line 2 has values but in the appointment in Google Calendar, it is missing. This means the address is incomplete and we are unable to use the address link which Google Calendar provides as Google Maps can't find the location because the address is incomplete. For a salesperson on the road this is hugely inconvenient. Please bring to the attention of the product team this new issue, thank you.

All these issues regarding addresses in Square Appointments are causing us real problems. I hope they will be fixed soon and we would appreciate advice when this might be. Thank you.

[tranguyen]

Hey @amjessey, thank you for flagging this! I'm checking in with our team regarding the Address Line 2 not populating for Google Calendar. If possible, would you mind sending me a screenshot via private message showing an example of this? That way, it'll help the team have a better understanding and help troubleshoot the issue. 

[amjessey]

Done.

Thank you

[tranguyen]

Hi @amjessey, thank you for bearing with me while I look into this with our team, especially since it took longer than anticipated.

From chatting with the team, this is actually a known limitation within our current Google integration. It's something that has been flagged to Google by our team but we don't have a timeline for when the issue will be fully resolved. 

[amjessey]

Hi @tranguyen 

Ok, but please note this issue is overcome in the HubSpot integration by merging Address Line 1 and Address Line 2 into HubSpot's sole 'Street Address' field. Can this principle not also be applied in Appointments with the sync to Google Calendar? Please let your developers know. 

https://app.hubspot.com/ecosystem/7007746/marketplace/apps/marketing/ecommerce/square-data-sync

Thank you

[amjessey]

Related issue: https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Feature-Requests-Point-of-Sale/Feature-Request-Integrate-with-Hub...

[tranguyen]

Hi @amjessey, thank you for flagging this. It looks like one of my colleagues are currently looking into this case. I've followed up with them as well to check whether this is an expected behaviour or a bug right now. Once I have more information, I'll be sure to follow up on this thread and my colleague will be reaching out via email as well.