Pre-order for Thanksgiving...

[HumblePies]

Okay.  We are a pie shop.  Our Superbowl season is coming up with Thanksgiving.  We have our primary pick up days the Tuesday and Wednesday prior to the big day. Is there any way in the Weebly system that square uses for its base online system.  Is there any way to limit the thanksgiving orders to just those days and certain times without changing our other online ordering?

[Hanmaru]

It's been a while since I requested this feature, but I don't think it's a particularly difficult request.

[LinWoodSweets]

I own a bakery and have tried for years on the square platform to set certain pickup days/times for holiday preorders. The only work around I've found is to set it up as a service and create a modifier with the set date/time frame options for them to choose on each item OR a modifier that is a short answer for them to type it in. I really wish there was a better way to have long range pickup for a set date/time.

[TheSweetSide]

LinWoodSweets - When you use a modifier as your workaround, can you then setup a report that will tell you how many of each item are needed on a specific date? For example; can you get a report that shows you how many pumpkin pies you need for  11/24?  We have struggled with this square limitation for years as well, and this seems like it might be a pretty good workaround, I am just curious if you have any experience with reporting.

[baker]

The way we did it was to create a category called Thanksgiving and put our pie offerings under that.  Additionally we created a modifier that the customer could choose - like pick up Tuesday before 9 am or Wednesday after noon. We then put in capital letters on the item description that the customer sees to ask them to please  ignore the date and time that square will give you for the pick up time and instead follow the modifier  date and time that they picked.

You can create a report on modifiers and see how many pies have been ordered each day for which pick up day and time.  It is not elegant but it will give you the info I believe you are looking for.  

 We also print out an order ticket for each pie ordered and put it on our "board" under the day of pick up and then with pen and paper add all the pies up to get a rough production tally.

Good luck and hope this was helpful.

[Devin3627]

@baker @LinWoodSweets, i've had the same problem too for a long time. During Thanksgiving, we typically have nearly 200 orders reserved for pickup in a matter of 2 days, on top of normal business hours. To cope with this, i have built an order manager app that helps with this process and keeping track of the items on reserve. It's so bad trying to keep track of 200 paper tickets on top of everything else going on. And God forbid if your count gets off. 

Let me know if i can help out! 

[LinWoodSweets]

Sorry, I thought I replied already! No, I haven't been able to run a report. But like @baker said, you may be able to run a report on modifiers. For us, when an order comes in, we just write it on our list for whatever day it is due then tally up how much to make of what. Now that we have a POS, a ticket auto prints when an order comes in online and we transfer the info to the list. If we need extra info, we can just pull it back up under orders. We get more calls or walkins for orders, so we forget to clear out orders online. (Then when you clear out Valentine orders at Mother's Day, everyone gets a notification their order is ready. OOPS! Wish there was a way to turn that off, lol.) 

[Tom_Herman]

A quick solution to clearing old orders: go to the Dashboard orders overview and choose Edit. Check off the orders you want to clear, mark them COMPLETE. The notifications won't go out. 

You can also do this one at a time from the POS by scrolling to the bottom and hit MARK AS and select Picked Up

[Devin3627]

So the easiest way I have done it @LinWoodSweets is to simply create additional items (if you sell those same items during regular business hours). I know it sounds stupid, but honestly it's the easiest way I've found. Furthermore, in Weebly, you can set each item's pickup time "out" to a certain date e.g. (2 weeks). 

The problem with this is it can be annoying and tedious sometimes. And setting the item "Preptime" out is a pain because you have to update it frequently so that your buyers aren't disabled from buying as the days tick down. I wish it was setup like the feature they added of "days closed". 

Let me know if that makes sense! I would also create a separate page for those items to properly router customer traffic. Example order.fatbacksbbq.com/thanksgiving-meals

[LinWoodSweets]

I thought about the prep time feature before but decided it was too much of a pain for all the items I have. Especially at holiday time when there's no extra time for anything. 

[Titas]

It will be great to have this feature!

[ZDeli]

We too would love this. We started using Tock, which is a reservation system, and works great, but we'd love to have one streamlined system through square.

[BernadetteA · Accepted solution]

Thanks for posting, @HumblePies and welcome back to the Community 😊

It looks like this is still a (very) popular feature request. I haven't heard of any recent updates, but I'll see if I can get some more information from the team fo you all. 

[Nolanryan]

any updates to pass along? Thanks

[WhittierFarms]

Having just finished our busy Thanksgiving rush, I'm reaching out with an urgent request for the pre-order feature. My colleagues requested today that due to the volume of customers not reading our holiday pick-up policy and just scheduling holiday specific items for whenever they want, I look at other online options that offer pre-order. If Square is going to launch this feature soon, I'd love to know so I don't have to rework our entire site to a new platform. Thank you.

[TheSweetSide]

We have requested this feature again and again for years from square. I have seen so many others request this also... it seems so simple!!?  We are also a bakery and run into this problem constantly with square. We actually use a different platform all together for our holiday sales because square lacks this capability, which is just frustrating, honestly. 🙂

[baker]

Another bakery here.  Couldn't agree more about on-line ordering for a specific pick up day such as the day before Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The work around that we employ in the absence of this feature invites confusion from our customers as well as stress to our staff.  Very frustrating.  

[cafedella]

+1 on this feature request - thanks!

[DebbyPortillo]

Me too. We really need to have a feature that enables customers to pick a special day that is outside of business hours.... like Thanksgiving or Christmas Day. 

[Rojd]

Agree as well. Needed 

[LinWoodSweets]

I've got it! So, I know that there are different options to set up an item as physical, service, prepared food, etc. What if you (Square) created an option for "Preorder" or "Presale" and have another setting within that  (like a modifier or variation) that let's us set the date/time window where people could choose from a drop down on the date and dropdown on the time within our set open hours. OR make it another modifier type thing/feature kind of like where there is a set amount of time prepared food takes to make, but make it a set date/time instead. Just brainstorming some options!