Feature Request: Set up specific date and time selection for Square Online orders (Pre-orders)

[gelatofiasco]

The title of this post has been edited from the original: How to set up date and time selection for Square Online orders

Hi,

We quickly built a Square/Weebly Online Store this week so that people could place contactless/curbside orders for our gelato shop. It's working great and I love that the tickets print out when it's time to make the order.

We are also implementing a local delivery service where people can preorder with us and we'll deliver it on Friday night. Right now we're doing it by email to take their item order and we respond back with a Square Invoice to capture payment. Has anyone successfully found a way to do local delivery with the Online Store platform?

It would be awesome if besides Pickup or Shipping, merchants could toggle on a Local Delivery button and the merchant could set a few options, such as "Delivery on Friday night, 4-7pm," "Delivery on Saturday afternoon, 12-6pm." Maybe with an option to assign a fee, but that's less important during this emergency response.

Thank you and be safe.

[#2]

@lonestar31 @MCTMN 

We are currently testing Batch Processing in our Beta Community, which may help you out. This is another update to allowing pre-orders on your online store.  We'd love for you to join in the test and provide feedback.

To get started:

Please join our Square Online testing group.
Once accepted there are instructions in the group of how to get started in the test.

[#3]

Hi all! Thank you for jumping into. your thread for pre-orders and more customizable delivery/pick up options. We're excited that this feature is now moving into Beta testing, and we'd love to have you check it out.

Please take a few minutes to ready our Beta Recruiting post- and make sure you're a fit. We're looking to get his launched in the next few days. Also if you've replied to this thread, we will be sending you information on this test via DM as well.

[#4]

The title of this post has been edited from the original: How to set up date and time selection for Square Online orders

Hi,

We quickly built a Square/Weebly Online Store this week so that people could place contactless/curbside orders for our gelato shop. It's working great and I love that the tickets print out when it's time to make the order.

We are also implementing a local delivery service where people can preorder with us and we'll deliver it on Friday night. Right now we're doing it by email to take their item order and we respond back with a Square Invoice to capture payment. Has anyone successfully found a way to do local delivery with the Online Store platform?

It would be awesome if besides Pickup or Shipping, merchants could toggle on a Local Delivery button and the merchant could set a few options, such as "Delivery on Friday night, 4-7pm," "Delivery on Saturday afternoon, 12-6pm." Maybe with an option to assign a fee, but that's less important during this emergency response.

Thank you and be safe.

[AshleyK]

Hi @rich4747 I've merged your post with an existing thread that will help answer your questions. I would encourage you to browse the thread to see which workaround fits best for your business, but I see some sellers like @asol using modifiers to help alleviate the pain of this. @ChefAngela77 may also have some workarounds for you here. 

[ChefAngela77]

Hi @rich4747  - we had a heck of time with this too.  Thanks @AshleyK for the merge.

We spent weeks trying to hack it and finally did, by fussing around with two parameters - the "order prep time" and the "delivery time" window.  Also, it matter when you say your business is open.  All of this can be found in the Settings>Edit Location section.

What we ended up doing is saying our business was only open on Fridays (our delivery day) and saying that the delivery time was from 1 minute to 4 hours (which is our driver's time span).  Then we had to say the "prep time" was "available immediately".

You will have to fuss a bunch, and do some faux shopping to see what the confirmation will say to your clients, but you should get there eventually.  I practically pulled my hair out and for weeks, was modifying these parameters 2x/day to get them right.

Square STILL can't allow us to give people a span on the pick-up side of things, it still says "after noon" instead of between noon and 1:30 (which is our time).  So we email everyone to remind them.  It's tedious, but better than all the other marketplace sites out there.

[Valentina]

While I don't have an update to share about the requested pre-order feature at this time, I found a workaround in this thread that may be useful in the meantime.

I also wanted to jump in here to let you know that you can turn off the setting related to the Only a few left message you're seeing on these items. I hope this is helpful, @KGVmonograms.

[Jiveturkeylegs1]

I’m waiting for the ability to allow customers to select a delivery time! That would greatly help me.  Presently, I’m using the pickup feature and select delivery facilities are told that their day is a particular day for delivery and they order and select a time but it would be so much nicer and more professional to have the ability to select delivery times as we can select pickup times.. or allow customers to select I should say.

[worldtree]

We order a lot of items for our shop based on pre-orders, I would like to be able to set up new items list them as for pre-order. I want to be able to track inventory without having to enter in an actual inventory quantity because I won't know numbers and I only need to know how many to order.

In addition to this, can we please get the delivery and pick-up prep time where we can put a specific date? Every week I have to go in and change the prep time for pre-ordered products. But if I could just say this item will be available 03 July 2020 that would be very helpful.

[nika]

Hey @worldtree- Pre-ordering is something our team is looking into, as well as customized delivery and prep time. 

You can check out what our friend @PreOrder_Apps has to offer in regards to pre-order integrations!

[Joey1]

Accept pre-orders to be able to gauge demand, then we can bill the customers once limit has been reached and shipped out, it would help with wholesalers and dropshipping circumstances.

On some products you can have it to where you ask the customer to pay what they think is fair.

[AshleyK]

HI @Joey1 I've merged your post with an existing thread that will help answer your need for a pre order system. As you know, this is a feature request we are tracking, but you might want to look into what @PreOrder_Apps is offering as a workaround! Thank you!

[bunker]

I run a microgreens business where I send out an email the week before directing customers to my square store for the following weeks deliveries. The trouble is i want to establish a pick up and delivery time. like a specific date and time not 5 days 3 hours or 3 weeks from the order date. Like when people order they get a message saying "thank you your order will be delivered/ready for pick up between 4 and 6 on friday july 3rd".

Am I missing something can i make this work? i feel the only option right now is to edit the order confirmation email and say "dont pay attention to the date below".

Ideas? Is there a work around or can this be added as an option?

[AshleyK]

Hey @bunker and thanks for reaching out! This is a popular feature request that we are still tracking. I know it can feel really frustrating to not have specific dates to deliver on. I know a lot of sellers at this time are adjusting their prep time(s) to help alleviate the stress of this, but as of now, you will need to post a banner for your website or emails.

@pessosices I know you expressed frustration around this issue as well. Have you found any other workarounds that helped?