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Beta Member

Is there a way to limit the number of orders per hour?

[The title of this thread has been edited from the original: Limit orders per hour?]

 

Is there a way to limit orders per hour in the square store? Like I get a pile of orders and they are all set for being ready in a certain time from the ordering time. But is there a way to set it so if you have say 20 orders for 10:15am after 20 it will bump the next ones to be ready for like 10:30 or 10:45?

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Hey there! I've got an update on this feature 💥

 

We've just launched Order Staggering for Square Online Store, which lets sellers set the number of orders they can take every 15 minutes (so that they don't get flooded with too many orders at once that they can't fulfill).

 

This can be found in our dashboard > Settings > Pickup & Delivery > select a location > edit Hours.

 

screenshot_2020-05-06_at_1.20.42_pm.png

 

Let me know if you have any questions about this, or any additional feedback regarding this update 💡

️ Isabelle | she/her
Seller Community & Super Seller Program Manager | Square, Inc.
Learn about the Super Seller program!

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Hello @MattHebb1995,

 

Thank you for posting in the Seller Community.

 

At this moment, we have no way to limit the number of orders placed within a given time frame. We definitely see how it could benefit your business model. Our teams are constantly looking through our seller's feedback to make necessary improvements, and we will be sure to let you know if anything ever changes or if new updates are released. 

 

The one work around we have is being able to limit the exact prep time needed for each specific item, but we are not able to stop how many orders are placed during your business hours. Please check out this page to go over all your options, and let me know if you have any other questions by replying to this thread. 

Alex_
Community Moderator, Square // Moderador de la Comunidad, Square
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Oh yes I am aware of the prep time setup which does help alot. The biggest problem is the first part of the morning, you get 60 orders over night all coming an hour after opening because of a 1 hour prep time that is alot of people all at once. Thus if it kept bumping the time every so many orders that would be great. We can work with it for now though and hopefully someday a new feature appears 

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Please update when this is possible. This the biggest opportunity we have as a business and I’m having to look into another pos system to handle this. 

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Please add this feature. Essential to stop getting overwhelmed at any one time!

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We are having the same issue during our busiest nights and for some reason everyone wants pizza at 5pm on a Friday night. 😉 We've had some success bumping our order ready time from 30 minutes to 45 or 1 hour, but it's a messy solution. I would like to be able to define each hour with a number of available order slots. For example, 40 orders available between 5-6pm, if full, then bump availability to the next slot. I see this technique mentioned elsewhere as "throtteling". I believe Square's appointment module has some of the functionality that could be ported to Square orders. Think about a therapist as a pizzaiolo (pizza maker).

Keith

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Super Seller

I would also LOVE to see this feature added. We are having to call customers to try and move pickup times so it does not overload our kitchen and make customers wait well passed their selected pickup time.

Luke Nieuwland
Owner/Operator
https://www.whiskyrun.com/
Co-Founder
https://birrdi.com/
Co-Founder
https://www.lakeeffect.ca/
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This is a must have or we will need to switch to a different POS system. We are currently working around this manually, but are explaining that Square doesn't offer an option to control the work flow and that we are very sorry for the inconvenience. 

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Do you have an update to this? We got $300 of orders in a 5 minute window, all with the same pickup time and ended up having multiple people waiting for 45 minutes once they arrived. Not only is this horrible in terms of managing customer flow and work in the kitchen, it puts us at risk in regards to breaking current regulations in regards to not having people gather together. If there's not a solution soon, we'll likely be switching POS systems.

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any way to use orders api to limit total sales per hour? I am not a programmer, but I might try, this is an important feature for me.

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Gonna second the this would be great to have to both help staff and to enforce some social distancing by limiting to like 10 orders every 30 minute time slot.

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Woo I hope this update happens!

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I agree!  Seems like this would be a great feature given the amount of small restaurants that recently switched over to try online ordering due to take-out only rules.  We are just sitting on our online ordering and are scared to launch it because of how easily we will get overwhelmed.  Unfortunately, I don't  think we will launch online at all until this feature is available.  😞  

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We are getting overwhelmed during the dinner rush with online orders from our new online store.  Of all the problems we could be having right now this isn't too bad! but it is disappointing to our customers to wait an extra 15-25 minutes for an order they placed for a specific pick up time.  Is it possible to limit the number of orders per time slot? For instance limit to 3-5 orders every ten minutes?   We have played with extending "prep time" for orders but that just pushes our problems further down the rail. Thanks for any ideas or advice!

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We are a food truck that is BEYOND DESPERATE for this feature. It is indeed a "good problem" to have so many orders, but for instance when we have 20 tickets (with 4+ items per ticket) that have ordered for a 5:30 pick up time, it is next to impossible to not fall behind. Then everything just snowballs, especially if you have another round of orders stacking up for a 5:45 or even 6pm pick up. We've adjusted our prep times (which isn't that user friendly to find in the midst of chaos) and if we fall super behind, we've toggled off the accepting online orders (which again isn't the easiest feature to find either.) If there was a way to only allow perhaps 5 orders per 15 minute timeframe - or something like this - it would be so helpful. Thankfully people are understanding during these times, but I don't know how much longer I can keep explaining why they are having to wait when the receipt says their order will be ready after Xpm. We have also put a note in our check out notes that says to keep an eye out for an update that their order is in process or ready, but some customers tell me that they don't get those email or text notifications until much later.

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Hey @Sweetwood @EMT and @empanadamama-

 

Please take a look at my best answer in this thread. I'm hoping this order staggering feature will be beneficial to you given your recent posts. Let me know if you have any further suggestions. 

️ Isabelle | she/her
Seller Community & Super Seller Program Manager | Square, Inc.
Learn about the Super Seller program!
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THANK YOU so much @isabelle this is like the best news I've heard all year! 🤣 Anxious to try it out today - fingers crossed that this solves our problems!

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OMG SAME! and Square needs to add a big easy RED button to pause orders when backup. We were so overwhelmed with orders one day, and couldn't even find the toggle button to turn them off. Not to mention if you don't have a laptop near its nearly impossible to find on another device. Square needs to be so much better with these updates! 

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Yes!! This is exactly a feature I have been looking for or seeing if there is a workaround. Like even if only 20 people can order for the 12:30 time slot, and then it bumps them to the next available time slot at 1pm or something like that. I agree, it's a great problem to have, but it's definitely still a problem and this seems like it would be a great solution.

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@empanadamama you know it exsists now? haha they added in that feature so woohoo!

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This feature is necessary for our restaurant to use Square's online store. We have as many as 45 customers trying to order takeout for a 5pm pickup. No way we can satisfy all of them.

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