Seller Community Feature Requests 2021: A Half Yearly Review

[#1]

It’s hard to believe, but we’re already halfway through 2021! With how fast this year has rolled by, it seems like a good idea to pause and take a look back at feature requests and product launches from the last six months.

I can’t overstate just how important your feature requests are: We love them. Please keep posting them! While it sometimes takes a while for new things to come to fruition, and we can't always make every requested feature happen, behind the scenes Square's Community staff are always advocating on your behalf using the feedback you provide on our forum❤️

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s look at some of our product launches and updates from the last 6 months.

Associations, Clubs and NFPs

Card Payments Now Available 💳

Our most requested feature for the past couple of years was launching payment support for ABNs used by clubs, associations and NFP organisations - we finally got there in May! Can't wait to start seeing Square Readers at Bunnings sausage sizzles 🌭

Square Register

Launched in Australia ✨

We released the Ferrari of Square hardware in Australia in March, which features a customer facing display and looks super slick 😎 It currently runs Square Point of Sale, Appointments, Square for Retail and the free version of Square for Restaurants (Square for Restaurants Plus support is in the works).

Square Loans

Launched in Australia 🎉

Previously known as Square Capital in the USA, we launched Square Loans in Australia - eligible Australian sellers are now able to see loan offers on their Online Dashboard 🏦

Square Contracts

Launched in Australia 🚀

We launched the ability to build and customise your own customer contracts! Collect an e-signature or print them out for your records, attach them to your invoices and use them to protect yourself from payment disputes 📝

Square for Restaurants

Printer Settings on iOS and Square Register

We’ve updated the printer settings for iOS and Square Register to make it even easier to configure printers, select items and categories to print, and identify what printer is connected to the Square app. 

Square Online: 

We released several updates to Square Online recently! 👇

Multiple Email Addresses for Order Notifications

You can now have order notifications sent to multiple email addresses, making it much easier to manage who is notified of orders through your online store. 📧📧 

Delivery Scheduling Updates

Customers can now schedule order deliveries straight from the online ordering page or from their cart, without having to wait until the checkout page.

Single-use coupons

Set up single-use coupons for customers, and fine-tune how customers use your coupons. Once they coupon, it’s coup-off for them! 

Restricted Dates

If you need to turn off online ordering on specific days, you can now set up restricted dates for your Square Online store. Time to plan that vacation! 📆

Square Online Checkout: Subscription updates

You can now set Checkout Links as subscription-only and have more flexibility on when you want to charge your customers: every other week, twice per year in addition to weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually.

Square Appointments

Fixed-Rate and Tiered Commissions

From your Square Dashboard, you can now assign fixed-rate and tiered commissions to staff, making it even easier to compensate them based on years of experience or items or services sold.

Booking site powered by Square Online

Shiny and new! Your customers can now easily book appointments online using a new booking site powered by Square Online. This also makes it simple to integrate your Appointments page as part of your Square Online website!

Square Appointments: Multi-staff appointment scheduling

You wanted to schedule services with different staff members for a single appointment , and guess what? It’s coming soon! 

Square Loyalty and Directory

Exclude Ineligible Items from Your Rewards Program

If you run a spend-based Square Loyalty program you can now exclude certain items or categories from Loyalty, so customers only earn points on items you choose . Now you can point them to specific items that will earn them loyalty. 🙂

Customer Group Discounts

For those that want to send group discounts, you can now set up discounts for groups in the Square Point of Sale app. Friends and family will love how much easier it will be for them to get that discount they want so badly!

Square Invoices

Custom Fields

To provide you with more customisation options for your invoices, you can now add custom fields. You can ask your customers anything you want on an invoice now. No really, literally anything.

Square for Retail

Inventory counting tool

Retail businesses need to perform cycle counts of inventory  on a regular basis. You can now count inventory with the Square for Retail app by scanning barcodes with your scanner or mobile device camera. 📱

Square Point of Sale: 

mPOP Receipt Printer and Cash drawer support

We now support the Star Micronics mPOP printer driven cash drawer for Android as well as iOS, for those that want a cash drawer and printer in one. 

Team Management/Team applet

Managing your team members is now easier - you can now manage team members with the Point of Sale app, Square Terminal, and Square Register. Go team! 🏏

Square Terminal

Order Manager

You can now manage online orders and more from your Square Terminal. 

Your thoughts and voices are important, and thank you again for the great feedback and suggestions you’ve made! We’re working on more updates and improvements to feature request functionality here on Community - expect to hear more soon and subscribe to our Product Updates board if you'd like updates as new features release!

[theroyalctambo]

I love Square and talk it up, and its been great to see some great steps this year!  My thoughts

- Square Loans is awesome, and a great result fro smaller businesses.  I don't like that the loan shows up on dashboard I must admit, as now general staff can see that, so I find that odd.  But overall a great option.  

- Loyalty.  Great that it came, but I'd love to know the % of take-up.  There seems a big request for a more traditional style, with cards, or a workaround with a scan code.  Having to ask customers for there number and type in a lengthy number is painful, if the customer is doing more than one transaction a day, and also a lot of businesses have ebbs and flows, anything that slows us down, is not an option.

- Square for non profits getting thru is great news. 

Great work Square, keep it up.  (But please help out on loyalty front haha)

[Seamus]

Thanks @theroyalctambo!

For the Loans offer appearing on your dashboard, do your staff have their own team member accounts to log into dashboard?

If not, you could possibly restrict what they can see with team permissions! If it's just a case of you staying logged in as the owner though, keep in mind that dashboard is supposed to be the place where you as the owner get any and all information about your Square account, as well as taking otherwise restricted admin actions!

To be honest even if I had stats on the take-up of Loyalty, I definitely wouldn't be able to share those kinds of figures publicly 🙂

I hear you in regards to the card though, there is definitely a portion of users who prefer physical loyalty cards. I've not heard of anything like this coming unfortunately, and I think it sort of speaks to the difference between traditional systems and what Square's trying to do with Loyalty - essentially using a phone number (that ties back to your customer's directory/loyalty listing) in place of an existing physical card. There are certainly advantages and disadvantages to this! A customer isn't likely to lose their phone number where they may a physical card, while typing in a phone number on a touch screen does take a bit longer than punching/signing a card, and it's not particularly convenient to enter on a per-pint basis in a pub setting!

I actually think barcode suggestion is still an ideal solution here, or perhaps a QR code as an alternative to entering a phone number on screen. It's not something I hear a lot of requests for though unfortunately!