Order Limiting not working as expected. Please help/explain?

[scottiespizza]

We use order scheduling, and we usually have order limiting set to 4 orders per 15 minutes.

Our reality is that we can produce 6 pizzas every 15 minutes, so we assume that some orders will be for more than one pizza, and we occasionally push out the pickup time if we need to. This all works fine for the most part.

What I don't understand is that at some point during the night when we start to book up with a lot of orders (we get ~50 online orders/day), our '15 minute' time slots start to get weird, and I just want to know why this happens so that we can use the feature effectively.

Problem #1: Our prep time is set to 15 minutes, and orders are limited to 4 per 15 minutes, but then the next order comes in for a 2 hour pickup time. We assume that this means we have reached the set limit of 4 orders for every 15 minutes within the next 2 hours, so if we're not fully booked with 6 pizzas due every 15 minutes, we will increase the order limit to 5 or 6 orders per 15 minutes. But this doesn't seem to 'open up' those time slots for order scheduling. Sometimes we even bump the limit up to 7 or 8, but find that the online store still doesn't let someone place an 'asap' order. Instead we might end up with 7 orders booked at the same time 2 hours later.

Problem #2: Orders sometimes come in for pickup times on the ":15" interval, but sometimes they start coming in for ":05" or ":10". For one, we would prefer that if our prep time and order limiting is set to 15 minutes, orders come in for every 15 minutes, not 15, then maybe 20, then maybe 35 mins. Also, what's happening in terms of the order limiting? If the limit is 4 every 15 minutes, does that mean we can get 2 orders at 4:00, then a 4:05, and a 4:10 and that constitutes meeting the limit? It just seems very irregular/unpredictable.

Problem #3: As a result of the weird order timing, we often have to adjust the pickup times for orders, to be right at the ":15", or sometimes to push them back by up to an hour. BUT we frequently get complaints from customers and difficult situations when someone shows up at the original pickup time they were given, because they didn't receive an update that their pickup time would be different. I'll start a separate thread about this but I wanted to mention it because this is one of the negative effects we've experienced due to not fully understanding the order timing/limiting system. 

TL;DR - Can someone please explain the ins and outs and everything between of how the order limiting feature works?

[AshleyK · Accepted solution]

@scottiespizza Thanks for taking the time to post this. I have a lengthy description of how order staggering works, which is completely dependent on the item's prep time and exactly when the orders are placed.

It doesn’t block it off, as in 4 15 minute blocks per hour, it’s actually a rolling 15 minute block that checks for orders every 5 minutes. For example, if I place an order and the pickup time is supposed to be 2:00, the system checks to see if there are 4 orders in the time block of 1:45-2:00pm or not. If there are 4 orders in that time block it now looks at 1:50-2:05pm and so forth in rolling 5 minute increments.

If there are only 3 orders in that period, then it’ll schedule your order for 2:10pm. If at any point during the customer's order, you mark an order as complete TECHNICALLY it frees up a time slot in that period for another order. This can cause instances where we see things, for example, like those 5 orders ready at once.

There’s a ton of factors that play into this-like if you have 3 people who have completely placed an order and their pickup time is 1:20pm and two other people have started an order, are in checkout and received the same scheduled time of 1:20, it’s within the order period and will allow them both to have an order time of 1:20. This also leads to instances where there’s 5-6 orders places in one time slot.

What our developer suggested if you are getting overwhelmed is to try and balance your prep time and orders per 15 minutes till you get a good flow. For example lowering to 3 orders per 15 minutes and then increasing prep time to 30 minutes. If that makes it too low volume, try keeping the prep time but going back to 4 orders per 15 minutes or staying 3 per 15 minutes and decreasing prep time back to 15 minutes.

I hope this helps! Have a nice day! 🙂

[scottiespizza]

Thank you for the explanation! Sounds like we're on the right track by adjusting the order limit throughout the day, and it just really helps to know the different ways that extra orders can come in.

[honeypiepizza]

Like @scottiespizza  we are trying to manage online orders but we also have walk up ordering that happens. Is there a way for order limiting to comprehend both online and POS orders? 

For example:

I have my online order limit set to 3 every 15 minutes with 30 minutes of prep time. However, I'm also getting 5 more orders every 5 minutes through our POS in-house. We then are forced to toggle online ordering off and on throughout the night to help keep the flow manageable for the kitchen. From the customer experience, it doesn't present well if online ordering is turned off, it would be better to let them still place an order with the understanding that their pick up time will be later.

[Kassi_]

Hey there, @honeypiepizza - 

Welcome back to the Community! 

When it comes to Point of Sale orders, those are entered at your own discretion and there isn't a limit setting to turn on. 

If you'd like to alter the order limitations or timeframe for your Online Orders, this could help with what you're experiencing with your orders. 

It's great feedback for a Feature Request for our Product Team. I would be happy to get this to them internally! 

Appreciate you taking the time to post! 👍

[knights9981]

We used the Order limiting capability for the first time last night and it behaved unpredictably when the time slots started to fill, putting orders into a time slot on a future date before the slot was filled.

Our business is a non-profit Catholic church fish fry held each year for 7 consecutive Fridays during Lent. The business is open for 3 hours (4 to 7 PM). Without order limiting, our online sales were overwhelmed with orders on the first full day (2/19/21) when received 160 orders before we opened at 4 PM and had to shut down the store for the rest of the evening to catch up.

On 2/26/21, we delayed the opening time to 4:15 and set the order limit to 10 and cut off sales at 6:55 PM. We have a 15 minute prep time. This would schedule the first 10 orders at 4:30 PM. We expected to have a total capacity of 110 orders in 11 15 minute blocks in a 2 hour, 25 minute hour time period. We opened the online store at 3 PM and started received orders. Square online stopped scheduling on the current day when we reached 82 orders and started scheduling orders on the next Friday, March 5. From testing, I knew Square order limits would roll over to the next day when the last time slot was full, but it started rolling over to March 5 before that time slot was full.

This order was the first to be rolled over to March 5.

Pickup Mar. 5, 2021 at 5:30 pm

Our workaround was to shut down the online store, increase the order limit capacity, and reopen. I also set dates March 5, 12, 19, 26 as restricted (closed). But it soon happened again when we received another 38 more orders and scheduled these next 4 orders for picked on April 2 (next open Friday), such as this one:

Pickup Apr. 2, 2021 at 5:00 pm

I do not know if the customers selected the next available pickup time or scheduled for a future pickup time (Upcoming order).

How does the customer's order pickup choice affect the pickup time when using order limits?

I had to shut down online orders again. We received a total of 125 orders, but could have handled more if the order limiting didn't schedule orders on a future date.

Is there a way to force square online to not schedule orders on a future date when the order limit accepting orders?

I can send Square support the transaction export or order export if you want to see the details of your experience.

Please help us use the order limit feature properly to manage the volume of orders on a single date.

[goldburger]

The best answer in this thread sort of showcases so much wrong square online. If customers have items in a cart and thus can deviate the rules set than there is a major engineering problem. 

Our BIG issue is when we get a mix and ASAP order and pre-orders during busy times. So we’ll have like 6 pre-orders under Upcoming for 6:30 but we’re getting so many orders at 6pm that ASAP orders are being pushed to 6:45, 7, etc because of our order limits we put on. But those ASAP orders are automatically placed as Active, completely ignoring the preparation time rule, while the Upcoming orders follow the rule and don’t become Active until 15 min (our prep time). So at 6:15 we have like 30 tickets already for 6:45 and 7 and all of a sudden we find tickets in the mix for 6:30. It’s absolutely chaos and my three calls with Weebly support have yielded zero changes and zero follow up. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯