Can you temporarily close your online store while doing a live event?

[CurlyQ]

Can you temporarily close your online store while operating at a live event?  I will be selling what I have online at a live sales event.   I don't want customers to be able to order from the online store while I am at a live sale so I won't oversell and have to refund money.  If I can temporarily close will I still be able to create receipts from my library & collect money at the live sales through my Square app?

[isabelle]

Hey @CurlyQ-

Yes, if you unpublish your Online Store temporarily, you will still be able to accept payments via your Square POS app, as long as you don't delete your Square account or anything:

Let me know if you have any questions about this! 

[clill]

The link that Isabelle posted to unpublish your store, is not working.  Could you please add that link again?

[vhovar · Accepted solution]

 @clill The link to the unpublish link is going to be unique to your online store. You can get to it by going to your online store (weebly) and go to Website/General Settings. Towards the bottom of the page you will find the Unpublish. Hope this helps.

[vhovar]

@CurlyQ To preserve your online store to be found and looked at (but not ordered from) you can simply turn off "Accept online orders" under Settings/Checkout.

[CurlyQ]

@vhovar, when I do it this way will I still be able to pull the item from my store listing and it be put on their receipt & them pay through the square app at the live event?  Also, will it take that item out of my inventory?

Is there a way to know how many items you can post in an online store?  I haven't set my store up yet.  I'm trying to make sure what I want to do will work & how to post all the items I have.

Thank you for your help!

[vhovar]

@CurlyQ I can tell you my limited experience. We have been using a Square Register in our cafe since May 2019 but just setup our online store and opened back up for business a week ago today. I do know that you can definitely purchase items through your Square app that have also been sync'd to your online store regardless of the status of your online store. We have started using inventory tracking to try and not get online orders for products we've run out of. So far that seems to work as expected. The one odd thing is that regardless of what our inventory says, we can still sell the item from our Register and app. That actually works well for us since we are in the cafe and know if we actually have the items to still sell (probably because of a miscount) Granted, we would need to ensure the online order was fulfilled first but that is easy enough to do. This also allows us to "turn off" (set stock to zero) certain items from the online store while still selling them in-house. The item remains in the online store so customers can see we have them but it will not let them order the item until we ensure our stock is over zero. This may work for some and not for others. Hope this helps.