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Feature Request - Order Cut Off Times, Specific Delivery & Pickup Time frames, pre orders

Hi, I'm so glad we can now enable delivery online for our home based florist business.

However we have a major problem - I don't want customers to see an estimated delivery timeframe because its wrong in the cart / checkout. We make up all orders in the morning then deliver in the afternoon in a set time frame. For now I will have to write a big disclaimer on items for people to ignore this. Please make this optional or let me pick a specific time frame on business days?

 

Also a request for a digital product store - I would totally use Square if you can do automatic email fulfillment and send customers a download link. I don't want to be monitoring a digital store all day for orders that I have to fulfill manually, I would want my product immediately. I will definitely switch to square when you can do this. Thanks!

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Hey @Roselaine,

 

Thanks for reaching out!

 

We've been building out new Online Store features on a regular basis in the last couple of months, and we're prioritising development of features that are helping businesses pivot during COVID-19. Set or scheduled delivery times is a feature that's still in the works, but this one has been a popular request and is currently being worked on - while I don't have a set time frame for when it will be available, we'll release this feature once it's ready and works. We'll be posting an update here once it's available so please keep an eye out, I'll tag you in this thread too ๐Ÿ‘

Seamus
Square, Australia
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It's a great question @Roselaine , and one I've seen raised numerous time before.

Here's to hoping the development team can action and implement much needed features like this.

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Hey @Roselaine,

 

Thanks for reaching out!

 

We've been building out new Online Store features on a regular basis in the last couple of months, and we're prioritising development of features that are helping businesses pivot during COVID-19. Set or scheduled delivery times is a feature that's still in the works, but this one has been a popular request and is currently being worked on - while I don't have a set time frame for when it will be available, we'll release this feature once it's ready and works. We'll be posting an update here once it's available so please keep an eye out, I'll tag you in this thread too ๐Ÿ‘

Seamus
Square, Australia
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Hi @Seamus  and @Tom  - I just wanted to check in and see if there's an update soon coming for different delivery timeframe options, even just to turn it off.  It's becoming a problem for us now as customers don't read the fine print to ignore the timeframe and expect the delivery at the wrong time, because that time frame is shown in bold at the top of their order confirmation.

 

If it helps here's what we do - we are a home based florist so we cannot accept pickups and only do local delivery at a fee included in our prices.  If the customer orders by 10am on business days we can deliver it the same day, if it's after 10am then we say it'll be a set time frame of 12pm-6pm the next business day unless otherwise discussed with the customer.  If a customer places an order on a day off then it also shows the wrong delivery date because right now I've set an order prep time of 1 business day.  If they did order on Monday though (our day off) we would deliver it Tuesday - right now it says Wednesday.

 

I have set certain postcodes that we deliver to, but we've had a few customers want orders outside our local area. We are happy to accommodate this for an extra fee and right now it can only be done by sending them a custom invoice as far as I can see.  I'm worried that we may lose customers that we are happy to deliver to because there's no way to put an extra delivery fee on different areas outside our local zone. 

 

Hope that makes sense. But right now fixing the estimated time frame is super important for us. Thank you!

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Hey @Roselaine,

 

Thanks for your comment and for providing such a detailed use case here!

 

The sort of setup you're describing (orders before X cut-off time being delivered later in the day) is one that I've seen on a number of occasions lately across a number of industries (eg florists, brewers, bakeries) and one that we've also received a fair bit of feedback about. I agree that dedicated features to assist with this would be super handy and go a long way to making a better online shopping experience for yourself and your customers.

 

While I don't have anything new to share, I can tell you that being able to better cater for delivery scenarios like the one you're describing is something that's being worked on - think features such as scheduled delivery, cut-off times and fixed delivery dates. I don't have an exact ETA for these features, however the team that works on the Online Store is aware of the demand for them and they're in the development pipeline. I hope I'll be able to have more to share here soon, and will tag you in this thread when I am able to share more!

 

EDIT: Different fees for different delivery distances is available now!

Seamus
Square, Australia
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i didn't want to, but I had to leave square and go with Wix due to this lack of functionality.   Wix has superior offer enabling customer to choose day and time delivery window, or you can create custom algorithm to calculate delivery estimated time.  

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Hey @BCBBQ,

 

Sorry to see you go, I appreciate that you've got to get the best setup to run your business and thank you for the feedback you've provided here.

 

I'll continue to update this thread as I hear of any new updates, this is a popular feature request and hopefully we're able to announce more here in the future.

Seamus
Square, Australia
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This seems like something I need and 18months from when you have told them still nothing... I also need to just pick specific dates to when I'm cooking, and have it available for customers to book and pay for in advance.  

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Has this feature been added yet?? Is there a date we can expect this feature to be available?

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Hey @CarlaU, we don't have any updates on this one at the moment. As soon as I have any info to share I'll loop back to tag everyone who's inquired in this post!

Seamus
Square, Australia
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I have one food special each day from Wednesday to Sunday (eg Sunday roast) with a pick up time between 4pm-6pm. I would like my customer to be able to nominate a time during this period only to pick up the food.  My cafe hours are 7-2 each day. And the order has to be placed before midnight the day before.. 

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Hey @TheHydrant,

 

Thanks for your feedback!

 

I've moved your comment into this thread so we can better track feedback on this feature request.

 

It's one I've heard a bit of and is also one I've seen used by a range of different businesses - hopefully it's something we'll be able to implement moving forward. I'll update this thread if I hear of any news on this one, in the meantime keep an eye on our community, we've been posting regular updates as we continue to expand Square Online's feature set!

Seamus
Square, Australia
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In The mean time we have add "Variations" with times to each meal item.. EG.. 4pm, 4.15pm ect ect 5.45pm, 6pm.....

this means the customer has to choose one time slot to move forward with  purchase..

 

hope this helps

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Really require an order cut-off time, that is not linked to my pickup or delivery hours.

 

Using prep times and delivery times doesn't work to achieve this.

 

I want a 6am order cut-off for a bakery business.

And then we are open from 8am, and offer deliveries from 9am.

 

Secondly, using the 'delivery estimates of times' (in the online location settings) doesn't carry over to the timeslots offered to customer to receive their delivery. At least not when it's 2 or more days ahead, only 1 day ahead???

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Hey @mattjones40,

 

I've gone ahead and merged your thread with this existing one for better tracking of the feature request.

 

This is another popular request that's currently in the works! I've heard a bit of feedback on this now and have even ordered from a few places myself recently that operate on a similar system for delivery. At the moment you can read about some of the workarounds in this thread, though I'll tag everyone who has commented once I hear about this becoming available!

 

RE: the issues you're seeing with delivery times - I think I've seen this before, it sounds like you may be substituting preparation time with delivery time? Delivery time should be how long it's estimated for your delivery person to get from your business to the customer's delivery address once they depart your business (usually not a few days) while prep time can track how long you need to prep an order (can typically be a few days). Hope this helps, but please let me know if I've misunderstood this!

Seamus
Square, Australia
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Thanks Seamus, appreciate the further explanation on the terms, which are as I expected.

I don't have them misunderstood, delivery time yep, i get it.

 

The problem is that when customer books delivery timeslot 2+ days ahead, it does not factor in the time to deliver, which for me is my current work around for the lack of order cut-off time.

 

The order cut off time would fix this problem.

In the meantime using incorrect store delivery hours to act as a artificial order cut off, and adding 3-4hours for delivery, so it lands in the hours customer would expect to receive. This isn't working either.

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Thanks for the clarification @mattjones40!

 

If your orders are not taking into account delivery time when placed 2 days ahead vs 1 day ahead this sounds like it may be a bug.

 

I recommend getting in touch with support about this first, who will have the ability to take a better look into how the account is set up first, then may be able to file a bug report if they can confirm things are not working as intended. You call support on 1800 760 137 (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm Melbourne time) or email via this form.

 

I'm hoping order cutoff time / set pickup and delivery time frames isn't too far away, but in the meantime I do recommend contacting support for further help with this!

Seamus
Square, Australia
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Hi Seamus,

I spoke to support that same day, no bugs were found.

Really really need order cut-off times developed and available asap please.

Then I can list my correct delivery/pickup hours rather than using an incorrect version of them as an artificial cut-off time.

Timeline on this?? Thank you,

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@mattjones40 I don't have an ETA for release on this feature, but I will update this thread once I hear of more.

 

You can also subscribe to our Product Updates board to get email notifications on new features.

Seamus
Square, Australia
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Hi - looks like Im trying to configure exactly what you are describing too. Did you get anything working or still waiting on the order cut-off time? Im so close to getting online to operate how will work for us but this is one of 2 blockers for me. 

 

@Seamus The other is that I have 2 'websites' in Online - 1 for school lunch DELIVERIES and 1 for pre-order breads etc for PICKUP only and cant change the Fulfillment type between then two. The only way I can work it out is to have only one 'website' working at once and have the other one set to off (which is fine as we are currently in lockdown in SA)

 

Will be great once I / Square get all this working ๐Ÿ™‚

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Hey @BakerST!

 

Have you tried managing fulfilment options on a Location based level?

 

If not, if you were to set up multiple locations on your Square Account (eg one might be your default location and you can set the other to "School Delivery") you should be able to manage fulfilment methods on a per location level via Fulfillment > Pickup and Delivery:

 

You could have one location tied to one website and the other location tied to the other website. I think this should effectively do what you're looking to do here!

Rethinking your other request....I still don't think there's an elegant way of doing this, but depending on your exact situation you could try playing with the delivery/pickup times on a per-location basis and also the order prep time. Could you have your hours set to the cutoff time, then set prep time to the max expected timeframe for pickup/delivery?

 

 

I will be a very happy person once we're able to get order cutoff times up and I can update this thread. From what I can see it's on the list of things we want to build (both for pickup and delivery orders), however I still don't have an ETA unfortunately.

 

Seamus
Square, Australia
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