Is Square Online abe to handly multi-format selling (ie, cafe orders, online retail, online wholesal

[bwholesomeau]

I have been looking into using square online for my new business venture.  We will be having a cafe with retail items in a physical store (using square POS) and would like to connect that up to a square online store for online ordering with in-store pickup.  I know this is possible.  I would also like to be able to sell the retail items (prepackaged food, etc) online which will then be posted out.  I think this will just be a tweak on the onlne ordering part of the site.  Then I want to have a wholesale section.  I've read a lot about wholesale and retail on this forum and know that you can't use the same inventory for both, but I've also read of using different linked sites and/or locations for this purpose.

What I want to know is:

- Is it possible to have cafe ordering, retail mail ordering and wholesale ordering all using the same URL?

- If so, how should it be set up?

Thanks

[Seamus]

Hey @bwholesomeau,

Thanks for reaching out and welcome to the Community 👋

You can use the same website for cafe ordering as well as retail mail ordering - you can set three fulfilment options for each item you sell:

- Shipping

- Pickup

- Delivery

The key thing to consider when using a Square Online website to serve different audiences is that your item prices remain the same. So you wouldn't be able to have a wholesale price and a cafe price for the same item on the one website.

You can have multiple Locations on Square and set items at different prices, so for selling to wholesale customers I would create a new "Wholesale" location then a new website connected to that location, with your wholesale items listed at the applicable prices. You could then manually add links to your wholesale website from your retail website and vice versa, in case customers go to the wrong website.

Or, if your wholesale items are all listed differently to the ones you sell in the cafe, and there is no crossover with items sold in cafe vs wholesale, you could actually put it on the one website and simply list the wholesale items in their own category.

Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions 🙂

[bwholesomeau]

Thanks Seamus.

Would I need separate subscriptions for the wholesale and retail websites?

Would I need actual separate domains or could I use a subdomain such as littlevillagefoodco/wholesale?

Is there a way to keep the prices (or products if not just the prices) visable only to wholesale customers?

[Seamus]

@bwholesomeau

- You wouldn't need seperate subscriptions, you can create multiple websites with a single plan!

- You would need seperate domains, because you're unfortunately not able to assign the same domain to two websites. You could approach this in a number of ways though. You could have the cafe/shipped orders as the main domain, then you could put a link prominently on the website linking to a different wholesale URL (or even just using the free square.site domain if you didn't want to buy another domain).

Or something I'd probably do is have a main domain with a simple home page that links to two seperate websites - one to your cafe and one for wholesale. So you could have businessname.com as a home page linking to businessnamecafe.com and businessnamewholesale.com. Which is a bit more work with 3 websites and 3 domains, but it depends on what solution appeals the more.

- You could make a password protected page and share the password with your wholesale customers. Come to think of it, if you did want everything under the one website/domain, it may be worth exploring simply making different items for your wholesale products. Eg have "Muffins" available to the public and "Muffins (wholesale)" as a completely seperate product, hidden behind a password protected page that you share with your wholesale clients! A potential downside of this is that the inventory counts would be seperate - which may or may not be what you want!

[bwholesomeau]

Hi Seamus,

I created another site for wholesale as you suggested, and upgraded the original site to the 2nd tier paid plan ($30 per month I think), but it only seems to have upgraded the original site.  I am unable to password protect the new site.  Please help.

[Seamus]

@bwholesomeau while you can create multiple websites on the free plan, it looks like if you want upgraded features then plans apply on a per-website basis. Apologies for the confusion here! When I tested I was using a free plan and was able to create multiple websites - I didn't realise that features for paid plans would then apply on a per-website basis. 

I certainly didn't mean to lead you astray here so will try and facilitate the best possible solution. Were you looking to password protect both websites, or just the wholesale one? We could look at:

• Cancel the subscription and refund the cost, and then you could sign up for the plan on the other website that you needed password protection for
• Alternatively, I'm noting that password protection plans start at the $15 per month plan - if you wanted it on both we could refund the $30 subscription and you could got two $15/month subscriptions
• My previous suggestion of having seperate password protected items could still potentially work (eg "Muffins" vs password protected "Wholesale Muffins")

Again, I'm sorry to have provided you with some dud advice here - while it worked fine for me testing the multi-site feature on the free plan, it just didn't occur to me that the same might not be true for the paid plans. In any case, let me know what your thoughts are for possible solutions and I'll try and make things right!

[bwholesomeau]

Thanks Seamus.

I'm thinking of possibly leaving it "as is" with the addition of a $15 plan.

How do multiple sites use the same inventory?  When I was entering stock levels I had to do it per site.

[Seamus]

Hey @bwholesomeau,

I did some testing by syncing the same item library to both websites and it appeared to draw from the same inventory.

If you set up your item library within Square (as opposed to specifically within Square Online) then sync the same item library to both websites then I think it should draw from the same inventory. There are some steps on doing this here, though this may be one that will be beneficial to get in touch with support for - they will be able to look into the backend of your Square Online account to see how everything is set up and advise what exact changes need to be made. You can call support on 1800 760 137. Lines are open Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm Melbourne time.

Otherwise, hopefully the above steps will work! In the test setup I did, I linked both websites to the same location and then synced the same core item library to the second website when I set it up. 

[bwholesomeau]

I still can't seem to get what you descrip with regard to inventory, but I have a new problem...

Is there any way to have different shipping rates for different site locations?  I have a flat rate for retail sales with free shipping over $50, and a calculated shipping rate for wholesale orders with free shipping over $300.  Can square do this with connected sites?

If not, is there a way to split the second site from the first completely?  I've already paid for the password protection on the second site.

[Arie]

Hi @bwholesomeau,

The shipping settings are shared between different sites / locations on Square Online. The site wouldn't be able to be split from the other, unfortunately. 

It's possible to set up shipping rates based on the order total, so you can create a shipping rate for orders above a set amount. Under Fulfillment > Shipping > Add another rate > Show additional shipping rates. From there, select Order total.

You can create multiple shipping rates from here! Please let us know how you go 🙂 

[bwholesomeau]

Hi Arie. That doesn’t tell me when free shipping kicks in at different spend rates depending on if you are a retail or wholesale customer. 

[Arie]

Sorry about that, @bwholesomeau! Here's how I set this up on my test account, replicating what you described above:

1. Set up a shipping rate for orders between $1 - $49.99 using the Order total shipping rate option, and enter the shipping rate you'd like to charge for these orders. 

2. Set up a second shipping rate using the Free Shipping rate option, and add the minimum order total (e.g $50).

Any orders above the threshold will automatically have free shipping, and orders below this amount will attract the shipping rate you've set. 

[bwholesomeau]

Yes, that’s what I’ve done Arie, but I need different rates for different customers. I have a retail site and a wholesale site which are currently connected. Retail customers pay $9.95 flat rate shipping with free shipping over $50. I’ve set this up. That’s fine. But my wholesale customers pay a calculated rate of shipping based on weight with free shipping over $300. How do you propose I do this?

[Arie]

I see, thank you for clarifying @bwholesomeau! In this case, having the two connected sites means that it wouldn't be possible to set up these shipping rates, as you essentially need different shipping rates for each site. I'm sorry for not communicating this more clearly! 

As Square Online sites can't be split, and the shipping settings are shared across both sites, the only way to achieve this would be to have two separate Square accounts- a wholesale one, and a retail one. 

I understand that this wouldn't be the most elegant, or practical solution. You can still consider cancelling your plan for a refund by giving our CS team a call on 1800 760 137. 

My sincere apologies for the hassle, and misunderstanding of your needs on my part!