Beating a Dead Horse but it needs to be: Preauthorization

[FarmAndBar]

We need to be able to preauthorize credit cards when running a tab. Period.  We really enjoyed the low buy in and easy menu development and a couple of the other features, but a bar/restaurant needs to be able to run a tab and preauthorize a credit card.  I've gone back and looked at conversations about it and it appears that this has been a CONSTANT request by users that has gone ignored.

I'd like to know why it isn't available.

[#2]

Pre-Authorization for Bar Tabs Update ⭐
Hi everyone - I'm Hadley, from the F&B product team. First of all, thank you SO MUCH for continuing to share all the feedback here over the years, we know how important the Bar Tabs feature is. For anyone who is not aware, this feature is currently in beta in the US for both Square Point of Sale as well as Square for Restaurants POS. 

➡️ If you use Square POS, here are instructions on how to get started beta testing. 

➡️ If you use RST POS, you can join the beta community here and our beta team will enable feature to your account. You can find the support article for getting set up on RST POS here. 

As a reminder, when a feature is in beta, there is still some engineering work happening to iron out the smaller bugs and optimizing the experience for our sellers and their customers. If you choose to participate in the beta testing, please share any feedback (good or bad 😄) to our beta team at betafeedback@squareup.com so we can learn how it is working for you and your staff.  

Thank you!

[TonyK]

It is unfortunate, but we'll be leaving Square because they have ignored this feature request for years over half a decade.  If we need to keep holding hundreds of cards on a busy night because Square won't have their programmers spend a few hours setting this up, it's a bad sign for Square.  We process just over $1m/year too.  Looks like we're leaning towards Toast.

[HOTCOFFEE]

We host many private small events opening a tab would be so efficient. Ive been looking and trying to figure it out but no such luck. Please help and make it effective and user friendly. @BWH agreed! 

[occoquanoptical]

I would love to be able to hold balances for customers. I often have customers who want to place a deposit on a purchase and pay the balance when they pick up. I have no way of doing that other than doing an open charge, but then I don't really know what the purchase was for. Is this possible and I just don't know it or is this something we need to wait a million years for too???

[modebrewing]

We absolutely need a way to start a bar tab with a credit card auth without holding the actual card.  That is such an antiquated system.  Has this been moved to the top of the request food chain yet?

[Atomburst]

We rent equipment. This feature would be beneficial.

[Atomburst]

Rental businesses need a hold option. The implementation of the new refund processing charges makes the work around of charging and refunding not an option. Seems to be related to square grabbing more profits and not helping the business that use its services. Year over year profits. Year over year businesses asking for additional services with them not responding. I was one of the first companies to utilize square and have continued to use them with my other businesses. This might be time to change. Innovative in the beginning but profit hungry in the end. 

[Restaurant-busi]

Square will stop refunding processing fees next month, and when this happens we won’t be able to charge customers refundable deposits when necessary. We’ve been doing that as we were unable to put holds on customer cards. Just one more struggle added to the list of things that make square inconvenient to those whom businesses have grown. I am hoping square would announce a solution before the end of the month as it seems that we have no choice but to join those who gave up on square and signed up with toast or clover. 

[EB_CST]

Is preauthorization finally happening on Square? If so, how do I do it.

[_Violet]

Hi @EB_CST , Thanks for reaching out to us here in the Seller Community. I went ahead and merged your post to an existing thread where other Square Sellers have discussed this topic as well. We merge duplicate conversations together to keep like comments in one place, and to make it easier for others to find the thread in the future. 

At this time, the ability to preauthorize payment cards is a feature request. To learn more about how feature requests work, please see this post from one of our Seller Community Moderators.

Since preauthorization would be a big update for Square and our Sellers, we'll be sure to make an announcement if this becomes available 🙂

[Nukebrewer]

Look at how long this feature request has been made. This will answer your question as to the likelihood of this BASIC feature ever being rolled out. We will soon be switching providers for this and only this reason in the next couple of months after nearly 8 years with Square. Even if it means paying more as we lose money each time a customer walks out without paying. When you think of it that way and realize the true cost of staying with a provider that can't implement this feature, it cheaper to move on and pay higher fees on the front end than pay it from product losses due to no pre-authorization. That and now the decision NOT to refund fees on cancelled transactions makes the move away a no-brainer.