thread Order cut off times in Online Store

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

Roselaine — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 04:29:50 GMT

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!

Re: Delivery Timeframe

Remi — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 01:16:08 GMT

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.

Re: Delivery Timeframe

Seamus — Fri, 05 Jun 2020 01:20:45 GMT

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 👍

Re: Delivery Timeframe

Roselaine — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 02:18:55 GMT

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!

Re: Delivery Timeframe

Seamus — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 23:46:37 GMT

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!

Re: Delivery Timeframe

BCBBQ — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 03:08:13 GMT

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.

Re: Delivery Timeframe

Seamus — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 05:44:48 GMT

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.

Pick up time for item

TheHydrant — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 12:47:45 GMT

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..

Re: Pick up time for item

Seamus — Sat, 15 Aug 2020 01:54:59 GMT

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!

Re: Pick up time for item

TheHydrant — Sat, 15 Aug 2020 02:23:57 GMT

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

Order cut off times

mattjones40 — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 05:18:08 GMT

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???

Re: Order cut off times

Seamus — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 06:57:22 GMT

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!

Re: Order cut off times

mattjones40 — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 09:23:26 GMT

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.

Re: Order cut off times

Seamus — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 02:23:23 GMT

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!

Re: Order cut off times

mattjones40 — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 05:25:47 GMT

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,

Re: Order cut off times

Seamus — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 07:12:09 GMT

@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.

Delivery time setting

wangjueliang — Sat, 05 Sep 2020 07:01:31 GMT

Dear community,

I am still a bit confused about how the delivery time square worked out. I can roughly see there are two elements might be involved, one is the preparation time in the general setting and another one is the delivery time after courier picked up, which is a time period you can configure.

So my understanding is: if someone ordered something today before my business close, the final delivery time is calculated as the preparation time plus the delivery time (a range). If this time pushes out of your business hour for that day, it will start from next day for delivery, your opening time, say 9am, plus the preparation time and plus the delivery item range. That's just my guess and the end result always puzzles me. Sometimes it pushes over 24 hours till the day after, sometimes it shows the customer a time after my business hours.

This is getting very confusing and complicated. I actually don't want the customer to see a time that when the delivery will happen. I don't understand your algorithm and even it is all correct, we probably won't fulfill within that time range anyway.

Can we simply change the configuration to say, if a customer orders before a certain time everyday, say before 12pm, when they check out, they will receive a message that their orders will be delivered on the same day. If they order after 12PM, they will receive the order next day. If falls on the weekend, we automatically add days to display the delivery on Monday.

Thank you,

Re: Delivery time setting

Seamus — Mon, 07 Sep 2020 05:37:33 GMT

Hey @wangjueliang,

I've moved your message to this thread that we're using to track the feature request.

As you can see this one has been a popular request, and I am aware that the Ecommerce team are working on some improvements here. While I don't have an exact ETA or info on how the feature will work, I'll continue to monitor this thread and update every who has posted when I hear more!

To answer the question though - yep, the system will take into account your opening times and prep time when pushing an order through. So if you have a 15 minute prep time and close at 9pm, and the last order came through at 8:51pm, it should push the order the next day.

Hide or Remove the Delivery Time.

FlySpray — Thu, 17 Sep 2020 08:05:53 GMT

Hi All,

We have a delivery driver who will take the van out with a batch of 30 to 50 cakes.

So customers need to select only which day they want the cake delivered.

The timing & notifications is handled by 3rd party delivery management software.

Currently I have the scheduled delivery option set to ON. which is working good. Because customers can select a delivery date.

But is there a way to hide/remove the delivery time combo box??

Cheers.

Re: Hide or Remove the Delivery Time.

Seamus — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 00:59:33 GMT

Hey @FlySpray,

Thanks for your message. I've moved it to this thread so we can better track requests for this feature.

At the moment there's no way to remove delivery time frames - however as you can see in this thread it's a popular request, and our team is working on building a solution here. I'm going to update and tag everyone in this thread once I hear of a change, in the meantime you can try and set expectations through custom text fields on your website explaining delivery time frame.

I know this isn't the most elegant solution and customers can get confused though - I'm hoping we'll have more to announce here soon!