thread Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering in Payments Troubleshooting

Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

NickHunter — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 11:13:34 GMT

Hi. Anyone using this Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering anyone had any problems with none payment?

serve serve working well for us and I would really like to start using the tab system

thanks

nick

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

k_atie — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 09:47:58 GMT

Hey @NickHunter, thanks for your post 😊 We haven't heard of any issues being reported using the Open Tabs feature for Self-Serve. So you should encounter no issues by activating this feature.

Enabling open tabs for self-serve ordering through Square Online allows customers to continue ordering items on the same tab throughout their stay. They’ll enter payment information upfront but won’t need to check out and pay until the end of their visit. With open tabs disabled, customers would otherwise need to pay for each order individually.

After setting up self-serve ordering, you can enable open tabs by following these steps:

In your Square Online Overview page, go to Fulfilment > Self-Serve Ordering.
Select Edit by the location in question.
Toggle on Allow open tabs.

When customers put their entire party on one order and keep their tab open, you’ll pay just one transaction fee for their entire stay rather than multiple. This means that open tabs can help make the ordering process much easier for you and your customers alike.

Learn more about self-serve ordering open tabs with Square Online. Maybe someone else can weigh in on their experience with using Open Tabs and let you know what they think of it.

Hope this helps!

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

NickHunter — Fri, 06 Jan 2023 21:45:54 GMT

Styler

thank you for your response.

just one scenario:

customer orders just before close, they don’t pay and leave, the system will I understand take payment 2 hours after the last transaction, is that correct? will all the information be on the end of night reports although the tab is still open/not paid off?

regards

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

k_atie — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 12:17:30 GMT

No problem @NickHunter. So if you would some reassurance that you won't lose our on payments when using Open Tickets, you can add a Card on File to an Open Ticket and charge the customer if they walk out without paying.

Note: If you use a customer’s credit card to create a new open ticket, the card will not be charged at that time and their payment information will not be stored within the app. If it’s available, only the cardholder’s name will be associated to the new open ticket. You can override the cardholder name at any time by updating the ticket name.

Open a ticket before a Sale:

Tap Keypad > Tickets.
Tap New Ticket or swipe the customer’s payment card.
Enter a ticket name > Save.
Add items or custom amounts to the ticket.
Tap Save.

Create a ticket during a Sale:

Add items or custom amounts to the sale > tap Save.
Tap New Ticket or swipe the customer’s payment card to create a new ticket.
Enter the ticket information > Save.

As for the End of Day report, I'm going to double-check if unpaid tickets are accounted for with my team internally. I'll let you know once I find out more.

Let me know if you have any questions in the meantime.

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

Happycheese — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 06:43:40 GMT

Hi skyler.

I don’t appear to have these options available to me on the Resturant terminal or the iPad

when entering items I only have print bill, pay or send. See attached.

your saying tap save, tap new ticket enter ticket info, save I don’t have those options

regards

nick

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

k_atie — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 09:29:27 GMT

Thanks for letting me know @Happycheese.

Have you made sure that you have enabled open bills? This is usually done on your Square Dashboard.

To turn on open bills from your online Square Dashboard:

Go to Devices > Points of sale.
Click POS devices, then select the device you want to enable open bills for.
Under Open Bills & Floor Plans, toggle on Use Open Bills.

Once you have that switched on, go back to the Restaurants App and click on New Sale, add the appropriate items to the bill, and click send. This will send the bill to the KDS.

You can then edit open bills as your customers add more items to their bills:

1. Open a bill and tap Edit Items.

2. Select the items to update > Edit Item(s). From here, you can take the following actions:

- Move: Move an item to a different open bill.

- Repeat: Repeat an item on a bill.

- Comp: Keep an item on a bill, but remove the cost from the bill total.

- Remove: Remove an item from a bill entirely.

3. Once you’re ready, tap Done.

Once you have all of that setup, you'll see the option "View Bills" on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen, like in the screenshot below.

Learn more about Bill Management with Square for Restaurants.

Additionally, our team has confirmed that if a ticket is unpaid and left open, it will not appear in your close-of-day reports and it will stay open until payment is settled.

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

Happycheese — Wed, 11 Jan 2023 11:43:26 GMT

Skyler.

Thanks for your message, thats all fine and working on all devices its opening a ticket that I am not able to set up.

What I want to be able to do on the Resturant terminal is:

Open a ticket before a Sale:

Tap Keypad > Tickets.
Tap New Ticket or swipe the customer’s payment card.
Enter a ticket name > Save.
Add items or custom amounts to the ticket.
Tap Save.

This is not working and I am not able to open a ticket.

is there a work around for the restaurant terminal to get the customers card details and run a TAB on the terminal?

Regards

Nick Hunter

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

k_atie — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 09:48:35 GMT

Ah okay, I see what you mean @Happycheese. To clarify, when you say restaurant Terminal, are you speaking about this small handheld device? If not, which device are you using to create these open tickets? I just want to make sure I give you the correct information in relation to the products you are using.

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

Happycheese — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 12:58:40 GMT

Hi,

We are using the square register, so we are customer facing and looking to set up a tab for customers at the bar using the square register.

Regards

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

k_atie — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 15:38:19 GMT

Thank you for confirming that @Happycheese. I escalated this to our teams to check why open tickets are not appearing on your Register. They have asked if you could share a screenshot of what is appearing on your screen after setting up open tickets, please. This will help us investigate further. Thanks!

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

Happycheese — Thu, 12 Jan 2023 17:15:25 GMT

Hi Skyler

1st Screen grab shows products sold and only the send, print bill or pay options at the bottom right

Second screen grab shows the next screen when you press the send button.

Regards

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

Happycheese — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 10:59:42 GMT

Hi Skyer

We are now operating the Tab system and all looks good, its just these transaction from Wednesday night that I have noticed, whats going on here? any idea who has voided the order, is it the customer, its not showing as a void on any reports.

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

Breffni — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 10:11:54 GMT

Hi @Happycheese, just stepping in for Skyler today!

I'm glad to hear open tabs are working now.

Can you send me those order numbers by DM so I can take a closer look? The image is too blurry, thanks!

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

Happycheese — Fri, 13 Jan 2023 10:40:47 GMT

done

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

NickHunter — Fri, 26 May 2023 07:01:59 GMT

Skyler, hope you're well.

The order at table with customers creating a open tab and the table being paid off sometime later, is working very very well thank you for that.

One thing I would like to see if I can sort out is when we are at the table with a handheld restaurant app on the iPad, I still have no way of adding a customer card to the table and then taking an order knowing that we have the customers details stored, there does not appear to be an open ticket facility when we are at the table with a handheld Ipad.

Any suggestions?

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

k_atie — Tue, 30 May 2023 13:45:39 GMT

Hey @NickHunter, lovely to hear from you again.

At the moment, there isn't a way to add a card to a table specifically within the Square for Restaurants app. However, you can add a customer's card details to your account.

To add a Card on File, please follow the instructions in this article on our support center.

Let me know how that works out for you!

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

Happycheese — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 07:29:08 GMT

Hi Skyler:

A question. Can you turn on /off notifications using the POS restaurant terminals or handhelds, I am currently going to the dashboard to do this on the main web page.

Regards

Nick Hunter

Re: Open Tabs for Self Serve Ordering

k_atie — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 11:59:14 GMT

Heya @Happycheese! Thanks for your question.

What notification settings are you looking to change? Is it the order notifications or email notifications?