Scheduling pick up orders?

[Lizzyspizza]

Does anyone know how to use the Square Appointments feature to allow customers to schedule pick up times? it seems to be set up more for appointment START times - i.e. I select 5 pm and that is my booked appointment start time. However, I am in the food industry and need to allow customers to choose when they want the order to be completed (not started). 

[TripleThreatTrk]

Why won't it allow me to change my pick up address? PLEASE HELP

[isabelle]

Hey @TripleThreatTrk!

Please adjust your address within Square Online > Settings > General > Edit. Let us know if that doesn't work and we'll look into this further. 

[BrandonH]

@pessosices how did you add a link on your site to check gift card balance?

[Twiggy]

On your weebly site just add gift card to navigation bar - there’s a link on your gift card page at the top for clients to

check their balance. If you want that as a stand alone page copy and paste URL and let that as a standard page. 

[TGath]

Question: When does a 'scheduled order' hit the order queue? ...when it is ordered, or when it is about to be picked up? We are afraid if we turn on the ability to schedule orders we will lose them in the queue..... 

[nika]

@TGath Any time a customer schedules an order, it will be sent your way ASAP!

[lacherieseattle]

I would like to let people choose date for their order among three business days of the week. Right now it throws them to the next available date which is two business days from now.

thanks!

@Chad 

[isabelle]

Hey @lacherieseattle-

Thanks for posting in the Seller Community.

You have two options here. You can either allow your custoemrs to schedule a pick up, which will be the next available business day:

Or you can set it up so that your orders and items have a specific prep time:

These prep times can range from a couple of hours, to days or weeks. Totally up to you. I moved your post over to this thread for further insight. If you have any additional questions, please take a look at this article. 

[lacherieseattle]

It doesn’t give customers in option upon checkout to pick the day. It automatically schedules the order to the day when it can be technically ready, but they need it the next day for example. 

[empanadamama]

We absolutely love that we can accept orders ahead of time, but we find that most people do not understand that the order is available ASAP unless they select otherwise on the 2nd checkout screen.

We have had a lot of phone calls from customers asking how to place an order for a different time/date and we have to explain how to go through the checkout process and to ignore the time it tells them before they check out.

Sometimes, we have people call and ask when their order is ready because when they ordered, it "didn't tell them."

I do think a lot of it would be avoided if people read the fine print, but the reality of it is that pickup time should be selected before they checkout, and it shouldn't automatically pick the soonest time available. In fact, I'd prefer to not have an ASAP option, and have them always have to select a time so they understand that's when their pickup order is ready.

[Kassi_]

Hey there, @empanadamama - 

I moved your post to a thread with helpful tricks! Check out Joe's helpful answer for setting scheduled pick-up times.

Also, we just launched Order Staggering too. You may limit the number of orders that can be picked up or delivered at the same time so business doesn’t get overwhelming. When the system hits the maximum number of orders you can take every 15 minutes, then we will extend your prep time in 5 minute increments to sequence out those orders. To set this up, follow the steps below:

1. Log in to your Online Store dashboard > Settings > Pickup & Delivery.
2. Select a location > edit the Hours.
3. Toggle on “Space out pickup & delivery orders”.
4. Set the preferred number of orders for every 15 minutes.
5. Select Save.

Thank you!

[empanadamama]

Hi Kassi! Yes, I saw that feature first thing this morning and that’s exactly what we were looking for. Thanks so much!

[tejan]

Can you please give an example of a scenario using staggering ordering. If I set it to 2 order per 15 minutes, will I receive 4 orders per hour? And will it cut off orders or extend pickup times for customers as orders come in?

[Joe]

Hi there, @tejan 👋 Thanks for jumping in here on this thread! I can step in for Kassi on this one. Setting your orders to a max of 2 every 15 minutes would cap your potential orders at 8 (two for every 15 minutes). This cap will cut off new orders from coming in once you've reached your cap. 

[tejan]

Just to clarify, it will cap 8 orders for that hour, but it will push the 9th and 10th orders to the next 15 min slot.

[AGreekRest]

What am I doing wrong?!!  I have set my business hours to start at 3pm.  I've set our pickup times to start at 4pm.  The store hours clearly show 3pm on our website, and the 4pm is definitely marked as our first pickup time.  I've noted a 45 minute prep time.  When a customers tries to place an order at 12noon for a same day pickup, logically their first time slot for pickup availability should be 4pm but it is only showing availability starting at 4:45pm.  Why?  What am I doing wrong??  Any help would be truly appreciated.

[Kassi_]

Hey there, @AGreekRest - 

I moved your post to a thread with helpful insight on Pickup and prep time issues you're having. 

Check out @Pesso 's response to LilyPizza on what you're seeing.

Please let me know if you have any other questions. 👍

[FEPL]

I've found where to schedule times and stagger orders. However, I still dislike that ASAP is the default option when I want customers to schedule a time. I placed a test order using ASAP (with 1 order set per 15 minutes), to check if afterwards it automatically adjusted the next available time slot 15 minutes after--but it did not! So, I don't trust that it actually staggers the orders and I'm nervous to open it up for orders without staggering in place.

Is this functionality truly working? Or will it always default to the business opening time if the patron selects 'asap' rather than a scheduled time?

[Alex_]

Hi @FEPL,
 

The time window you are seeing is operating as expected. Thank you for the feedback.  Our teams are constantly looking through our seller's comments to make necessary improvements, and we will be sure to let you know if anything ever changes or if new updates are released. 

[julianascater]

I have 25-30 customers call me on the phone every week asking how to choose a pick up time for their order. As you know, the weebly system defaults the customer to whatever setting the store has for order pickup and won't allow that to be changed until the customer is checking out. This is VERY confusing even to me as the store owner and results in a large level of confusion and wasted time every week having to walk all these customers through this process. Is there any way to change this on my store OR to turn off the date and pick up time that customers are shown as they are ordering items and just have them select that while finishing their order?

Thanks,

Nick

[JustinC]

There's a setting that allows customers to schedule a pickup time but they're only able to schedule at checkout, not while they're adding items to their cart. 

I merged your post so you can see the screenshot Isabelle provided to enable scheduled pickup times. Checkout page two. 

@julianascater