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]

So sorry for the confusion here, @Amanda_Bierock @FarmAndBar and others!

Pre-Authorization recently became available to all users of Square for Restaurants (Free, Premium, and Plus), and you should be able to turn in on by following the instructions in this support article, via the Dashboard and device settings.

Enable and Configure Pre-Authorization Bar Tabs

If you are using Square for Restaurants and aren't able to enable Pre-Auth by following these steps, please reach out to our support team for assistance.

For businesses that use Square Point of Sale, there is not currently a way to access Pre-Authorization.  While we did run a Beta test last year for Pre-Authorization on Point of Sale, it has been discontinued and Square for Restaurants is the only application that currently supports this functionality.

The team developing Pre-Authorization decided last summer to focus their efforts on Pre-Auth within Square for Restaurants and discontinued the Beta and development of Pre-Auth for Point of Sale.

Some testers who participated in the Point of Sale Beta we ran last year may still have access via their open tickets settings on individual devices (like @ryanwanner) but accounts that were not enrolled in that Beta feature last summer can no longer be added.

@nika I hope this context is helpful when these questions come up - it can be confusing because at times we had a POS Beta on the way.  It's understandable when it's been a request for so long 🙂

Andy
Beta Specialist

[#3]

Hello all! We are so excited to let the community know that this feature is now available for Square for Restaurants! For more information on enabling and configuring preauthorization for bar tabs, check out this help article. Respond here if you have any questions, and thanks for your patience while our team built this out. We appreciate you!

️ Kristen
Square Community Manager
Product Engagement

[#4]

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 Square for Restaurants 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 [email protected] so we can learn how it is working for you and your staff.  

Thank you!

[Darkside]

I loan mugs to customers, using a deposit system. What's the best way to ring in the deposit when charged and ring in the deposit being returned to the customer?

Currently I charge a non-taxed item for the deposit and then refund a keyed in amount from a convenient transaction when returned to the customer.

Is there a better way to ring this in, one that might also potentially track the deposits as they are returned to the customer?

[nika]

@TheEpicWPB Thanks for posting. I checked to see if there were any updates to share but unfortunately this is still on our feature request list. Thank you so much for sharing why this would be beneficial to you. I'll make sure to flag this to our Payments team.

[nika]

Hey @Darkside. Thanks for asking about this here in the Seller Community.

I moved your post over to this thread so that we can continue to track this popular feature request. Refunding your customers is an option, like you mentioned. The only downfall of using refunds is the turnaround time of when the refund is actually processed to your customer (9-14 days in total.)

We'll make sure to update this thread if this feature is ever implemented.

[arianathacker]

For Square profiles, can Square hold credit card information?
What other data can we hold in account?

Can we collect credit information to pre-authorize payments?
How many days for pre-authorization?

How do we charge for cancellation fees (we are a service business) if outside pre-authorization window?

Is it possible to send cash to our customers? How?

[AshleyK]

Hey @arianathacker! Welcome to the Seller Community!!

I merged your post with an existing feature request thread for pre-authorization as that is a largely requested feature that we are tracking. 

While we do not have a way to pre-authorize seller's cards, you do have the option to keep their Card on File as well as charge cancellation fees through our Square Appointments subscription. You can see some of the details in Sean's post on the first page of this thread.

The Card on File can be used in the Point of Sale App, Invoices, Appointments, and Virtual Terminal to provide some flexibility.

Also, in response to your question in sending cash - we do not have the option to do that within Square Point of Sale, but you can always do a payout on a cash drawer report to mark sending cash, or us our Cash App to send someone money. 

I hope this helps!! Thank you!

[Omaha_3610]

It would be great if you offered a service like this... or at the minimum "played nice" with a partner that does this.  Looking for options!

[dburks400]

This features is a key need for people in the food, beverage and I'm sure many other industries. This eliminates the need to physically hold people's credit cards in case they forget to close a tab and simply leave.

I was told when we started square about 1 year ago that the feature would be released "soon". 

We need a concrete time frame for this feature to be introduced.

[ashc]

Hi @dburks400!

There's no timeframe we have to give on when or if this is going to become a feature but I moved your post to an existing thread about it for tracking purposes. 

[Bar2]

The community has been asking for this for years, They just can not get this done or they would have by now. As soon as another company figures out how to do this Square will loose 40% or more of there customer base. Some other service providers offer this but are higher in fees. Once a company figures out how to charge the same in fees as Square and offers Pre Authorization customers would leave in droves. One of our smart entrepreneurs out there will probably do a start up and be the next Billion dollar company for the Bars and Restaurants!  

[scooterjoes]

There is an app that does this ... PayAnywhere. This app had problems originally a few years ago, but its now worth another look.  It's owned by North American Bancard which is a large processor and provider to big companies everyone knows.  

Square could do this, but they won't because either they can't make money at it or their business agreements prevent it.

A college computer programmer could code this in a week (its simply another transaction type), and test it in 2 weeks.  It's a max 2 month project from start to finish (I know because I've done it in a prior job).