More Options to Customise the Layout and Information on Single Order Tickets To Be Used As Labels

[MorningHit]

Use Case:

We're a quick-service coffee shop. To distinguish between different drinks within a single customer order a shop would normally write on the cup or the lid. We wanted to make this process more efficient by printing a label which could then be stuck to the side of the cup. This process could also be used for food orders. Bubble tea shops and Starbucks already use a similar process.

Current Problems:

Using the current order ticket as a label has a few issues.

1. The ticket contains information that is relevant to staff, but not for the customer (eg. the device name that printed the ticket, date and time information). This also unnecessarily increases the size of the resulting label.

2. You have no way of changing the font size of the information on the ticket (eg. order name too large, modifier descriptions too small).

3. The white space on the ticket makes the label too large for smaller cups.

Advantages:

Large orders with complex information can be easily identified by the customer.

Business saves time not having to manually write product info onto packaging.

Less mistakes made by the business due to manual or messy writing.

Proposed Solution:

Add more customisable options to the order ticket area. Ability to turn on or off elements of information. Set font sizes. Click and drag to create layouts and templates. Options to reduce line spacing, padding, margins, etc.

[Laurie_]

Hi there @MorningHit,

Thanks for taking the time to pass on such detailed feedback, including use case scenarios. I've flagged this with our Product Team as this is in line with similar feedback we've received in the past regarding printing order tickets. We'll continue to monitor this thread and will be sure to comment here if we have further updates to share in future.

While I don't have any quick workarounds to offer you at this time, does your current label printer support multiple paper roll sizes? 

You may have already explored this option, but if your printer does support multiple sizes, you can use the following printer paper widths: 40mm, 58mm, or 80mm (default).
 

You can select the printer width through the Square Point of Sale app:

1. Tap More > Settings.
2. Tap Hardware and select the printer.
3. Under Printer settings > Paper size, tap Change.

If you have already tried the above, can you confirm which paper size you're currently using to print these tickets?

The more detail I can pass onto the Product Team, the better!

[MorningHit]

Hi @Laurie_ 

Thanks for your response.

We haven't currently implemented a solution at the shop due to the current limitations. But I have tested the possibilities with Star Micronics who allowed me to do some tests with their printers at the Sydney head office.

If the printer supports it, you can print order tickets on 80mm, 58mm and 40mm. Square worked with all sizes with current functionality. What Square does is scale down the image of the ticket to fit the size of the paper. So whilst it is smaller, there is still a lot of wasted white space and details that you may not want customer-facing. Also the modifier details of the order are smaller and harder to read as the paper size gets smaller.

Ideally you would want to remove unecessary info for the customer and set the font sizes and layout in a way to make the most compact label whilst also being easily readable by the customer and staff. If you could customise the font as well, you could make it consistent with your shop's branding too. I know the skies the limits when it comes to functionality, but I'm just floating some ideas to consider.

Let me know if the team has any other questions.

[Laurie_]

I appreciate you including this additional context, @MorningHit!

It sounds like even with the different paper size options, the issue of not being able to customise the information on the order tickets still remains.

I've got a clear idea of what you're looking for here and will be happy to pass this on to the Product Team for consideration.

Should we receive updates on this functionality in future, we'll be sure to post a comment in this thread.