[Early Access] Open Tabs for Online Ordering Profiles: try it out and share your feedback

[RazakM]

Hi F&B folks! 👋

We’re excited to share that Open Tabs for Online Ordering Profiles is now available in Early Feature Access!

What it is

Open Tabs lets customers start a tab from their Online Ordering Profile, continue adding items throughout their visit, and pay when they're ready to close out. Staff can view and manage the same tab from Square Point of Sale, making it easier to serve dine-in guests without interrupting the ordering experience.

We’re looking for restaurants, bars, coffee shops, bakeries, and other F&B sellers to try it out and share feedback with our team.

To get started:

1. Head to Early Feature Access in your Square Dashboard and install Open Tabs for Ordering Profiles
2. Go to Online Ordering → QR Code Ordering and enable “Allow dine-in customers to open a tab.”

Screenshot 2026-08-10 at 10.37.24 AM.png

You'll need to be on a Square Plus or Premium plan and have Online Ordering Profiles enabled.

Since this is an early feature, your input directly shapes where it goes next. Share your feedback here throughout the beta — what's working, what isn't, and what you'd like to see improved 🙌. 

[tranguyen]

Thanks so much for sharing @RazakM ! Tagging in a few folks that might be interested in this @SVLFever @MAXSDELI @tulanejeff @TheRealChipA @Getonthebus @Lovewell @makedonas @Donnie-M @JG_Brewing @indianathomas @GFC25th @Callee1945 @schaefferjosh @sugarlab @emilyz123 @perkits !

[MAXSDELI]

Hi Tran, thank you for tagging me however, this isn’t a feature I’d be currently interested in for our location but I like the feature and perhaps, this something we can utilize in the future. 

[indianathomas]

We're going to look into this.  

[SVLFever]

Hello @RazakM .  I activated the beta in early access, but when I try to go to the settings, I am seeing this request to upgarde.   I have Square Plus currently, although if you could update me to Square Premium @tranguyen , I would appreciate it. (I'll send you a DM about this).

Square Upgrade.png

Is this an error since I'm on Plus currently?

[RazakM]

Hi @SVLFever  It looks like you’re currently on our legacy Plus plan (i.e Square for Restaurant/Retail Plus and Square Online Plus) rather than the new plan listed here: https://squareup.com/us/en/pricing.

You’ll need to migrate to the new plan if you’d like to switch over. I believe your account rep should be able to help you with the migration.

[SVLFever]

HI @RazakM .

We upgraded to Square Premium yesterday and I tried to activate the "allow dine in customers to open a tab" setting and it created an error.   Thinking that it might be related to the beta being on when the subscription changed, I shut it off and turned it back on, but the result was the same.

Square Tab Error.jpg

Any ideas???

 

[RazakM]

@SVLFever First time coming across this issue. Will look into it immediately 

[RazakM]

Hi @SVLFever  thanks for your patience. The issue seems to be related to how the menu is currently set up. While the menu itself is assigned to the Ordering Profile, none of the items within the menu are assigned to the profile, which effectively leaves it empty and invalid. This then prevents updates from being made to your profile configurations. Could you please assign some items from the menu to the Ordering Profile and try again?

[SVLFever]

HI @RazakM .  I have to be honest in that I was wondering what your last response was talking about, as we have been doing QR code ordering now quite successfully for about a year.  I think I found the issue though.

I have two websites, since I have both a retail and restaurant businses.  The first website we built was for Retail, and the second was for our restaurant.  

It seems that I have to activate the menu to work on the retail site in odrer to get the error message to go away.  This is obviously an operational issue, as we don't want people ordering a bowling ball while they order a pizza.

So activating the correct menu with the QR code is not the same website as the feature is activating, from what I can tell.

Is this a bug, or a feature that hasn't been designed yet???

[RazakM]

Hi @SVLFever,

Apologies for the confusion in my previous response.

To clarify, Ordering Profiles are a separate sales channel from your Square Online websites. It sounds like you currently have QR code ordering enabled through your Square Online site, which is why your existing setup has been working successfully.

The experience I was referring to is specific to the Online Ordering Profile. From what I can see, there is a menu assigned to that ordering profile, but none of the items within that menu are currently assigned to the Online Ordering Profile channel. Here's an example from a test account for reference:

Screenshot 2026-08-14 at 3.55.47 PM.png

 

On our end, this means we effectively consider the menu empty, as though there are no items available for ordering through that channel. That's what's causing the issue when you try to update the configuration.

This article goes into more detail on managing menu assignments across locations and sales channels:
https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/8553-manage-your-menus-across-locations-and-sales-channels

So, to clarify, you shouldn't need to activate your restaurant menu on your retail website. Instead, the items in the restaurant menu need to be assigned to the Online Ordering Profile channel. This is independent of which items are available through your Square Online websites.

I hope that clears up the distinction, and apologies again for the confusion. 

[SVLFever]

HI @RazakM .   I'm sorry I'm having such an issue, but I GOT IT!!!!

So, some initial feedback.  Since I was seeing the menu items in the "Online Ordering Menu", I mistakenly thought that items listed were in fact set to be available in the channel.  I somehow missed the fact that I still had to go back to the items to have them show up in this setting.   With that being said, it's not going to be fun to have to go through my 100+ items and add them all individually.   It seems to me that if I enable the menu to be sold through this channel, it should automatically activate those items in the menu to appear.   This would save some time.

We will begin testing in our live environment this weekend or Monday at the latest.

THANK YOU for your help!!!

[RazakM]

Hi @SVLFever,

Glad to hear you got it working!

That's really helpful feedback. I agree the experience could be better, and I'll flag this with my team as well.

Thanks again, and I hope the testing goes smoothly!

[SVLFever]

Hello @RazakM .  

I began testing and it appears to be working as expected, but I found one issue.  I flagged an item as "contains alcohol" and added it to my tab.  I was never prompted to verify my age (as the customer using the tab) and our KDS displayed the item to be made.

Should there have been some message about verifying the age for the alcohol someplace, and if so, where should that be?

John

[RazakM]

Hi @SVLFever,  Great question! you should see a small banner when with a Valid ID required message when you add an alcoholic item to the cart. Example from an Iphone:

Screenshot 2026-08-15 at 12.45.39 PM.png

Screenshot 2026-08-15 at 12.39.10 PM.png

What device are you using to test currently?

[SVLFever]

I temporarly activated an item for the test (root beer float) and it did NOT appear like that when using my Samsung S26 @RazakM .   

I have left for the day but will check again tomorrow to see if I can duplicate the issue.   If so, I'll take a screen shot and post it here.

Thanks again!

[RazakM]

@SVLFever Thanks so much for the feedback! Will look into this issue on my end as well

[SVLFever]

@RazakM I figured out the issue with the age verification.  It does NOT work with Restaurants Premium.  It only works with Retail.    I for the life of me couldn't figure out why it wasn't working (as we had never used it) until I asked the Managerbot and it told me I needed Retail for this function (which seems odd to me as a bar owner using Restaurants).   Anyway, the mystery is solved!  😎

[RazakM]

Thanks for sharing that find @SVLFever. That does seem odd to me as well. I'll look internally to see if I can find some more details on why thats the case

[emilyz123]

Hi there, thanks for sharing! We are a coffee and gift shop, is there any use case for us for this new feature? Trying to figure out what an example use case would be for us.

[RazakM]

Absolutely! One example could be a customer who comes in, orders a coffee, and wants to keep browsing while they’re at the café. Instead of paying right away, you could open a tab for them, and they can add a pastry, another drink, or even a gift item as they go, then pay for everything at once when they’re ready to leave.