Hello Square Community. I want to suggest an upgrade/change on the Orders feature. I run a bike shop and have three types of in-person sales.
1. The product/items are in stock, customer is billed on the POS, and takes the merchandise right away.
2. The items sold are not in stock, the customer pays (in full or down payment) for the incoming items for reservation.
3. Service such as a tune up where the customer drops their bike off, payment is not taken till all the work done in case of extra things needed. Customer picks up the completed bike and pays for the work done.
Transaction #1 is easy through checkout. For transaction #2, the way to create on in-person order is through the checkout on the POS system which handles transaction #2 for the shop by adding a pick up date. I can see the order with the itemized receipt and mark the current status as the parts/items come back into stock on the orders tab. From what I have seen, once you create an order, you cannot edit the customer, or pickup date. You can take a payment for the order, but only on the square virtual terminal on a PC which charges extra for not being in person. I have to use invoices for option three (capture customer information, itemize the order, and pay when completed) and the payment has to be done through a link which increases cost for the transaction (+0.6%). Again, the invoice customization would be nice to do through the POS system (with the right credentials to edit per user).
I assume the main use case for the Orders feature is online orders, but I believe it could be transformed into much more powerful tool for businesses. I suggest moving the order creation/editing to the Orders tab on the POS system. This separates orders from the checkout process (transaction #1 in my case) by creating a "create order" button on the screen while viewing orders. This button would open a menu to add items, customer, notes, order type for organization, and payment if they are paying right away. After creating an order on the POS system, the employee (depending on permissions) can select/edit each order status (waiting, in process, completed/picked up), see the paid status (unpaid or paid), view/edit items in the order & customer info, edit pick up date, and most importantly bill the customer out from POS system without needing to use a computer or any links. This would streamline order and could apply to online orders as well due to the flexibility and how each order could be edited. The biggest part of this is that each step of taking an in-person order (creation, fulfillment, payment) would be completed through the POS system, no computer needed. This could be done a phone as well if you are using the square BT card reader on your phone.
This would make the order feature so valuable to my bike shop and increase the value you get by purchasing Square devices. It would allow me to track orders as product comes into the shop, and allows me to use order to track service work through any square device, in my case the POS and Handheld. All orders and status would be updated digitally, all available to edit, and check out in one place, the Square POS (or phone app).
What do you all think?
