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). 

[RumiPersianCafe]

We are a restaurant too and have been able to use Square Online for people to order and schedule their pick-up times (also curbside pick-up option). No need for Square Appointments. It can be a bit confusing because within the cart it says Location and time after (next available dependent upon you hours of operation and time for preparation - set at the store or item level) but you can't actually choose the time and day until you are in the checkout process after the email/address info is entered. Delivery order, if enabled can still not be set to anything but next available based on the same 2 criteria. Hope that helps. The Square site by the way was super easy to set up and implement and has saved our business during this time, still difficult but up and running none the less. 

[pessosices]

Hey @Lizzyspizza 

I definitely agree with @RumiPersianCafe 

We are an Ice Cream Shop and we use the Square Online store for Pickup Orders and it works amazingly well! Right now we're doing Online Orders Only, and it's been pretty flawless!

[Lizzyspizza]

Thanks to you and @RumiPersianCafe for your responses. I did start looking at this a bit. I will have to dig in a little further. So how do I add the time it takes to prepare each item? I assume there has to be a way to do that so it knows how much time to block off before the pickup time 

[pessosices]

@Lizzyspizza 

Awesome! Let us know if we can help in any way!

Theres a field for “prep time” and it works perfectly! And if you have orders scheduled in advance, you can set it to automatically print the order tickets in advance by your prep time. 

example: if your prep time is 30 minutes and at 2 pm someone orders for 8 pm, the ticket will print at 7:30. 

If at 2 pm someone puts in an order for ASAP it will tell them the order will be ready in 30 minutes at 2:30 pm, and it will print the ticket immediately. 

[Lizzyspizza]

follow up question for you - I did go and set up the prep times for each item (5 minutes each). So if someone comes to the online store and orders 3 items, the total prep time would be 15 minutes then? Or another way to look at it, if I open at 5pm the first available time for this customer would be 5:15pm?

i tried to do some testing but it doesn't look like this is working. It seems that no matter how many items I add to my cart, it is only giving me a total prep time of 5 minutes.

[RumiPersianCafe]

Yeah unfortunately (for some businesses) it is not cumulative. There is a way to set a large order threshold (advanced settings on the pickup & delivery screen) if that helps. I don't know if this would apply to your situation but consider if your average order is 3 items that take 5 minutes each setting the default for the whole store as 15 minutes and then setting a large order threshold for anything more than 3 items. Gives you a cushion on some orders but overdelivering on others, remember your customers can be texted if they choose to know when order is ready and you can mark order ready is you beat the default time.  

[MarkLeddy]

I have a question along these lines.  We restrict our lunches to be available from 11:00 - 2:00 pm.  It doesn't look like a customer can order lunch items in advance of this time.  This seems strange.  Do I have an incorrect setting?  We would like our customers to be able to order their lunches in the morning and then schedule a pickup time later for during our restricted lunch times.  It seems like this would be normal so I'm guessing I just have an incorrect setting.

[Kassi_]

Welcome back to the Community, @MarkLeddy - 

It sounds like there could be a missing setting when it comes to your pick-up settings since you aren't seeing the option. 

Do you already have Time Based Categories set up for your lunches? Or do you have it set up differently?

I will keep an eye out for your reply👀. 

[MarkLeddy]

yes I have the time based categories set up.  In reviewing the section describing it I found this:

Items in a time-based category will show the hours of availability on the order online page. When viewing an item outside of the available hours, the add to cart button is disabled and shows the hours of availability instead.

It appears that the item can not be ordered outside of when it is available.  It that really the case or am I misunderstanding something.  Will the cart button enable if you pick a delivery time during its available period?

[MarkLeddy]

I just tested it out.  Will not allow me to select a lunch item from our menu, so if I was planning to order something for tomorrow, I cannot do it until we are in the hours when our lunch is available.  It seems like there should be a setting that would allow me to order today for tomorrow pickup or order tomorrow morning for pickup at 11:00 for examaple.

[Twiggy]

We had to adjust our prep time or as a work around is to have a “mid” serve time zone. So for an 11-3 lunch open at 10 prep 1hr. Consecutively run an 11 - 3.   For us to have a specific day 2 day fulfilment pick up / delivery  - our prep time is set to zero. Cut off is 5am. Fulfilment  is set to 2 working days. I wish coding and computers think the way we do.

Coding works on the end result first.
We think - what do we want and when do we want it.

Computers think where do you want it and what do you want. 

[Twiggy]

Or have a prep of 3 and open at 8 

[Twiggy]

Play around with your prep time - if you’re offering delivery - have a look at batch delivery. 

[MarkLeddy]

Kassi

I copied the information below  from the Square website (Square support).  Can you tell me what I'm missing.  It states that "available items will only display time based categories as available, if it is during the time that it is available; thus it appears that you cannot order time based categories in advance.  If this is not the case, we would really like to be able to order time based categories in advance.  It seems logical that we should be able to do that, so maybe I'm missing something.

Mark

Set Up Time-Based Categories in Square Online

Ordering from Time-based Categories

After selecting a location, customers visiting your online store are shown available items by default. Customers can use the menu on your order online page to switch between available items and all items.

“Available items” includes any item in a category that’s set to be available during all pickup and delivery hours, items with fulfillment set to shipping, non-physical items (e.g. events, memberships, etc.) and items that are in a time-based category if the current day and time falls within the specified hours.

“All items” will display every item regardless of pickup and delivery hours or time-based category settings.

To be eligible for purchase, items in a time-based category must be ordered with enough time to allow for fulfillment within the selected location’s pickup and delivery hours, including prep time and delivery estimates. Customers can purchase items in a time-based category until one minute before the scheduled end time. So if you have a category that’s available from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM, 1:59 PM is the latest that an order could be placed, assuming it can be prepared and fulfilled within your pickup and delivery hours.

Items in a time-based category will show the hours of availability on the order online page. When viewing an item outside of the available hours, the add to cart button is disabled and shows the hours of availability instead.

[BCH]

Hi Kassi_

I clicked on the link for Time Based Categories and followed the steps of creating a new category and adding items, but I don't see "then scroll down to the Availability section" 

I operate a bakery using pre-sales only; for example: Easter items are available for purchase now until they sell out or I close the pre-sale, but the only pick up day is 4/15/22. 

Right now I'm marking the items as "shipping" because the options  for "preparation" changes based on when customer places the order. Is there any way I can set up a pick up date I want without it changing regardless when the customer places the order. 

[Kassi_]

Welcome to the Community, @BCH - 

Great question! This is a Feature Request for the Square Online site. I would recommend posting this on our Ideate Board for our Product Team. 

In the meantime, there is a workaround you can see on one of our Beta Community boards. Take a look, here. 

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

[RumiPersianCafe · Accepted solution]

You can set a default prep time for the entire shop (in online store-settings- pick up and delivery- edit location) beyond that you can give each item in your item list from the online store a prep time either default for store or individual. 

[Joe]

Thanks for stepping in to assist, @RumiPersianCafe! We appreciate it 😎🙏

[Lizzyspizza]

Hi Joe. How does the online store determine availability? Is it using my connected calendar? or just the hours of operation? Also, after someone places an order online, will that time slot no longer be available for the next person?

[Joe]

Hi there, @Lizzyspizza - thanks for reaching out again!

You can set your Online Store pickup window availability here. These online store pickup times are separate from booking times through Square Appointments, which will block off the particular timeslot once an time is booked.

I hope this helps!