Future-date pickup orders no longer printing automatically to kitchen printer

[cbstl]

Our shop does a lot of pre-order pickup business. Up until recently, all of our online orders and pickup orders with a future date taken on the in-store POS would print automatically to our kitchen printer. Now, only online orders are printing to the kitchen printer, but future-date pickup orders taken on the POS do not print automatically to the kitchen printer. We rely heavily on this functionality to keep track of all of our orders.

In the printer profile, if I enable In-person Order Tickets, pickup orders taken on the POS will automatically print to the kitchen printer, but so will all other in-store transactions based on my testing of that setting, so that doesn't work because we don't want a ticket printed for all of our immediate walk-in business too.

Did Square change the way this works? If so, why? The printer profile needs to have a setting that will automatically print only the in-person order tickets that have a future fulfillment date. That's the way it used to work until very recently!

[MayaP]

Hey @cbstl –  It does sound like something may have changed. I’ll investigate further to confirm. In the meantime, I will tag some super sellers who can share their insight ( @TheRealChipA @Donnie-M @SVLFever @DinaLRosenberg ). Thanks guys!

[cbstl]

Thanks @MayaP. 

[MayaP]

When I tested this on my end, it looks like you can select which order to send to the printer. I don’t have a printer connected to fully test, but when you select the order, does it not print as expected? Let me know what you’re seeing! @cbstl 

[cbstl]

Hi @MayaP - I can print orders manually to the kitchen printer without a problem. The issue is that future-date orders taken on the POS used to print automatically to the kitchen printer as soon as the transaction was complete and now they don't. As I said, if I enable In-person Order Tickets, then they'll print automatically to the kitchen printer, but so do immediate transactions that aren't future-date orders and we don't want those to print to the kitchen printer. Until whatever changed recently, Square Online orders and future-date orders taken on the POS printed automatically to the kitchen printer, while immediate in-store transactions did not. That's how we need it to work and how it has worked for us for several years up until a couple of weeks ago.

[MayaP]

To be clear, two issues are happening. First, in-person future date orders are not printing automatically. Second, these orders should not be going to the kitchen printer. Is that correct? Where should they be printing? Have you tried deleting and reinstalling the printer profile? @cbstl 

[cbstl]

@MayaP - No that's not correct. Sorry for the confusion. The problem in simplest terms is that in-person future-date orders taken on the POS are not automatically printing to the kitchen printer and they always did before (and should).

I just wanted to head off the potential suggestion of turning on "In-person Order Tickets" in the printer profile, because I tried that, but doing so caused all transactions taken on the POS to print to the kitchen printer and we only want future-date orders to print to the kitchen printer. The "kitchen printer" in our case is the printer for pre-orders that our production staff needs to plan for. Immediate (non-preorder), walk-in transactions are fulfilled by our reception staff and so we don't want/need those transactions to print on the kitchen printer.

[MayaP · Accepted solution]

Hey @cbstl  – I know this isn’t the answer you were hoping for, but I did escalate this to our Advanced Support team. They confirmed that this is working as expected and don’t recall this being possible before. This would be considered a feature request. I understand how changes like this can be frustrating, and I apologize for any inconvenience.

[cbstl]

@MayaP - Ok, that is very disappointing given that it most definitely worked that way for us for the last 3 years, despite what the Advanced Product Team recalls. The setting for automatic printing to a kitchen printer used to be for any Pickup order (regardless of POS or online), not specifically for online orders. It seems a little ridiculous to have to submit a feature request for a feature that used to be present and now is not, but if that's the only option, I guess I'll do that.

[SVLFever]

Unfortunately @cbstl , I can't answer your question, as I operate opposite of you, as I only do in person order tickets.   I'm not sure what the behavior is or was in this case.   I wish I could provide more insight, but maybe the change occurred with the rollout of "modes" @MayaP ?

[MayaP]

Thanks for the update! Yeah, it does seem like something may have changed. I appreciate you taking the time to try and help! 😊