Creation of unpaid order via API or alternative ideas needed

[johnkuhn]

In my application, I typically send fully paid orders into Square accounts. I create the order and then I use the Square .Net library to do a CreatePaymentRequest in order to pay for the order. It then shows up in the terminal and auto-prints to a receipt printer and all is good. However, there are circumstances where the customer chooses to pay upon arrival instead of using my application. I am looking for a way to still have this order visible in the UI at the restaurant and print on the receipt printer even if it is not paid for yet. This way the restaurant can begin cooking the food and the customer can pay upon arrival. I’m not finding a way to do this and looking for either ideas or maybe this is something in development at Square? I found the below post that basically states that unpaid orders can be retrieved by the API, but they won’t show in the user interface in Square. Help please! Thanks

Why are Orders not visible in the Square UI?

Why in the world are newly created Orders not visible in the Square UI? I need to generate Orders in Square based on an external system, and before those Orders are paid, allow Square users to create Invoices to send to the customer for payment. But this seems impossible if Square users can’t even see Orders before they are paid. I have seen others refer to how strange this is, but I have not been able to find any reason for it, which leads me to believe I’m missing something. Isn’t it a basic …

[Bryan-Square]

At this time unpaid orders aren’t surfaced in the UI of the device to be printed. This is a very popular feature request and we hope to have more for you soon.

[johnkuhn]

Thank you, that would be great. Right now in order to test out our system, people have to place a live payment order to themselves. Likewise, orders that aren’t paid at the time of ordering aren’t as highly visible to the merchant selling the food because they can’t see them in Square at all.

[Bryan-Square]

We’ve just released Terminal API beta features including order itemization on the Terminal, delayed capture to authorize a payment upfront and collect funds later, card on file for recurring purchases, and app fees so you can monetize on payments processed via Terminal API. Learn more .

[johnkuhn]

Thanks Bryan, I’m checking this out now.

[johnkuhn]

Bryan, it looks like I need to actually have a Square piece of hardware (terminal) in order to be able to use this. Is that correct? My goal is simply to be able to place an unpaid Order in Square and have it be viewable by a merchant within their Square POS system, Square App, essentially all the places where you can view orders today. My application is web-based and customer is placing an online order using my application and trying to pay for it when they arrive. So, I need to be able to send it to the merchant’s Square system so that a ticket can be printed and they can cook the food. When customer picks it up is when the payment on the Order will be made. I’m using the Square .Net library and recently upgraded to the most recent one from April 2022. Thanks

[Bryan-Square]

Okay, given that use case this won’t work. The ability to push unpaid web orders to the POS to pay when the customer arrives isn’t currently available. We hope to have more for you soon.

[johnkuhn]

Ok, thanks for the quick response!