Supported pre-order additions to an existing UK Square restaurant bill

Questions
1

Hi Square team,

Retriever manages bookings and food pre-orders for The Old Dog in the UK. We can already read the venue’s OPEN Square POS orders. Please confirm whether there is a supported way for our integration to add the saved pre-orders to an existing unpaid table bill.

The intended workflow is:

  1. Staff open a table bill normally on the till and select that bill in Retriever.
  2. Retriever appends the booking’s Square catalogue items and modifiers once.
  3. Staff continue adding food and drinks and take payment normally on the same bill.

The public Update Orders documentation says UpdateOrder cannot update orders created in Square POS:

However, this October discussion reports a booking platform successfully adding catalogue items to staff-created Register tickets, with a Square employee acknowledging the workaround:

Please confirm:

  • Is adding items this way officially supported for a UK merchant such as The Old Dog, or is it experimental behaviour we should not rely on?
  • Which API or partner capability should we use, and what permissions, enrollment, POS mode, hardware and app versions are required?
  • Are added lines preserved when staff subsequently edit/save the bill, including its table association and any card tab?
  • How should printer/KDS routing and course timing work, and how should we prevent duplicate kitchen tickets?
  • Is the IN_STORE closed beta relevant, or is another supported route available?

We can provide application/location identifiers and confirm the venue’s device details through a private channel if needed. We have not tested writes against the venue’s live bills. We would like a supported route confirmed before arranging a controlled test with staff.

Thanks,
Peter Sowrey
Retriever

3

Welcome to the Developer Forum!

There isn’t currently a documented, supported way to add items to a bill that staff opened on the POS. The Update Orders limitation still applies.

The IN_STORE fulfillment beta access doesn’t cover this either. It applies to orders your app creates, not bills opened on the POS, and on its own it doesn’t enable open (unpaid) order workflows.

An alternative supported workflow is to create and fully pay a separate pre-order through your integration. Staff would bill additional purchases separately. However, this would not provide the single restaurant bill you’re asking for.