Manage cross location orders with Square for Retail
About managing orders across locations
If you’re out of stock for an item at one location, you can easily fulfill it from another location to avoid losing out on a sale. While fulfilling the order for shipment or pickup, you’ll have full visibility into the inventory at your other locations to determine if you can fulfill the order successfully. Once created, the order will route to the selected location for fulfillment, and you can track the progress through the Orders section of your online Square Dashboard or Square for Retail app.
Before you begin
If your items are split up across locations:
Split fulfillment is not currently available with cross location orders or single location orders. While this feature may be available in the future, you must fulfill your customer’s items from one single location at this time. As a workaround, you can process separate orders for your customer if the items are stocked across multiple locations.If you currently use a courier (or alternate fulfillment method):
The only accepted fulfillment methods for cross location orders are pickup and shipping. Delivery through a third-party courier service is not available at this timeIf your customer wants to pay later:
At this time, the ability to provide payment for an order at a later date is not available for single location and cross location orders. Customers must pay for their items up front in order to successfully complete the order and either fulfill it at the location they’ve ordered from or send it to another location for fulfillment.
Create a cross location order
To create a cross location order:
Select an item to Add to Cart.
On the item details screen, select Pickup or Shipping as the fulfillment method. If you select Pickup, you can add a new or existing customer to the order or directly enter pickup information in the Details fields. If you select Shipping, you can add a new or existing customer to the order, or directly enter delivery information in the Shipping address fields.
When adding items to the cart, you can either: Select a specific item, and navigate to the item detail screen for it. Scroll down to the Location dropdown at the bottom of the fulfillment Details screens, and tap to select a new location. Tap the three dots at the top right of the cart, then tap Change Fulfillment Location. Tap the existing location dropdown to select a new location.
You can view inventory availability for the item(s) in your cart per location and filter by Distance, In stock, and Name.
Once the new fulfillment location has been chosen, tap Save to complete your changes. The new fulfillment location will now be reflected at the top of your cart.
Tap Charge to complete the order.
Once the order has been fulfilled at the appropriate location, the stock levels at the location where the item(s) were fulfilled will update accordingly. The location where the order was created will receive the sales data for the order, and the customer’s payment will be included in that location’s next transfer. The order details can be viewed in the sales reporting associated with said location.
Note: At this time, an entire order must be fulfilled from a single location with one fulfillment type. The ability to split fulfillment across multiple locations is not currently available.
Create a return for a cross location order
To start a return from the Retail POS app:
1. Search for the transaction by typing in a receipt number, scanning the receipt, or swiping the payment card.
2. If the transaction is not found, tap Select Location.
3. Select the specific location or All Locations.
4. Once you have located the transaction, you will have the option to return or exchange the items purchased.
Related articles
Review the following Support Center articles to optimize order management with Square for Retail: