Open tabs ("bar tabs") vs Guest Pay (EMV)

[Motorco]

We have a high volume, fast paced quick serve restaurant/bar. We've been doing paper receipts and open tabs with pre-auth. I recently added a customer screen to only one terminal as an experiment. BUT, we still wanted to be able to offer open tabs, so it's a wacky hybrid with the screen, but no tap/dip box (customers fumble around trying to tap the screen and we have to get their card and swipe for them 🙄). We've had an uptick in chargebacks lately - not sure what's up. It's usually for a random fraction of the total. So Toast yanks our money plus the $15 and I have to hunt down the signed ticket. If the guest left their tab open and we closed it with an autograt, then we're screwed. Also, we have about $1000/month in charges that we can't close due to various weird errors.

SO! We are considering just ditching open tabs altogether. The reasoning being that it is a much quicker process for customers to open/close each time with the GuestPay EMV setup. For actual tabs (eg office parties, etc), we would keep the card behind the bar (just like in olden times). This is because I can't figure out a way to have an open tab with a pre-auth on a terminal setup for EMV/GuestPay.

My question(s) are: Has anyone figured out a better way to get a pre-auth for a tab on a system with Guestpay? Has anyone with a bar/quick serve switched from paper/tabs to full EMV guestpay and what heartaches/headaches do you now have?

[Rob]

@Motorco, the chargebacks might be coming from closing out the open tabs with auto grat and the combination of the pre-auth process. 

When a card is pre-auth, the check must be closed out to the "saved card" Otherwise, this could cause extra charges to pend BUT they do fall off; however, to a customer, this may look weird and they might submit a chargeback.
 
Also, if you are to pre-auth a card, it needs to be done at the beginning of the transaction before adding any items to the check. If you pre-auth a card with items on the check, it will pre-auth for the total on the check rather than the amount specified in the backend of Toast. Then when the customer pays, it may look like a "double-charge" on the bank's dashboard; however, this amount does fall off. 

If you think it would be helpful, I could make an entire article about pre-auths and what are the best processes with them. 

Lastly, pre-authorization only works when swiping a card. It will NOT work with credit card chip/EMV dip payments or contactless payments like tapping a card.

Here are some articles about the pre-auth process and using tabs open tabs that may be helpful!
Setting Up Tabs & Pre-Authorization for Toast Mobile Order & Pay™
Card Pre-Authorization Configuration & Device Setup

Card Pre-Authorization FAQ

[Motorco]

Ha. Ya, so you're saying we're supposed to get the customer's card first, before taking their order? That's hilarious. That happens in precisely no restaurants ever.

It is possible to have an MSR on the terminal. So it *seems* as though the system should allow me to swipe the card for a pre-auth, even if the emv box is installed and configured for guest pay. If not, I'd call that a software limitation.

But I am still hoping to get some feedback from any other bars or quick serve spots that have switched from paper receipts and tabs to EMV only. We're concerned about possibly slowing things down, reducing average check size and reducing overall tip percentages.