Rails Management: Control access, markup pricing, and roundup

Rails Management gives brands better visibility and control over their marketplace settings eliminating the need to rely on Olo to grant restaurants access to marketplaces. 

Please note that the Manage Access and Rails Pricing features have been combined into a single page called Rails Management. You can find the tool under the Rails tab in the left navigation.

Overview

Brand managers are able to edit both marketplace access and Rails pricing for each vendor within the brand. Managers with the RailsSettings permission will be able to do those tasks for the stores that they have access to. 

Managers are able to grant access and remove access along with setting a price markup per store along with a rounding strategy. They’re able to do this for a specific marketplace for a store, for all marketplaces for a given store, or for all stores and all marketplaces in bulk.

Brand Settings

Managers can specify which marketplaces show up in the table. Under Brand Settings, there is now a Rails Settings tab that allows managers to toggle marketplaces on and off for access on the Rails page. 

Only marketplaces that pass Rails Certification (aka Certified Rails Partners) can be displayed. To see a list of marketplaces that have passed Rails Certification, check out this article.

Once Rails partners have been enabled, you can activate your stores via the Management tab under the Rails section in Dashboard. Check out step 2 below for details on how to activate stores.

These settings also control which marketplaces will be visible in other parts of the Dashboard, including the Rails Performance Dashboard and the marketplace filters when searching for orders.

Feature Breakdown

The columns in the table align with marketplaces that are Rails-Certified and that the brand has specified they want to display and be able to modify (See the section above).

Note: There is no pagination on the page. If you've selected several stores to manage, only a few will show up on the page on initial load, but if you continue to scroll down the page, the remaining stores will load.

Editing a single store

Clicking on the cell value will display a modal where you are able to modify the selected marketplace settings for that particular store. See the screenshot above. 

Editing multiple stores

Users are able to bulk edit settings for several stores and marketplaces at once via the “Bulk Edit” button in the upper right corner. Please note that this button will only appear when two or more stores are selected. As always, bulk edit actions should be taken with caution. 

Step 1: Select a Rails Marketplace partner

The drop-down contains a list of all the Rails-certified marketplaces that your brand has enabled via Rails Settings

Step 2: Select an Action

There are two actions available: 

• Access: Control the marketplace access for the stores you’ve selected. You can give and remove access via this option. 
  • Note: We highly recommend coordinating with marketplaces before you remove access, as this can cause subsequent orders to fail. This feature should not be used as a means to temporarily deactivate a marketplace.
• Pricing: Edit the menu item markup pricing and price roundup AND optionally, the marketplace access for the stores you selected. Please note that you’ll only be able to keep existing settings or grant access via this route. There is no ability to remove access via this option.
  
  

Bulk Edit Access flow

Bulk Edit Markup & Roundup Pricing flow

  

 

Downloading CSV data

Rails Management includes the ability for users to download a CSV file that contains a summary of your selected stores’ marketplace configurations and high-level store information. In order to download this data, select a store or group of stores and click the Download CSV button. This report contains your Olo vendor ID, the internal system reference Olo uses to identify each store. Marketplaces will need this ID to complete the integration on their end. You can download and send this report to your marketplace contacts when requesting that a location be activated on Rails. The report also contains the External Reference ID. This is equivalent to your store number (e.g., "Store #1234") and it is not used by the marketplace to configure the integration.

 

FAQ

• What is a Rails-Certified marketplace?
  • Third-party marketplaces that have built integrations that meet or exceed Olo's standards for quality, accuracy, and security are given access to the Olo platform and become "Rails-Certified." To see a full list of marketplaces, please visit this help center article. 

• Why are the changes (that I've applied with the Rails Management tool) not applied immediately on my stores & marketplaces? 
  • Though the changes are immediately applied within Olo, Marketplace partners may not always update their systems immediately. If unsure, please contact your CSM or Olo help desk so that Olo can investigate and help troubleshoot.
  • For more clarity, Olo applies the changes within our platform, then sends a webhook notification to the Marketplaces that a change in access/markup has been applied and that a new menu file must be pulled from Olo. Marketplaces then consume this information and will ingest the latest menu file and apply the changes on the marketplace platform. For granting access, we’re working on establishing an SLA with our marketplace access.

• Will changing access to one of my stores make it "Live" in a specific marketplace?
  • This tool grants access to the store and menu data to our marketplace partners, who then have to make updates on their side to make the store “live.”

• Do all Rails Marketplace partners support marked-up prices through Olo? Including Google?
  • Yes, however, the way the prices are displayed in the POS differ.

• How will the inflated orders look in Dashboard?
  • Inflated prices are reflected in the order record in Dashboard. You’ll see the products and modifiers with the higher prices added to them.

• How will the pricing be reflected for accounting purposes?
  • Each POS displays inflated prices differently. Contact your Olo Representative for further information.

• The marketplaces are already marking up my prices. What should I do about that?
  • The price inflation at the marketplace must be removed before implementing the markup with this Rails Management tool. Please notify your Olo Customer Success Manager and we will work with the marketplace to adjust your prices accordingly.

• How will I know what the prices look like on my marketplace menu?
  • You can check the marketplace listing for your store to ensure the pricing is appearing how you intended.

• I don't see increased prices on my marketplace menu. Why is that?
  • The marketplace may not have refreshed the menu and thus are not presenting your most recent menu. If you notice this, please contact your CSM and we will work with the marketplace to ensure they are displaying your menu accurately.

• The marked-up prices appear strange. How can I fix that?
  • We recommend using a rounding strategy so that prices appear consistent. You are able to round prices to either the nearest $0.05, or $0.09 increments.

• I'd like to include a service fee for my marketplace orders. Is that possible through Olo?
  • You or your corporate brand manager will need to discuss service fees with marketplaces directly. Some marketplaces support this, however, service fees for Rails ordering cannot be supported through Olo at this time.

• Do I have to duplicate the menu items in Olo to apply the Rails prices?
  • No, you do not need to duplicate your menu items to apply the Rails pricing. If a brand has duplicated its menu previously, we recommend you delete that menu and use the markup functionality with this Rails Management Tool on the original menu.

• How do the Rails menu filters work with this Rails Management feature?
  • If you have used the Rails menu filters and have made certain products or categories “Rails only”, only those items will be impacted by the Rails Management feature, meaning only those items will have inflated prices applied to them.

• Will this feature work for all users and web browsers??
  • This feature will work for all modern browsers. Unfortunately, there is some degradation of performance in IE 11.

• How does the roundup/rounding work?
  • The logic will always round UP to the option you've selected - it will never round down. Ex: If you've selected "Nearest $0.09" the items at the store will be marked up to the nearest 9 cents - so if you have a burger that's $10.73, it will be marked up to $10.79. 

• I just selected stores but I don't see any of the marketplace configurations - is this a bug?
  • In order to see marketplace configurations in Rails Management, you'll need to be sure to toggle visibility for your marketplaces. You can do this via the Rails Settings tab in Brand Settings. More instructions are in the "Overview" section of this article.

• Can I use this feature to temporarily deactivate marketplaces?
  • We do not recommend using this feature to temporarily deactivate a marketplace. Marketplaces do not quickly deactivate a store on their interface based on this feature. If orders are submitted after a marketplace has been deactivated, the orders will fail, causing a poor guest experience. We recommend working directly with the marketplace to temporarily disable ordering.
    
    

• Why do I see “Contact Olo” listed for my store(s)?

  • Please check that you have provided billing information for the location(s) you are setting up or making changes to. If you have completed this step, please contact the Olo Support team to configure this store to accept Rails orders.
    
    

• Are negative markup values supported?
  • Not at this time