Inventory Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Inventory 📊

[Tom]

Calling all sellers — especially those signed up with Square for Retail and Square for Restaurants. Our product team wants to hear your inventory questions and feedback!

On Wednesday, May 11th, we were grateful to have Mukta Dhanuka (@Inventory) and her team in our forums to address questions and feedback about Square Inventory. See the thread below for answers to your questions and keep watch for a summary of the top themes discussed.

To learn more about Square Inventory and its features, take a look at our Support Center: Basic Inventory Management. 

A few example questions:

• What are the best practices that will ensure I'm getting the most out of Square Inventory?
• What are the latest feature improvements with Square Inventory?
• If Square Inventory could take care of "_______," it would save me so much time and help me run my business more efficiently.
• I can’t seem to figure out “______” or I need help with “_________”.
• An inventory issue that keeps me up at night is “____________”.
• I wish Square for Restaurants or Square for Retail would support “________”.

Note: We can't share specific details on our product roadmaps, though this information will be helpful as we continue to make improvements.

[lbrboutique]

Would love it if “donation” was an option for adjusting inventory.  

[RiJu]

I agree a donation would be amazing. We donate items as well so we had to create a “donation” in discounts as 100%. But a donation button would be better so that I could print out a report for taxes.

[Inventory]

Hello @lbrboutique , @RiJu  - Thank you for sharing your feedback. It looks like you are currently using a less than ideal workaround for inventory adjustment for donations. Currently, the best way to do this in Square for Retail Free or Plus is to mark the items as "Lost' which means the business still pays for them, but they're not sold for profit. Our team will evaluate requests for additional inventory adjustment codes. We will reach out to you for feedback when we plan to work on a solution.

[dogtrainer84]

Hi! Our website and square app randomly say items are sold out when they are not. Is there any way to stop this from happening? Also, when updating stock or adding a new item to our website, you can only update 1 variation qty at a time and save. Is there a way to update multiple variation qty at the same time for an item?

Also, it would be really great if we could list modifiers in a dropdown box instead of a checklist grid. This takes up a lot of space on the item page. A lot of our items have personalization options but the only inventory tracked is the base product. For example we could have a tumbler in 6 different colors (inventory is tracked and this is in a dropdown for variation) but they have the option of 26 different personalizations (these are in the checklist grid and take up a lot of space).

Thanks!!

[RiJu]

We haven’t been able to take our store online because I notice inventory on the register and inventory only were different. We also noticed that when we receive inventory and few days or a week later the inventory in the register is way off. Have you noticed this happening at all?

[Inventory]

Hello @RiJu - when you say inventory is different, do you mean that products that are listed as available in the register and the product listed online are different or different physical stock count numbers show up for the same item variation  at register and Square online? 

[RiJu]

When items arrive and they are entered into Square then a day or two or week later the count is completely different from what was entered. I could enter an inventory of 10 items and then it mysteriously changes to another count or even 0. So we have not been able to use Square online because I am concerned that the inventory count will never be accurate and then we would have angry customers that would potentially give us a bad review. So we lose profit by not being able to have our store online.

[Inventory]

@dogtrainer84 Thank you for reaching out. I would love to understand your use-case in detail. Would you please DM me your contact information and time slots that may work for you in the next two weeks. Thank you!

[SandwichHag]

This happens to us as well.  Randomly shows we’re sold out when we never marked it as sold out.  

[issara]

@SandwichHag when you say inventory is different, do you mean that products that are listed as available in the register and the product listed online are different or different physical stock count numbers show up for the same item variation  at register and Square online?

Would you please share more  details about this issue so that our team can analyze this?

[CannedFresh]

Hello.   Canned Fresh here.....I've had several customers ask me if I take VENMO as payment.   I have a Venmo acct but its not tied to Square.   How can I tie my Venmo acct so that the transaction will take the products out of inventory ?  And how would I set it up so that the transaction goes to my checking acct NOT stay in my Venmo balance....or do I have to transfer it manually.

Thanks

lois

[homeprogreen]

That one is easy as far as taking the items out of inventory. You ring the sale up in Square as you normally do then choose “other” as form of payment. The sale is listed in your sales report and inventory is adjusted like normal. You will have to transfer the funds from your Venmo manually though

[issara]

@CannedFresh Thank you for sharing your use-case.  Unfortunately, it is currently not possible to automatically connect Venmo received payments to Square invoices.

You will be able to collect Venmo payments and settle corresponding Square invoice using "Other Payment Types".  You can add an optional note if you select  “Other Payment Types”. You will have to manually transfer Venmo balance to your bank account from your Venmo app.

Our team is not actively working on or considering Venmo integration but we are always assessing priorities based on seller feedback.

[ophiuroidea]

Is there a way to scan UPC codes of a product to enter inventory into Square?

[LeahfromProduct]

With Square for Retail Plus on Square Register, iPad or iPhone navigate to the Inventory Applet > Stock Overview > Adjust Stock > Receive

From this view you can scan barcodes for items that exist (and do not exist) in your item library to add them to your inventory quickly and efficiently. This feature is not available in a free plan.

[Nikas_Olive]

It would be great if Square could handle "recipe" items where you could track bulk and/or raw materials that are used to produce a final product.  It would make keeping track of our inventory SO much easier.

[issara]

@Nikas_Olive Thank you for reaching out. It is currently not possible to set up an item bundle with material and services combo for sale. Our team is actively working on incrementally adding this inventory functionality. We will follow up with you to better understand your use-case as we build this.

[TheOpenEye]

If you see this do not post

on this thread. I have been flooded with email of other people’s

questions. Unsubscribe does not work. Thread settings do not work. This is annoying.

[homeprogreen]

Well people have to post their questions in order to get them answered. Maybe try unsubscribe from a different device 

[Tom]

Hey @TheOpenEye, thanks for bringing this up and thank you for helping out @homeprogreen!

If you'd like to reduce the frequency of email notifications you receive, you can adjust them from your Notification Settings. To do this, go to My Profile (dropdown menu in upper right corner) > View / Manage Settings > Subscriptions & Notifications > Notification Settings. From there, you can scroll down to "Email Notifications" and select the frequency for New replies that works best for you. (screenshot below)

Be sure to click the blue Save button once you've got everything configured. Hope this clears things up, but definitely let me know if this doesn't resolve the issue.

[londontea]

I have a strange need at my business, and I'm not sure how feasible it is. At our shop we bag up tea to order because customers can order tea in any amount, but at our warehouse we have everything already bagged up. 

Currently we have two separate items for each tea we sell, one is sold by the ounce (for in-store sales) and the other is sold in 3 sizes (for online sales). I want to be able to have just one item for each tea, as that would simplify management and allow me to finally track our tea inventory. My ideal item looks like this: 

Item: Irish Breakfast

1. Variation: 1oz
2. Variation: Sample (conversion x1)
3. Variation: Small (conversion x4)
4. Variation: Large (conversion x16)

What I want to do is track variations 2-4 at our shop using stock conversion, but at our warehouse they need to be tracked independently with manually entered stock counts. (I also need a way to hide variations for sale online, but that's another team).

Can I have it so that one location uses stock conversion while the other location does not?