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.

[holskies]

Thank you for reaching out. Square supports plug and play integration with several 3P solutions including Wix. For details, please check out our app marketplace : https://squareup.com/us/en/app-marketplace/app/wix.

Hopefully this inventory integration can help you better manage inventory between Square and your Wix website. If not, don't hesitate to let us know so we can work together toward a better solution.

[SandwichHag]

Is there a way to sync online and POS inventory to show “out of stock” when an item is sold out online?  At this time, an item could be at zero stock online, yet the item on POS won’t be automatically greyed out.  This leads to the cashier overselling an item without knowing that the item is at zero stock.  I then have to refund the customer, then manually go into that item online and select “out of stock”.  It seems counter-intuitive.  If the tracked stock gets to zero, it should automatically be tagged as “sold out” for both online and on our POS.  Thank you so much!

[issara]

@SandwichHag 

Thank you for reaching out:

• For items that have stock tracking on, inventory can go down to zero or into negative. When the inventory number goes to zero, Square Online blocks purchases for that item online. But the item can still be sold on POS  which results in negative inventory count. We have received different feedback from different sellers on this topic - some want this flexibility to ‘Add Anyway’ with a warning dialog, and others don't.
• For items that do not track stock, a seller can manually mark an item as sold out on POS or on Square Online. This sold out state syncs between Square Online and POS. Marking as sold out still allows seller to ‘Add Anyway’ with the warning dialog.
• Another RST specific functionality is item counts. If a seller is using item counts in RST, those don't sync back to dashboard inventory or Square online.

Our team is actively working on improving  visibility on item availability across sales channels.

[TKS]

It would help a lot to set the MOQ for an item during product setup so we can see the MOQ when we create a PO either with auto or manually. We usually cannot order 1 or 2 of something even if Square doesn't think we sell that many. 

Also, it would be helpful to be able to select multiple items within the Items list then indicate to which PO the items should be added or to create a new PO with the selected Items. The new or existing PO would be updated and the MOQ would be shown in a column next to the current QTY on hand.

[Inventory]

Hello @TKS - Thank you for reaching out. This is currently not planned. We will be reassessing our product plan based on feedback collected during AMA.

[CandyandMore]

Is there a way to run a report of items that are removed from inventory that are marked as loss, theft, damage etc?

This could be used for tax write off purposes, double checking lost items, finding patterns of theft among other reasons. 

[RiJu]

I agree if we could download the loss, theft, and damage would be beneficial at tax time.

[Inventory]

Hello @CandyandMore @RiJu -  Thank you for sharing feedback. The only way to look at these adjustments is in Inventory History. This data is not available for download or in any report. This is currently not planned. We will reassessing our product plan based on feedback received during AMA.

[LouiseAtTheShop]

Hi! 

I have a couple items I sell individually and in sets. I.e. Widget A by itself, widget B by itself or the widget starter pack that includes A, B, and a couple small accessories. I don’t want separate inventory of starter packs—we grab those items together when someone wants all of them and then I want that transaction to reduce the inventory of each of the included items. Am I right that this is not available? It feels like a really simple ask but it must be much harder than I would expect. Or it exists and I’ve somehow failed to discover it. 

[wheeler1]

This is usually described as "bundles" or "kits." There are other comments in this thread (and other threads) requesting the same. I've been asking for it for a couple years. It'd make my life a whole lot easier!

[JALS]

I have been begging for bundles or kits for over a year.  This has been a requested product feature since 2016.  Still not available.  Don't hold your breath.

[Paulyester]

https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Square-for-Retail-Discussion/Grouped-Item-Sales/td-p/287270

[Inventory]

@Paulyester @JALS @wheeler1 @LouiseAtTheShop Thank you for reaching out. It is currently not possible to set up an item bundle for sale such that inventory is automatically decremented for each component of the kit when the bundle is sold. 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. Please DM me your contact info and a few time slots that will work best for you in the next 2 weeks.

[kuttersedge]

I need the ability to “build” services that utilize inventory items. Every service we perform involves one or more items I inventory. I have reached out for assistance with this previously and was told it was not possible… This is vital to service businesses. Thank you, in advance, for your consideration in this request.

[Inventory]

Hello @kuttersedge Thank you for reaching out. It is currently not possible to set up an item bundle for sale such that inventory is automatically decremented for each component of the kit when the bundle is sold. 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. Please DM me your contact info and a few time slots that will work best for you in the next 2 weeks.

[kuttersedge]

I don’t see a way to DM you, but you can either send me a message through the Square app or via my email. Kutters Edge. Thursdays are my best day as I’m at my desk instead of on the floor. 🙂 I’m on EST, so I could be available after 7pm any weekday, if you’re in a later zone. I look forward to hearing from you. And I’m happy to help in any way that I can.

[stirredh2o]

What do I do when inventory items are waiting for payment and are not deducted from my inventory. If someone takes a week to pay it looks like that item is still in stock.

[ms11]

@stirredh2o Our team is working on a solution to display an available inventory count which updates upon invoice creation rather than payment. We are looking for sellers to participate in the beta release of the feature, let us know if you are interested!

[Shaffe]

I have used square for years and love it.  The main thing I would love to see adjusted to the inventory tracking is this.  At my business, customers get different pricing for larger quantities purchased.  However there is no way to track that in Square currently that I am aware of. If I have an item with 3 different price points, I can only track it on one price point-which means having to go back and readjust constantly.

[Inventory]

Hello @Shaffe Thank you for reaching out. It is possible to track item variation sales or other types of inventory adjustments in different units of measure through the same physical stock. This feature is currently available as part of Retail Plus package: https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5957-inventory-plus

We are planning to organize a training session on how to get started with sell-by units if you have a Retail Plus subscription. Stay tuned for the details!

[Caswellonian]

Hi @Tom and @Inventory !

Many of us who use Square Retail are deperate for the inventory to correctly reflect items that have been invoiced, but not yet paid. Square currently shows these items as in stock until the invoice has been paid.  This is incorrect as the item is removed from stock before the invoice is paid. Can you please provide a fix that would show invoiced items as not in stock.  As TSCLAGUNA indicated,  this could be accomplished by adding a "Quantity on Hand" or "Quantity Available" feature.  It is difficult to understand the point of an inventory system that doesn't correctly show available stock.