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Inventory Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Inventory ๐Ÿ“Š

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

 

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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 canโ€™t seem to figure out โ€œ______โ€ or I need help with โ€œ_________โ€.
  • An inventory issue that keeps me up at night is โ€œ____________โ€.
  • I wish Square for Restaurants or Square for Retail would support โ€œ________โ€.

 

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

๏œ๏ธ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
Find step-by-step help in our Support Center
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Thank you for every question, feedback and product request. Every discussion thread made this a very engaging and insightful AMA for our team, especially me, as the new Inventory, Product Manager. Your experience and feedback will help us revisit priorities for the product going forward.

 

We wanted to share a short recap on three themes that came up during inventory AMA event:

  1. Bundles/Kits: This stood out as one of the most frequently requested product features. Our team is actively working on incrementally adding this inventory functionality. We will continue to follow up with you to better understand your use-case as we build this.
  2. PO <-> Items Management:  This was another key area of interest that came up often and the overall sentiment was to have a more cohesive workflow as you make purchased items available for sale; and purchase more items from your vendor based on those sales.
  3. Inventory Availability: We hear this loud and clear to have more accurate โ€˜available for saleโ€™ inventory count versus stock you may still have on hand but committed through online orders or invoices. Our team is also actively working on incrementally building this functionality starting with invoices. Please stay tuned for the updates.

 

Next Steps:

  1. Trainings: Our team will set up bite size 30 min live trainings for areas where you may need some help to set up or get used to. Our first session about how to set up and use โ€˜sell by unitsโ€™ will be particularly helpful for current and future Square for Retail Plus subscribers. If you are interested, please submit your contact information here: 

    SIGN UP FOR TRAINING

    You can also use this form to share if there are any other topics/areas where training might help as you start or continue your Square inventory management journey.
  2. Feature Discovery/Beta: We will closely partner with sellers who have shown interest in product features like kitting/bundling, inventory availability etc. for feedback as we build these functionalities and participation in a product beta rollout.

 

We are inspired by your diverse businesses and how you want to continue to improve Squareโ€™s products to save you time and make better inventory business decisions that directly affect your brand and cash flow. It was also amazing to see a sense of collaboration and trust, especially experienced sellers helping out other sellers with their experience, within and outside of Square.

 

For the latest updates on Inventory, visit Product Updates.

 

Again, thank you for your participation and stay tuned for our next Q&A!

 

View Best Answer >

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Hello @Plantshop1098 @LouiseAtTheShop @loribradeen @Caswellonian - Thank you for reaching out. You may be able to set up two fulfillment locations to address this - one location to track backroom stock and another location to track the stock on the retail floor. Please feel free to reach out if you have a follow up question.

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@Inventory This has not been a workable option for us. We then have to (1) pay for the second location and (2) manually move every item from one location to the other when restocking. There has got to be an easier way to fix this issue. 

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It would be awesome if I could connect Square to Go Daddy for Inventory purposes. 

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Square

Thank you for reaching out. Square supports an integration with GoDaddy. You can find the details here on Square App Marketplace: https://squareup.com/us/en/app-marketplace/app/godaddy-websites-marketing

I hope this helps with your inventory syncing needs. If not, please let us know why so we can work to make this experience better for you and other Square sellers.

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I would like for the inventory to be able to be moved From a main storage to mobile/ store without having to go back and forth adjusting all. 
like if I want 3 things moved from a main storage, 1 going to Mobile store and 2 going to main store with out having to change every individual number for every individual product.
also it would also be nice to have the numbers of  the inventory for multiple places on one page.

 

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Thank you for reaching out. It appears that you manage three fulfillment locations - main storage, mobile store and main store; and want to move inventory from main storage to mobile and main store with a more simple process. 

 

Our team is actively working to design a new and simplified inventory workflow. We would love to set up a follow up call to collect your detailed feedback as we build this. Please DM me your contact information.

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Hi, I would like to be able to sync my square inventory with website platform WIX. That way tracking inventory is truly seamless. Is this feature available?

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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. I hope this can help you get where you want to be. If not, please let us know so we can learn more about your needs and work together to meet them.

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When removing items from inventory, what about a "put into use" or some such similar option?

 

I produce a raw product, dry peppers, and I also make sample recipes using them for customers to try. Since this is a seasonal product I have X bags of peppers at the end of the harvest season. Throughout the year I then use that inventory to make the samples (and also to make other products) so I have to remove them from that inventory - but there is no really appropriate category to track that change in use.

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@HellfireFarm Thank you for sharing your feedback. It looks like you are currently using a less than ideal workaround for inventory adjustment when item inventory is used in-house - for example as samples. Our team will evaluate requests for additional inventory adjustment codes.

 

Currently, the best way to do this in Square for Retail Free or Plus is to mark the items used for samples as "Lost' which means the business still pays for them, but they're not sold for profit.

 

It is currently also not possible to set up an item bundle with other item variations as ingredients for sale and track ingredient inventory as you sell the item bundle. 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 your contact information and we will set up a meeting.

Pong Issara Paoluengtong
Product Manager, Square for Restaurants | KDS
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- Need more reason codes for removing inventory to better organize why inventory was removed. OR give us the option to create our own category as to why inventory was removed. 

 

- Need to be able to "hide" inventory items from our library instead of just deleting them and never being able to view them. 

 

- Please please please take away the feature of being able to sell into negative inventory. OR give us the option to be able to turn that off. 

 

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Hello @cornseed - Thank you for sharing your feedback. It looks like you are currently using a less than ideal workaround for inventory adjustment and hiding old catalog items. These improvements are currently not planned. Our team will evaluate these product requests and reach out to you for additional feedback when we work on this. 

 

Our team is also actively working to provide improved visibility into inventory availability and how to manage or avoid oversells. We would love to set up a follow up call to better understand your use-case. Please DM your contact information.

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We have not been using the inventory feature quite yet. We have a handful of consigners. Is there a way to organize items by consigner (name or #) so that when it sells we can see who to pay out. Also so we can view what inventory they have left in the system 

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@Electriccity Great question. You can setup a vendor with consigner's name. That way you will be able to see consigner's associated item list in Inventory Management > Vendors. You can also filter Inventory History for a specific vendor.

Inventory_0-1652421530084.png

Inventory_1-1652421577254.png

 

 

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Hi, I would love square inventory to track inventory by weight when processing online orders. For instance, if I have 1lb of inventory, in store I can sell .5oz or 2oz and it subtracts from the 1lb (16oz total). Online, customers can only select 1oz increments. If I create separate variations, people can then by different increments, but it would not subtract from a universal inventory count. I would have to ensure we don't oversell by constnatly adjust inventory. Not ideal. Not doable. 

 

Thanks

Popi

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Square

@Popi 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 in POS and Square Online by using sell-by stock conversion feature. 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!

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I world like to be able to alphabetize the low stock alert

 
Brian Stewart
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@whatzup69  Thank you for reaching out. You can see which items are out from a Retail Plus account using in the stock overview. Today they appears as negative stock if they are oversold. You can access by logging into a Retail Plus account, navigating to the Inventory Applet. Tap 'Stock Overview', tap the 'Filter' button and choose sort by 'Lowest Stock First'. This will bring all of the items with negative or zero stock to the top of the list. You can also filter by Location and Category. Once you sort by 'Lowest Stock First', the list is then sorted alphabetically.

You can also do this on dashboard. Navigate to Items Library. Filter by 'Low Stock Alert' and the filtered item list should be sorted alphabetically.

I hope this information helps you accomplish what you need to do. If not, please let us know so we can better understand your needs.

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Hi - another one.

 

Possible for square inventory to allow "bundles" or "packages" to pull from multiple inventory sources? Example. If we want to sell a kit that includes 5 separate items, I would have to subtract the inventory from those 5 individual items in order to then add 1 inventory count for a kit. Would be great if you can create an item called "kit" or something like that and and select the inventory items that make up "kit". That would allow us to continue to sell the single items as single items or kits without worrying about over selling. 

 

Thanks

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Yes yes yes. I've been asking for this for more than 2 years.

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I have also been asking for this for years! Crucial feature for our gift shop.

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