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.

[issara]

@londontea 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!

[londontea]

I've given the stock conversion feature a try but it hasn't quite solved for my need. Here's my use case: 

I have two locations: Location A and Location B. 

Item X contains two variations with their own SKUs: 100 and 101. 

SKU 100 is sold by the ounce at both locations.

SKU 101 is a 4x conversion of SKU 100 at Location A, and at Location B it is tracked as its own unit (independent of SKU 100). 

As I'm writing this out in more depth I realize that it's probably a big technical challenge for a SKU to be counted as two inventory types, one of which is a conversion of another SKU. So maybe it's not possible, but I'd be thrilled if it could happen. 

[Inventory]

Hello @londontea - Thank you for sharing your use-case here.  We would love to speak with you to understand this use-case better and gather more detailed feedback. Would you please DM your contact info and a few time slots that may work for you next week?

[JALS]

Hello,

• I have several issues with square for retail.  One is the inability to bundle individual products into kits.  I own a quilt shop.  We cut several pieces of fabric (different sku's) to put them into one quilt project.  Right now, I sell the pieces of fabric to myself with 100% discount through square pos so that the correct amount is removed from inventory and my COGS is updated.  I then set up a new item (quilt kit) with the COGS set up as the unit price and the selling price is created from that amount.  It is tedious at best and requires spreadsheets to track the costs and amounts used.  I used Lightspeed for many years, but they decided to do away for decimal quantities and that does not work for fabric.  

• I would also like my PO's to be able to receive in decimal quantities since my goods come in fractions of yards.  We can sell in decimal quantities, we can't we buy in decimal quantities.  I have created an item "Yardage Correction" so that I can get my Invoices to balance with my PO's.  I then manually go in an update the actual quantity received.  Bothersome.

• I see that you have changed the Item screen on the POS dashboard.  Bad move.  I have two locations.  I can't just click on the blue stock quantity anymore.  I have to go into "Edit Variations" and then "Manage Stock" to see what each location has.  Takes longer.  Everything is so spread out on the screen, I am constantly scrolling to get to the next field.

• We are trying to figure out how to track Vendor Sales.  When setting up an item that has more than one vendor, Square credits sales to one of them.  Randomly?  I have set the vendors to a specific default vendor, but square will not pull the reports from the default vendor.  Some items show up with "No Vendor" when there is a single vendor attached.  We have to manually go through all the vendor sales to make sure that the correct vendor is being properly paid for the items they brought in.  I am one of the vendors as I have an online square account and a brick and mortar account (location).  In order for me to be paid, I have to export the Vendor Sales reports for myself and several of my distributors and manually color code which are items that I should be paid for.  How should this be done?

• To transfer stock from one location to another, we have to type the item in because we cannot use the barcode scanner on the label created through square.  Sometimes, if we scan it twice it will bring up the item, but then when you scan the next item it puts in the previous item again, which you have to delete and then scan the second item again.  Not efficient to say the least.

• I am running an online business and tracking inventory.  Some of my items have been transferred to my brick and mortar location that I am partners with.  When I transfer stock to the brick and mortar, I cannot sell it in my online shop, because it says it is now out of stock.  In speaking with square online support, he said I could have two or more pick up locations, but only one shipping location.  So I can't ship from my brick and mortar shop?  Even though we each have our own web address?  I am confused on how to handle these issues.

I hope that I can tune into the webinar on May 11.  Maybe one or two questions will be answered.  I am tired of hearing that we are passing this on to our product development team.

[Inventory]

Hi @JALS  - Thank you for taking the time to share detailed feedback, really appreciate it. Would you be available for an interview? Please DM me your contact information and a few time slots that may work for you in the next two weeks. 

[JALS]

Hello,

This is Crystal from Just A Little Something or JALS.  I hope this is the way I DM.  My contact info is as follows:  [redacted for seller privacy] (email).  [redacted for seller privacy]  (cell).  I am available most days, nights and weekends.  I am on CST and work very long days.  I am looking forward to hearing from someone that knows a lot about Square and its capabilities now and what is coming in the future.

[Inventory]

Hi @JALS - I sent you a DM as I can't read your contact information here. Please reply to the private message and I will set up a call for us to chat.

[Archie1]

I would love to see what you are doing for restaurants as not only do I use outside inventory... that I hate but I consult for 4 others and we are looking at what to do

[issara]

@Archie1 We are working on making improvements for restaurant inventory and would love to connect with you to better understand what your ideal inventory experience on Square looks like. Would you please DM me your contact information so that we can set up a follow up call?

[zmartin]

we do a lot of wholesale (around 60% of revenue for us) It's not unlikely to have 10-15 pallets of wine (5400 bottles on the low end) on an invoice each week. having the inventory reduced at the time of payment rather than at the time of invoice creation is an absolute PAIN! is this something that is going to be fixed? 

[Inventory]

Hi @zmartin - Our team is actively working on this feature as I am writing this. We will share details about BETA launch soon. Please stay tuned.

[Honeybeard]

I have another question.

Why has adjusting inventory become such a difficult task?
Before it was just one click.
Now we have to go to "receive inventory" Just to adjust inventory.
It doesn't make sense to make something like that more difficult for retailers.

Anyways of having inventory adjustments easier to do with less steps?

[Inventory]

@Honeybeard  Thank you for sharing this feedback. Our team is actively working on incrementally improving inventory workflows. We would love to set up a call and gather more feedback as we build this.

Would you please DM me your contact information and a few time slots that may work in the next 2 weeks so that we can set up a follow up call?

[whatzup69]

I hate the new dashboard. Takes to long to get to the item screen. Please make it simple. Also what size I phone do I need to use dashboard.

[Inventory]

Hello @whatzup69 - Can you please share more about your experience using items management screen on dashboard? What aspects of the experience do you dislike?

[shopfybr]

Would love it if we could automatically notify a customer when a requested out of stock item is back in stock.

[Inventory]

@shopfybr Thank you for sharing your feedback. This feature is currently not planned. In the coming days, our team will evaluate all product requests shared during AMA for backlog refinement.

[claritycoffee]

Is it possible to add an automatically daily resetting inventory to certain items? 
Example: we have fresh pastries each day and every night after close, we have to go in and reset the inventory back for the next day on those pastry items. If we can have this automatically reset each day, it would save SO MUCH time. 

[Inventory]

Hi @claritycoffee Thank you for sharing your use-case with us. Our team is actively working on incrementally adding this inventory functionality. Today you can also use the Item Count and Availability feature on Square for Restaurants POS to track item count and reset availability at the end of day.

We would love to set up a call and gather more feedback as we build this into inventory.

[carriejensen]

Can you please address the issue of bundling? It would be so helpful to be able to bundle a kit, gift basket, or class items and have it reduce the correct inventory with one entry. I have recently been making my own kits, which include up to 20 items in them and have to enter each item when someone checks out. I've seen this topic has been requested for years and know other POS systems offer this. Is there a good work around or are there plans in creating this option. Thank you. 

[Inventory]

@carriejensen It is currently not possible to set up an item bundle or kit 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 for research as we build this. Stay tuned for updates. 

Please DM me your contact info and a few time slots that may work you for an interview in the next two weeks.