Square Inventory & Item Management: Ask our Product Manager Anything!

[Helen]

Hello!

On Thursday, September 9th @elaine_p from our Inventory team joined us in the Seller Community for another Q&A all about Inventory and Item Management.

This event has now ended - thank you for everyone who asked a question!

We've released a lot of features over the last year, and we asked you to share what's working well and where are the areas where we can improve. We can't share out specific details on our roadmap, though we make sure any feature requests that came through during the event are considered for further versions of our products. Read through the replies below to learn more! 

[elaine_p]

Hi @Gvoneberstein! 

The feature I mentioned to wheeler1 that is in beta on Retail Plus may be a good way to go. I would create an item variation for each charm, and then I would create an additional “unit” of sale for the necklace at a different price point. If you are interested in trying this out using Retail Plus, I can add you to the beta test group. 

This is an example of how I might set up charms as variations with different units to account for them being sold at different price points. They could also be set up as items for each initial which would be better for Square Online display so that each one could have its own product page. 

One additional idea is to set up the necklace as a modifier to the charm. You can specify a price that a modifier will add to account for the difference. I would track inventory on the charms, then just use the modifier to account for the price difference. This assumes that you do not need to track inventory on necklace chains, which may not be true.

[grovetealounge]

I'm going to second what @sotexbbqco said above.  Additionally, I would love to see Square add the ability for us to track inventory of our MODIFIERS.  For example - we sell bubble (boba) tea. Boba is an add-on for certain drinks and thus has been created in our register as a modifier.  The problem is we are only able to make a certain amount of boba every single day and some days we just run out (or run out for 30-60 minutes while we make more fresh boba). The problem is that when customers come in and order or place orders online, I have no way to show in our register system that we are out of stock of boba. Which inevitably means I end up having to go back in and refund that part of the transaction or the customer cancels the entire drink order altogether. Which costs me time, money (credit card fees that I don't get back now), and frustration on the customer's end. It also makes us look incompetent

Lastly - I would LOVE to see items, modifiers, (maybe ingredients in the future) have the ability for us to track the COGS with each of them. We already have fields to add price, discounted price, etc. It would be insanely helpful for us to be able to just have 1 more field to type in the cost of our product/modifier/ingredients/etc so when we pull reports we can instantly get a more accurate and detailed snapshot view of true sales and profitability

[elaine_p]

Thank you for sharing @grovetealounge - tracking inventory on modifiers is definitely coming up as a theme here, and would be relevant to the prior question too! I really appreciate all of the detail in your example. 

At the moment, I don’t have a great solution for modifiers. If boba is where you experience this most frequently, one idea before we solve this would be to structure the item with a boba variation and a plain variation. In that case, when you are out of boba, you could mark the boba teas as sold out. This would include the pain that sotexasbbqco referenced of having to go through every single boba tea item to do this, so we're aware it’s not ideal.

[elaine_p]

One other comment here regarding COGS - we do have cost tracking in our Retail Plus product. There is more information here about cost tracking in retail to see if the reporting would meet your needs. 

[texastreefarms]

How to allow partial paid invoiced items, removed from inventory?   Our inventory is not accurate without this feature.

[elaine_p]

Hi @texastreefarms! Unfortunately, we don’t have a way to remove the unpaid items from inventory when using a Square Invoice. I completely understand the need and hope to have a solution in place in the future.

[SweetM18]

Is there a way to enter the quantity through the square restaurant app & have it sync with your on-line store through Weebly?   

[elaine_p]

Hey there @SweetM18! Today we don’t have a way to enter a stock quantity that syncs to other apps using Square for Restaurants. You can enter stock amounts in the online dashboard, or using the Square Point of Sale app. I know it’s not ideal to have to switch back and forth.

On the positive side, when you do enter a stock quantity, sales in the Square for Restaurants app will decrement that inventory once the ticket is paid. The inventory count does sync with online store. When your stock count reaches zero, then buyers cannot purchase it through Square Online.

[HC_Charlie]

I'm not sure if this is a question that fits Inventory managements, but I think so...whenever I add a new item to my inventory, or sync from my Faire account integration, I need to toggle Sales Tax ON. Is there any way to set Sales Tax to default to ON for all new items. The majority of my items charge sales tax, so it is less frequently that I'd need to turn OFF sales tax. Thanks!

[repopgifts]

yes! I'm not sure if that's something we should request from Faire as an option. It's such a pain when those items sync, the easiest fix I've found is to go to the square sales tax settings and hit "apply to items" then select all. I end up doing this after ordering new things on Faire just to make sure my staff doesn't miss any when they check things in.

[elaine_p]

Hi @HC_Charlie and @repopgifts - I don't have an answer, but I'll ask a colleague on the sales tax team to see if there's a good way to do this, and if not, to share the feedback. Thank you!

[wheeler1]

I second this. I've also been using Faire recently and have noticed the same behavior. I have to be very diligent about going back in to update every single new item to turn on sales tax! 

[vsbooks]

setting up for an off-site author event- how do I set up the items to be just icons on the Ipad screen or on the virtual terminal on a PC  I impi\orted the items and started adding cover images but just a list in library (about 20 items)

[elaine_p]

Hi there @vsbooks! In Square Point of Sale on an iPad, tap the tab with a number on it. Tap and hold an empty square, then tap any plus icon on the grid. You can add an item, category, or even a discount to the grid.

[vsbooks]

@elaine_p How do I see the grid?  I just see a list of the items. Never Mind, I found it - it now comes up with set up a grid!!!!!  Thanks

[vsbooks]

@elaine_p if my normal sale (I use square for all of our credit card transactions) is just a bulk sale (including tax) how do I get these items for that day to add tax.  I thought I had it, but not showing...   Also using it that night for cash and check sales...

[tume_pdx]

I am trying to update my stock quantities for my menu items. Some items are newly added but some have been on our menu for some time, I have never had any issues updating the stock quantities on these items before. I have spent about 5 hours of my day trying to troubleshoot this problem, using my phone, using my laptop, refreshing the page, logging on and off, even deleting an item and recreating it. But all of that have yet to help resolve anything, I have 1 new item that will not update as well as 3 dishes that were on my menu already that won't update. I have made sure I updated the stock, SAVED IT and it still has a little line instead of an updated stock number.

Any help would be appreciated since I am very small business and rely on these POS systems to be able to function correctly so I don't miss a day of income. 

[elaine_p]

I’m sorry to hear you are having difficulties updating stock and have had to spend so much time on it @tume_pdx, it sounds like there is a problem. Our Customer Success team can help you work through details when you have issues like that. I’m not aware of an issue that would have caused this on Monday, but will take a look with our engineering team to make sure there is not an issue on our side.

[Sumoscot]

Can I build a butchers box of multiple items that when sold will automatically remove said items from my inventory?

[elaine_p]

Hi @Sumoscot! We don’t have a way to build a bundle like this today, but we plan to support this in the future. I’m hearing bundles are a big need here in the thread, thank you for sharing your feedback.

[WaldenBros]

Is it possible for multiple items to share the same inventory?