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

[tranguyen]

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. 

I'm thrilled to introduce you to Mukta Dhanuka (@Inventory), whose team at Square focuses on inventory accuracy across all Square products. This is an opportunity for you to ask any questions or share feedback on how it's going with Square Inventory. To learn more about Square Inventory and its features, take a look at our Support Centre: Basic Inventory Management. 

Post your questions to this thread ahead of time and check back with us on Wednesday, May 11, at 9 p.m. BST as she and her team respond. 

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.

Click Reply below to post a question ahead of time, and we’ll address as many posts as we can on Wednesday, May 11!👇

[Ian_Tarps]

Hi guys,

when using square for retail. is it possible to set up coupons for discounts for a specific number of a product?

Is it possible to set up special offers within the webpages for instance if 1 specific item was purchased along with a related product could a discount be set up to automatically be set to add a discount for purchasing both products?

Best Wishes

Ian

[Inventory]

@Ian_Tarps Yes, it is possible to do discounts for specific number of products. Go to: Items > Discounts > Create Discount > Discount rules > Quantity. You can learn more about discounts here: https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/3955-create-and-manage-discounts

Our team is actively working to incrementally bring different kinds of tiered and combo discount functionality to Square Online e-commerce experience. Stay tuned for the updates!

[artizansty]

Would be great if there was a simpler way to add inventory that’s missing (a wizard would be super helpful for our staff to run through that asked the necessary questions like correct taxes to be applied, etc).

Barcode management, including far simpler creation and printing, would be a godsend. Even using Terminal with a barcode roll of stickers would be amazing.

Being able to create “type” of products. Our use case is we buy in various types of vodkas, we don’t care what brand but we care about tracking so we know we have vodka on hand. Tracking a type of product instead of individual SKUs as separate items means reporting is simple (we’re seeing a vodka line item and can drill down if required) and tracking is simple.

[LeahfromProduct]

Thank you for sharing your feedback. Definitely acknowledge that improved barcode management and a wizard for inventory management could be handy. 

With regards to the vodka question, there are a few ways to address it . We have not come across this use case before:

• Use the same SKU for every vodka on hand and print out a barcode label that covers the manufacturer’s barcode label.
• Track each brand separately using the manufacturer’s barcode label, but put all vodkas in the same item category. You can filter reports to just show the vodka category, which may get you the report you’re looking for
• Track each brand separately using the manufacturer’s label and have them as variations of a single “vodka” parent item.

[Markpriestley16]

hi it would be good if we could have a option to upload our stock in every day from production we are a bakery.

but the next mornings production would have to overnight the last number as it would not be adding to stock 

this would save a member of staff at least a hour a day taking items offline when sold out 

thanks

mark 

[artizansty]

+1

[issara]

Thank you for reaching out. It appears that you would want to mark items as sold out in bulk.  Could you please share your exact use-case with us in detail so that we can share best practices to set this up using Square inventory management?

[artizansty]

Thanks @issara. @Markpriestley16 can advise if their use case, I thought I would share ours as another point of reference:

We’re a cafe (and gift shop and wine bar) that makes a range of breakfasts, filled rolls, and cakes. Right now we need to physically check what stock we have of each (by looking) when we go to sell an item, however if it was easier to manage stock that changes daily, we could turn on online ordering for those items, and we could sell them from a coffee van (basically click and collect from the van). These are revenue streams that are hampered massively currently due to the inability to avoid the situation of selling an item we can’t guarantee is there.

The main constraint we run up against are that it requires a lot of staff training to help them understand how to change stock levels from any of the apps, and giving access to a dashboard in a browser on an iPad or computer is another level of friction that scares them. Assuming we handle the staff training, sifting through inventory to find the right items to update is time consuming. Having items potentially auto-reset to 0 stock, and asking when starting a new day what stock exists or will be made of each item would be really handy for staff who are really preferring to be in the business for what they’re good at - selling and giving great customer experience, rather than navigating a complex item inventory to edit item stock levels one by one.

[Markpriestley16]

we have thought about taking a lot of products off line as it is hard to manage as you say we have someone spending half a day taking product's off or we have been letting the customer down 

even if it reset everyday with the same number in 

example we make 100 crusty rolls for the shop every day even they all reset every day back to the same number then if you dont have the product or less its only a couple of items to change 

or if we can up load the stock from a spread sheet but would have to be 0 again in the morning oteh rwise it just adds to the stock and as you said you have to go into every product and change it which is to hard 

[ChrisScott]

Hi
Please can you add cost price to the item options - so we can look at profitability.
I don't know of any apps in UK which are compatible and affordable for small businesses to use with Square.
Many thanks

Chris

[Inventory]

@ChrisScott With Square for Retail Plus, you can add cost to products, bulk receive inventory, view Projected Profit and Profit Margin. Both Projected Profit and Profit Margins are available in Square for Retail under Reports > Inventory Reports > Projected Profit. You can see total profit for a time period and a profit margin for individual products as well. 

Please feel free to reach out if you have follow up questions.

[GoodRootsBarn]

We have a number of 'gifts' that are individual products sold as a box set, however we don't seem to be able to set these up so that when an 'gift' is sold the number of individual items in the inventory is updated? I have to manually go into each individual item within the box set and adjust the inventory manually. Is there something I'm missing or does this automated feature not exist?

[Inventory]

@GoodRootsBarn  Our team is actively working on incrementally adding item bundle or kit inventory functionality.  Will love to follow up with you to better understand your use-case as we build this. 

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

[CRubenok]

Can we get integration with more website platforms please? My website is hosted with wix and its a huge pain to keep the inventory updated between in store and web sales. Can we get integration with wix ecommerce inventory? 

[Inventory]

Hello @CRubenok  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

[CRubenok]

The payments are integrated, but there is no integration with the inventory. If I sell something on my wix website, it doesn't come out of the in-store inventory with square and vis-versa. Even if there was a manual button to click at the end of the day that synced the 2, that would be great. 

[newlandpoultry]

Integration with Wix.  I have to use skuiq app at the moment to link store and online sales and is really complex.  Ability to set cost prices and see the % profit.

[Inventory]

@newlandpoultry  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

[MPBModels]

• We need to adjust stock levels when items of sale stock are used by our workshop, at the moment we have to mark it as inventory recount - it would be great to have an option for "used" or "transferred"
• The ability to run a stock valuation report for our accountants 

[Inventory]

@MPBModels 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 - workshop.

Currently, the best way to do this in Square for Retail Free or Plus is to mark the items used by the workshop 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.