Pop-up low stock alert needed at checkout.

[DJbookfairs]

We need a low-stock alert pop-up -- similar to the window that comes up for modifiers -- at checkout.  Does anyone else have this need?

We're a bookstore which brings Square to school book fairs.  Many schools don't sell their final copy of a title and instead take backorders so that customers can still browse all available books.  It's difficult to know in a busy book fair when someone is bringing the last copy of the book to check-out.  Our primary competition has its own POS system which does this: it makes life a lot easier for the schools and it hurts our competitive position that we can't offer it.  I know the information is easily accessible when we reorder, but it would be great to have it at the actual point of sale.

Right now Square is saying this is low priority, would only become higher priority if there were a perceived demand.  Anyone out there think this is a good idea?

[hundleybk]

I think this would be an excellent update! I'm only getting started adding inventory and haven't ran into this issue, but an alert when a defined number of items is left in stock would be wonderful.

[hundleybk]

The email alert for inventory, is great, but when a clerk is making a sale, they are not blocked even if the item is out. Ideally, it would be nice to have an option that states item on back order and prints that on the receipt, but just a pop-up for the clerk that says this item is low or out, so at least they can tell the customer it will be on back order. This may not be an issue for most retail shops, but we sell from the stock room as part of a set of items to be processed and picked up later. It's not fun when the customer returns to find out it's not available and has to be shipped. Most are ok with it, but sometimes they need it right away. I am realizing with this issue that I need to be sure we stay stocked up. Hopefully the email notification will be sufficient. 

[EJ_]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this @hundleybk

In regards to blocking a payment of a sold out item, that's actually intentional behavior of the Point of Sale app. 

The thinking here was that if a store does not keep their quantity levels accurate (i.e. forgets to update the amount after they receive goods or a customer returns an item during business hours), we don't want to block your sales if the quantity level goes below 0 on Square, but you actually have the item in stock.

Hopefully the pop-up notification within the Point of Sale app for low-stock or out-of-stock items gains some momentum, and we can advocate to have it prioritized in the future. 

[cornpopper]

This would be great to add and to Register as well

[hundleybk]

oops, sent a reply twice. so I edited it.