[Improvement] Manage your Items with the Items Applet in Square for Restaurants

[#1]

Hi Sellers! 👋

We’ve made it faster and easier to manage your items and modifiers directly from your Restaurant POS.

Overview

Today, restaurant operators and managers create and manage items from their Square Dashboard. Now, with the Items applet, you can manage your items directly from the Restaurant Point of Sale (POS). Updates made on the POS always stay in sync with Square Dashboard so you can spend less time in the back and get back to your guests.

View and modify your items, modifiers and categories, update the POS layout, and sync inventory availability across Points of Sale (POS) and Dashboard all from the Items applet.

For instructions on setting-up items visit the Create and Manage Items Online support center article.

Definitions

• Applet: A module that performs specific tasks, embedded within the Restaurant Point of Sale (POS) app.

• Items Applet: The Items applet is a module within the Square Restaurants POS where you can manage your items. You can view and update items, modifiers and categories. 

• Item Library: Where you can view and edit all your items and variations in one place. This is found on the POS and in Dashboard.

• Item: Anything you sell that has a measurable inventory level. This can be a menu item such as a muffin, a burger, or a cocktail. Items can have variations to represent sizes, and modifiers such as ‘extra cheese’ or ‘no cheese’.

• Square Dashboard: Your online Square Dashboard gives you access to the tools you need to manage your daily business operations, including your items. 

• POS: Point of Sale. The device used to take orders and payments. 

• Availability: The status of an item or variation. An item can be available or marked as sold out. If the item/variation has stock greater than 0, then it is considered available. If the item/variation has stock count less than 1, then it is considered sold out or unavailable. 

• Stock: Stock measures the quantity of the item on hand. If the item/variation has a stock count greater than 0, then it is considered available. If the item/variation has a stock count less than 1, then it is considered sold out or unavailable. 

• 86’ing: To mark an item or modifier sold out/out of stock temporarily.

• Committed Inventory: Stock or item in your inventory that’s been ordered (or committed). Knowing this enables sellers to track inventory and make sure a customer doesn’t order something that’s out of stock, and to prevent accidental over or double-ordering.

• Modifier: Item modifiers are used to customize pre-existing items by editing, modifying, or specifying to the kitchen a change to a pre-existing item. Modifiers can also add to the cost of the item if necessary. For example: add cheese for $0.75, no mushrooms. Modifiers do not decrease inventory counts unlike variations that do decrease inventory counts when inventory management is turned on.

• Variation: Item variations are added to items during the creation process and are most commonly used for sizes to create multiple price points for a single item. For example: a small salad and a large salad, the variations are “small” and “large”. Variations will reduce your inventory count if you’ve enabled inventory management, unlike item modifiers that don’t reduce inventory.

• Category: Categories are groupings of items that you set up that help make your workflow streamlined. Categories simplify your item library and sales reports, and they give you control over what and when items are sent to certain printers. Once you’ve created your categories, you can assign them to be sent to individual printers. For example, all of your drinks can be sent to the bar printer, while all appetizers, mains, and desserts can be sent to your kitchen to make sure no tickets get lost in the shuffle of running your restaurant.

• More Definitions: Didn’t find what you were looking for? Checkout this page with more definitions.

How does the new functionality affect pre-existing workflows?

Marking an item as unavailable: Previously, you could long-press an item and see an inventory modal that allowed you to mark an item as available or unavailable.  Now, you can mark an item as available/unavailable by long pressing the item, scrolling down to select “manage stock” and marking the item as unavailable.  You can also navigate to the item by going to More → Item and searching for the item.	Before After
Tracking stock of an item: Previously, you could long-press an item and see an inventory modal that allowed you to add/edit/view stock for an item.  Now, you can add/edit/view stock for items and variations [new] by long pressing the item or navigating to the item by going to More → Items and searching for the item you need. * You can only disable stock tracking from Dashboard. If you are tracking stock for an item and want to disable stock tracking to simply mark as available/unavailable, they have to disable stock tracking in Dashboard first.	Before After
Marking an item available at the end of the day: Previously when you marked an item as unavailable, you could mark it to become available at the end of the day.  Now, you can choose a custom time to make an item available.	Before After
Access to Item Availability modal: Previously you could view the Item Availability modal in Actions → Item Availability. This modal listed which items were marked as unavailable. Now, you don’t have access to this modal. However, from the Items Applet you can see which items are marked as sold out or unavailable.	Before  →  After
Count on the tile will represent the variation: Previously you could view the stock of an item on the item tile. * In a future update (along with navigation redesign): Now, you will view the stock of an item on the item tile if it does not have variations.  Now, if the item has a variation, then the sum of the count of all the variations will appear on the item tile. * The count is based on the stock that is Available to sell only	Before Before  →  After
Stock and availability status sync with Dashboard and Square Online Before, the stock and availability of your items on the POS were not available on Dashboard or reflected on Square Online. Now they are.

Best Practices

The new functionality introduces consistent item and variation stock management across POS, Dashboard, and Square Online. This also means you have a single source of truth to manage the stock or availability of your items on Square. 

• When you start tracking stock for an item or variation, stock tracking is enabled. Stock tracking can only be disabled from Square Dashboard which means that to mark an item with stock tracking on as unavailable or sold out, you need to turn off stock tracking or change stock to 0. To easily mark items as sold out, it is recommended that you do not change stock tracking on/off for a given item or variation. 

• To see the list of items that are sold out or unavailable, navigate to the Items applet home by going to Account → Items (iOS), Utilities → Items (Square Register), or Items (Consumer Android or T2). Each item that is sold out or unavailable will have a red tag under the name.