New Retail Feature: Sell-by Units and Stock Conversion

[#1]

Square for Retail Plus subscribers will now be able to sell an item in different units, and track inventory with those units - for instance, sell candles by a case of 12, by a bundle of 6, or by a single candle.

This works great for businesses that sell an item in multiple ways, but want to decrement inventory from the same quantity.  This can work for wine shops that sell wine by the case, bottle or glass.  We’ve seen Sellers use it for wholesale pricing, and price breaks for bulk buying.  

Each unit can have its own SKU or GTIN, so the barcode on the case is different from the barcode on the single.  

Retailers can set up a stock conversion in their Dashboard:

1. Navigate to the **Items** tab of your online Square Dashboard.
2. Select an existing item or click Create an Item.
3. In the Variations section, select Add unit in the price field, or select Edit variation details > Add unit. If your item contains multiple variations, select the variation name and then from the Edit variation details modal, select Add unit.
4. Select a unit, or create a new one, like “case”
5. Under the Conversion section, enter in the conversion details specific to the item variation. For this example, a conversion for a case of candles might be “12 candles is equal to 1 case.”
6. Click Done to save.

In the Retail POS app, these units will be selectable as variations during checkout.

This first version of this stock conversion tool only allows you to create sellable units. These will show in your POS and on your Square Online site.  It does not allow you to create gift baskets or recipes at this time.  When creating purchase orders or counting inventory in the Retail POS app, you’ll only be able to receive/count by the first unit entered.  We are working on more tools to help you receive, count, and make units non-sellable in the future.  

You can repeat this process for any items that you sell in multiple units, as well as create multiple conversions for single items.

For a detailed walkthrough of how to add sell-by stock unit conversions, visit our Support Center here. 

To try out Square for Retail Plus features for free, get started here. 

JANUARY 2023 UPDATE:

In addition to "Sell-by Units and Stock Conversation," we have now launched "Sellable / Non-sellable Item Variations."

This provides Square for Retail Plus sellers the ability to toggle item variations either sellable or non-sellable. This feature will work great for sellers who want to track inventory by a specific unit of measure but do not want that unit quantity available for sale.

Read the full update for Sellable / Non-sellable Item Variations.

[TCSlaguna]

This feature must have been made for us, because we sell candles exactly that way! 

Going to start using it right now. Thanks!

[Ryan_M]

@TCSlaguna Glad to hear! Sounds like it was meant to be!

[QCBalloonBar]

This doesn't do a lot of good for people who need to use option sets in their item variations, unfortunately. LOVE the concept and would be super helpful to us if we could actually use it!

[creeksidescoop]

When will the option come to create gift baskets and then add multiple items from different categories to make one item and track inventory be coming?  For instance, I want to make a Build Your Own Easter Baskets and let people pull from different items/SKU.  Is that the next step for this update?

[rsilyan]

This was absolutely a challenge at our business.   Thank you for finding a solution.  We will be putting this to use.

[PDTaproom]

I think this is exactly what I need but on the Square for Restaurants side.  I sell beer in many sizes and want to use one unique inventory management.  Basically sell beer in 5/16/32 oz pour sizes off of draft. I know each keg is a specific amount and want it to pull out of that quantity I define in inventory management.  If this is possible already, please let me know!! It would be a life saver.

[mythicrunning]

Neat feature! Currently we don't have items that we sell this way but are certainly looking forward to seeing the ability to sell disparate items as a bundle! 

[Ryan_M]

@creeksidescoop @mythicrunning 

The product teams are actively working on gift bundle functionality. 👨‍💻👩‍💻😄

[WhitneyMaille]

This would be HUGE for me with my Square Online store but apparently it is not available to me.  I do not use Square for Retail and it is my understanding that this is only available for those users.  Please bring this to Square Online!!!

[cocosnap]

@Ryan_M I was SO excited for this feature, but unfortunately for me, it doesn't quite hit the mark. For example, I sell chocolate bars both at my retail shop, and wholesale to other businesses. I pull them all from the same stock. I used this new feature, setting up the conversion to simply be 1 bar = 1 bar, and then I set one at my retail price, and one at my wholesale price. In theory, this works perfectly to track the inventory properly, except BOTH variations show up in my online shop. I can not have my wholesale options visible. So far as I know, there is not an option to hide one variation...? This fix would be life altering! ....as of now, every time I sell a wholesale item, I have to go in and subtract it manually from my "retail" inventory. So close! 

[Ryan_M]

@cocosnap The functionality for non-sellable units is in the works. Stay tuned! 👨‍💻😃

[QCBalloonBar]

@Ryan_M Is there any hope that this could be available for items with option sets? For instance, we received bags of 100 balloons but only sell them individually at the moment. Someday we may also sell the bags. However - each item has options assigned - for instance 11", white or 11", blue (down the line for tons of colors). It would be awesome to have single 11" white and bag of 100 11" white.

[gamershavenar]

I am loving this edition to inventory but am stuck with beverages.  I sell them by item but receive them in multiple configurations (12 pack, 24 pack, 36 pack).  I have been tryting to figure out if it is possible to setup multiple receiving case quantities for one sold item.

[The_Good_Life]

Finally!  This is great but we are only using retail plus on the back end and not POS so it doesn't show on our FOH POS.  We would upgrade to retail POS but I cant get an answer on whether or not tips and open ticket are available on Retail POS.  Anyone have the answer?

[rsilyan]

I have a question regarding the sell by unit / stock conversion.  In our store we sell beverages and must charge customers CRV fees for each can or bottle sold.  When setting up items by units or case the CRV amounts charged to customers are different.  I could not figure out a way to program separate CRV fees.  Am I missing something or is the feature not available?

Thanks

[Candlestore]

@The_Good_Life ;

Yes You can use the Saved Cart as an Open Ticket in the Square for Retail App

Also Yes you can enable Tipping in the Square for Retail App  https://squareup.com/dashboard/business/devices 

[SuesSweets]

We sell candy.  Each box we received from the distributor has its own barcode, which is unique from the barcode of the individually wrapped bags or bars in the box.  Our use case would be to scan the barcode on the box and have the quantity of bars get updated appropriately.  For example, if a box included 24 bars, we would scan the barcode of the box then get 24 bars added to inventory.  This would save us time (and errors) while taking in inventory and avoid breaking box seals to scan the barcode of the individual candy items.
Also, we do not sell the boxes separately so we'll wait until the box "variation" can be hidden from the customer.   

[JJ_]

This is a great idea @SuesSweets I recommend you submit a Feature Request here. This will help our product team get visibility and track other Sellers with similar interest in your request. 

Important: When submitting a request, make sure to include the desired feature, and provide the details of how this feature will help your business succeed (how would you use it and what you expect from it).

[quikone]

I really like this feature, we are using it partially for wholesale and ingredients.  Does anyone have any idea how to get a unit out of stock for an item used in building a recipe or assembly?  For example, something  simple:  a chicken and cheese quesadilla made with items pulled from our ingredient list.  How to remove a unit of the main product on a no sale invoice?  Ideas?

Ron

[JJ_]

At this time Square doesn't offer the ability to create recipes made from items in your inventory.  I recommend submitting a feature request here.

[Heather_H]

@Ryan_M I came across your note about having non-sellable units in the works. Any news since March or is there another thread I can follow for progress updates?

This is something we are very interested in as part of the sell-by units/stock conversion feature.

[Ryan_M]

Hi @Heather_H ! 

Non-sellable / non-stockable variations should be launching in the next few weeks. I plan to update this post / thread when that happens and there will also be a new announcement posted on the US Product Updates page. You can subscribe to that page by following the instructions at the top and then you'll be notified of any new posts. 😁

[Ryan_M]

JANUARY 2023 UPDATE:

In addition to "Sell-by Units and Stock Conversation," we have now launched "Sellable / Non-sellable Item Variations."

This provides Square for Retail Plus sellers the ability to toggle item variations either sellable or non-sellable. This feature will work great for sellers who want to track inventory by a specific unit of measure but do not want that unit quantity available for sale.

Read the full update for Sellable / Non-sellable Item Variations.

[MAHughes]

This feature would be absolutely AMAZING if scanning the barcode on one of the sell-by units just added it to the cart, the way scanning any other bar code does.  Having to go through the steps of manually entering quantities and manually adding the item to the cart seems unnecessary.  

[SuesSweets]

still looking for a solution to receive inventory with a case bar code, then sell with only the item bar code. 
or has that been added in the last year?  thanks.