New Retail Feature: Sell-by units and stock conversion

[Seamus]

Hey Sellers!

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 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.

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

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 (eg bundles of different items) 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.

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

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

[AnswerS33k3r]

This is a great and much needed feature.

I've set this up and tested it and have found a couple of issues which need addressing.

Scenario:
We purchase drinks by the carton, sell by the carton and by the single unit.

Issue:
-I've setup the product variation as the drink size (eg 330ml)>

-The default variation size I setup is the single unit, because...( setting up the default unit as a carton means we can only stock count in cartons and then we are not be able to stock count in single units - I see you mention more features are being worked on to do with receiving and counting and assume this is relevant here - definitely need to be able to stock count both)

-I added another unit and setup conversion for a carton size ( eg carton of 24)

-Entered the price + cost for single unit size

-Entered the price for carton size ( cost cannot be manually changed and is auto calculated by Square)

-then ... On Retail for iOS for iPhone ( latest version of iOS and Square Retail), when entering a purchase order, the carton unit prompts to add a unit cost ( even though it's already saved in dashboard when created)

-When receiving the purchase order, it seems that entering a quantity for the carton unit does not update the stock count for the carton, nor for the single unit. Only the single unit quantity was updated per what I entered on the PO.

I hope this helps.. 

Great to see new features coming online though.

[AnswerS33k3r]

It seems that it's not possible to hide either unit from the Square Online Website either ( if we wanted to only sell by the unit, and not the carton) - I'm unable to disable or hide the carton size via Online.

The only option we have is to delete the unit we don't want showing to online shoppers, which subsequently deletes the unit size from the square item library - which we don't want to do.

Will there be an option to hide the units in online?

[Arie]

It doesn't look like this could be hidden on Square Online at this time, @AnswerS33k3r. We'll pass this feedback on to the team - as you know, we're still working on ways to improve this feature in the future. In regards to the app prompting you to add a unit cost, even when this was already entered when you created the item, it would be great if you could record a video of what this looks like on your end to send to our support team here, who can file a ticket with engineering. 

[BenInOz]

Great to hear of that functionality. It's a good start.

Excellent to hear an indication that;

a. In future there might be opportunity to hide a variant (eg a keg of beer) and;

b. Ingredient tracking is in the works?

Those two features (particularly 'a.') would make Retail Plus useable for our organisation.

Looking forward to updates on this one.