Square Stand Inventory Management When Sold Out

[LarsonJ]

I want to use square stand to sell lunch tickets in a trade show type environment at 4 different stations around the venue. I have 8 lunch options, and I would like to be able to stock all stations with more than enough physical tickets, and just have the inventory option display as sold out when the actual number of available lunches are sold out, and not allow any more sales to be processed. This way I don't have to worry about printing the exact number of tickets and some stations having extra tickets when others are sell out even if there is "stock" left. Essentially I want the option to have inventory work like it does for an online store at the physical register. Is this a possibility?

Thanks, Josh

[Kimmiesue12001]

I sell a paint line with over 150 colors in 3 different sizes. If I cant tell when we are out of stock on a certain color or size it makes it difficult to know what we have without searching. As business owners our time is valuable and retail shop owners would need this function to perform adequately. Abeinf such a large company now square should get on the ball...retail is thriving and we are being approached by many different merchan services offering outstanding products. 

[Tom]

Hi @Kimmiesue12001, thanks for taking the time to check in here. We definitely want to remove any extra hassle with inventory tracking. I'd like to share some more details with our Point of Sale team—can you reply with a bit more information on what your ideal view or inventory notification setup would look like? Appreciate your patience was we work to make improvements.

[Tom]

For those sellers on this thread who have concerns about selling tickets with regard to this issue, I wanted to surface that we've partnered with a handful of services that may help streamline your event needs:

• SimpleTix

• Brushfire

• TicketSocket

For more details and specific features, head over to your App Marketplace > Ticketing & Event Management. Again, thank you for your patience as we make iterations based on seller feedback.

[Tom]

@Mzboutique, my apologies—I just reviewed your posts and I see that the sale you referred to took place in the Point of Sale app, not the Online Store. I don't have an update on this request right now, but rest assured that I've shared your experience with the appropriate team members.

[Mzboutique]

I also had an online transaction but the lady came to shop to pick up and she was nice about hers. We didn’t have to refund she picked another pair of leggings. Some customers aren’t  always so nice and having to explain to them your systems don’t coincide with each other is rather embarrassing. I mean it is 2018 and square online store, pos app, and square retail register system should all work together to update inventory and not allow over selling of an item that is out of stock. I mean why spend hours putting stuff in inventory just for it not to do it’s job? Makes absolutely no sense

[kellygreenmen]

This is ridiculous and has been going on for years. I help with a small annual community festival that sells t-shirts, buttons, ride tickets, drinks, etc. and donated a couple of Square registers a few years back to allow them to take credit cards and better track sales and inventory. Like many others, I found out the hard way that the Square Register will happily allow register workers to keep selling items that are completely sold out. Again, this is utterly ridiculous - are most of Square's users selling services that they have a neverending supply of? I mean, sure, if you're a hairdresser this is a non-issue for you, but every retail business I've ever dealt with that sells THINGS needs to know when they're out of said things. 

At last year's festival, we sold tickets to a hayride that turned out to be shockingly popular - we sold every seat we could. To manage the process, I had to be on my laptop constantly refreshing to see how many tickets we'd sold for which times and the register workers (volunteers, mind you) had to keep yelling out asking if they could sell a ticket. It was a ridiculous (sense a theme) scenario that could have been avoided with a simple setting that KEEPS THE FREAKING REGISTER FROM ALLOWING YOU TO SELL SOMETHING THAT YOU'RE OUT OF STOCK OF. 

I have no faith that Square will ever fix this issue - this thread is proof that they simply don't think it's an issue because this thread has been going on for two years. How they've managed to get this big while doing stuff this stupid is beyond me. I wouldn't set up a new Square system to launch a lemonade stand at this point. 

[Mzboutique]

As much money they get from me a year in fees for choosing them you think this would be a top priority. They aren’t the only service I can use, I Choose to use them, they work for me. They need to fix this ASAP. IT IS RIDICULOUS that this as been an issue for 2 years and a simple pop up to say no more in inventory do you want to proceed and u can click yes if u want or no. How hard is that! Get it fixed square 

[EJ_]

We definitely hear your frustration @kellygreenmen and @Mzboutique

This isn't something that we have an update on at the moment, and is actually behaving as our Product team intended. A few great suggestions have come from this thread (like a toggle option or an on-screen notification), but nothing new has been brought up recently from our Product team as of yet. 

Check out the post from Tom earlier in this thread that mentions a few of our Ticket partners that might help with your ticket sales. Hopefully that's something that works for you both. 

We'll definitely update the community if anything changes. 

[kellygreenmen]

EJ: An additional product - and expense - isn't the solution. Not to mention that that would only work for tickets and we - and many others - need a solution for inventory overall. I get that this is the way the the product team intended, but the product team has a very narrow vision of what constitutes retail sales. Your system makes sense if the inventory is out in a store where a customer brings something to the register and checks out. That way the customer can't buy something you don't have. However, if the inventory is being served from behind a counter - just off the head I'm thinking food trucks, movie theater concessions, restaurants, coffee shops, ice cream shops, concert merch sales, the list goes on - you might not know you're out until after the transaction is in process and you go to find the inventory. At our festival, for example, we have 2 Square Registers and multiple Square readers on iPhones running in the main tent selling drinks, t-shirts, buttons, hats, etc. All inventory is behind the registers, and when you've got dozens of different products and variations and a long line of customers, you don't want to have to keep stopping to check to see if you've got inventory. Especially when 4 other people are selling the same items. 

But I'm just beating a dead horse at this point. Square's either going to fix this or they're not, and I'm betting they're not. 

[AEndelman]

EJ: This absolutely does not work for us.  We need to keep our users from selling inventory we don't have.  We take a limited inventory to events and sell it throughout the event for pickup at the end.  When we oversell we have to either make our customers angry, or ship them the items at our expense, or both.  Should we be looking at different POS applications?

It's not a difficult fix.  If the quantity on the order is less than the quantity remaining at the location, do either of the following:

• Highlight the line in some ugly color (and we'd just train our users to look for that)
• Add a popup "This will take your available inventory of {item} below zero!"

[EJ_]

Thanks for sharing your specific business need on this @AEndelman

I completely understand if this is a deal breaker for you, as it's definitely something that we can to improve on given the amount of feedback across this thread. While we'd want nothing more than for you to stay with us, you absolutely must do what's best for your business if we're not able to update this specific feature in a timely manner for you. 

Hopefully one of your fellow sellers can chime in with a workaround that helps you during your festivals and allows for you to stay with us. You've been very patient with us through all of this time, so thank you for that as well and I'll continue to advocate for an update on this for you all. 

[ZebsCoffeehouse]

I would also really appreciate an option to either toggle on/off the ability to oversell an item or at least an alert. We are a coffee shop and I would like to use the Square Online store for pick-up orders. Everything would work great, exept for the lack of this feature. We have a limited number of pastries each day. The problem arises when we have one cinnamon roll left and someone places an order in the online store for a latte and a cinnamon roll. Awesome, it's theirs and now no one else online can order it. However, if we have not yet pulled that cinnamon roll from the case and another customer walks up and orders a cinnamon roll, we have no way of knowing that it has already been claimed by someone else who has paid for it online, but we just haven't pulled it out for them yet. So we end up selling the cinnamon roll to the customer in front of us. Then we go to get the online order ready and realize that we no longer have a cinnamon roll availble for the online order. That person arives ready for their morning latte and cinnamon roll, but OH NO! They don't get to enjoy the wonderful cinnamon roll they ordered and are looking forward to because Square let us sell it to someone else. What a terrible way to start the day!

This seems like a very much needed feature for a variety of applications. Why is product development not listening to this need?

[Helen]

@ZebsCoffeehouse Thank you very much for providing this scenario, I'm so sorry that this happens at your coffee shop and there isn't a way to disable this or an alert when an items 0 is added to the cart at checkout.😞

I'll share this post with the Online Store and Inventory teams, your input is really appreciated!

[Mzboutique]

Here we go onto year 2020 and it’s still NOT fixed. I have a few more payments left on my POS and I’ll be looking at other avenues that have inventory management 

[davefackler]

This reply was created from merging an existing thread: Configure Square POS to Not Allow Sales of Out of Stock Items?

We use Square and love it.  We don't use the online store, but just use the POS.  That said, we absolutely need a way to configure things so that a POS user CANNOT sell and item that we don't have.  We have inventory management turned on and track all inventory religiously, but someone entering an order for a customer can still choose and sell an item that has a stock level of 0.  I've read through various threads on the topic, but cannot seem to find a way to handle this.  Help??

[Helen]

Hi @davefackler, I'm sorry for the trouble this has caused. You're right, at this time there isn't a way to block an item from being sold from the Point of Sale app even if its out of stock. I absolutely see how having a setting to prevent is important toyou. We're tracking this request in this thread and we'll share any news on this here. 

[davefackler]

That thread appears to be at least a year old.  Sad that Square hasn't gotten this accomplished yet (particularly since this doesn't represent an entirely new feature - just a tweak to an existing feature that appears to work (albeit differently) within the on-line store versus within the POS.  Disappointing.

Dave F.

[Mzboutique]

It’s more than a year old if you look way back, been an issue since day one. It’s mind blowing they still haven’t figured out how to keep inventory true and not allow over selling of an out of stock item. If I didn’t have so much money invested in square products for my shops I’d bail and go with a program that’s better suited for inventory. I live everything else just not the inventory issues. 

[Stametis]

Serriously Sqaure, we need some action on this - please listen to you users.

For us this is really creating a headache and is the primary reason for us looking for a new POS solution. Square has been great but we really need to be able to remove items from the inventory whilst they are temporarily out of stock. I know your restaurant app has this functionality but as we're not a restaurant it would be a pretty silly move for us.

Can you tell us if there is likely to be a fix for this soon - before we move platform?

Thanks

[StatementWoodcr]

Agreed.  I’m just starting and unfortunately I did not see this before I bought hardware or I would have found another pos.  The only solution I see is for physical items to use a bar scanner.  But even then not being able to look up accurate stock is inconvenient for the seller and the buyer.

[ValliHi]

Yes this NEEDS to be FIXED!!! You have all kinds of ways to turn on and off functions, yet you are making it Nearly Impossible and VERY challenging for all of us that sell VERY specific Items, when we NEED to know that we are out of Stock on an item.  And while we are on the topic of a toggle option, I'd like one that also lets the SELLER decide if Variable products stay visible online even when we are out of stock... because I'd like people to know that that product is an option, just out of stock temporarily.  Thank you, really do like most of Square but honestly if I found a similar product that had the ability in checkout to know it was sold out and better web functionality with inventory... I'd switch... unless you can fix those 2 items... which would be better!