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

[Whatafood]

Any news about it? It’s a very basic feature should be up to us to decide if we want to sell or not out of stock items. 

Any partner has a solution? Email do not work when you have a line in front of you. 

[Anthem]

I've hesitated using the online store for any items in my coffee shop that have the possibility of running out of inventory for the very reason described in this thread. However, given the complexity of the selling environment, the absolute need for pickup, curbside and delivery options as well as the benefit for customers of being able to place an order in person, over the phone or via the web I've felt forced to expand my operation into the web-store. I have used a mobile ordering app via an integration partner for over a year now, I've added the marketplace web-store to the mix this week and already caused several problems with customers. While the web-store limits the purchase of an item when it is sold out it leaves lots of room for mistakes while taking phone orders or in-person orders. 

Specifically, customers order frozen items from the retail freezer or pastries for the following day (here lies another issue with the web-store for a different thread - we need the ability for customers to schedule their pickup/delivery). Upon opening, new customers walk in the door and purchase pastries as well as items out of the retail freezer. The problem is neither the square app or stand tell my staff those items were actually sold out because customers have already purchased them for pickup later that day. 

My staff cannot be expected to monitor an email for this info and on a busy morning, even though I have web tickets print at the register, they often cannot get to the freezer fast enough to beat an inbound customer and label something as sold before they pick it up. 

Having experience with software development, being part of the beta team and working with both of Square's previous apps, Order and Pickup, I recognize things are often more difficult than they appear. However, in this case, a full solution isn't needed at the moment, a stop-gap would suffice for every comment I've read. A fairly simple alert, notifying our staff that an item is out of inventory would allow us to mitigate the problems on the spot and make a decision based on the info available. At the very least, we couldn't blame Square Stand anymore.

I suspect there are bigger fish to fry, given our current circumstances and while this stop-gap seems plausible, it seems to me, even in our current situation, there could be an update, by now, on the potential status of a full solution, or a half-measure for this problem. 

[Lbcreamery]

We signed up for Square for Retail to solve the problem for us so we can have online and in shop orders going at the same time.

It an over buy for our ice cream shop - but the pain in the butt of selling something that was in the freezer but already claimed by an online order - was a bigger issue.

[FATPANDA]

Has this feature not been added yet?  I can't believe why there isn't a settings toggle to allow people to choose whether to sell an out of stock item or not?

It seems like this is a pretty key feature that a lot of people want, me included.  

[vtFarmer]

I want to echo the post from Art_Eatables from 09-18-2020 09:53 AM. I'm considering switching over my online store from another platform to Square for no other reason than the inventory tracking feature. I don't understand why an inventory tracking feature would even exist if not to show you how many items you actually have in stock. It's impossible to have a negative number of something physically on hand, so how can this functionality be useful in any way? It seems that this is a glaring oversight, especially since one can easily update inventory quantities from any authorized mobile device, thus enabling the sale if there is a need to do so. Square should certainly default to not being able to oversell, as opposed to the way it is now. Please fix ASAP!

[JScherer01]

Having same issue ... the answer that "it was intended that way" is awful.  Users should be able to "turn off" ths sale of out of stock items when using the Register app.  Good grief.

[Gallery924]

YES!  We are a gallery with hundreds of one-of-a-kind artworks. We sell from two different POS and it would be ideal to be able to block further sales once an item has sold out.  Please, please, please, make this a reality.

[PostCommons]

argeed horrible answer - the "86" and item count are basic features in other POS solutions. Why even have an inventory function if it does nothing?   I've even worked with POS systems that give you the option to "86" or keep selling when Count=0

[EJ_]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this @PostCommons

What would be the ideal behavior for your business specifically?

Our main concern was to make sure you never missed a sale if during your busy work day you weren't able to update your stock count after a return or new inventory received within that day. 

Would it be a more valuable feature to prevent overselling? 

[AEndelman]

I am glad I found this thread - for my company, the reason why we haven't yet moved all of our point of sale retail to Square POS (a few hundred thousand dollars each year) is because there is no way to prevent or even warn our employees that they're about to oversell.

We do pop-up retail at events and inventory management is a perpetual thorn for us, because we often pre-sell items that are in use for demonstrations later in the event to be fulfilled later in the day.  So we can't trust the physical stack of goods in front of us and we DEFINITELY can't easily restock; we have to ship items if we oversell (often at high expense; some of our events are international).

At a minimum, for the iPhone and iPad apps we need a popup or warning that alerts the user if they've added more items to the cart than exist in inventory.  Could be a setting to toggle if other users don't have the same needs that we do.

[katieand]

Super helpful of you to share exactly why you need inventory tracking and that pop up to warn about overselling @AEndelman! I'll be sharing this feedback with our product team, and if we get any updates, we'll share on this thread. 

[rodlovescanada]

I own two drive-in movie theaters and one indoor movie theater.  We are located in three cities.  We sell many items ranging from theatre seats for a number of showtimes to food items (packaged candy and prepared food items containing multiple ingredients).  I need Square inventory to track every item and ingredient I sell.  My sales staff (cashiers) needs to be notified when the quantity of the inventory (or ingredients) reaches the alert level.  On-screen notification is REQUIRED -- not just an email to the purchasing manager.  The next important step in the process is to notify the cashier if the inventory is = 0 of an item (or any ingredient) and give the cashier the option to continue with the sale or not.

I cannot imagine any business that would not NEED this functionality.  My businesses cannot create inventory out of thin air on a busy Saturday or Sunday night.   But, we do need to know when inventory is running low or SOLD OUT so we can manage our customers expectations by suggesting other alternatives to our customers instead of taking their order and then having to tell them moments later that we don't have any more Peanut M&Ms in stock....

Many others have cited similar business scenarios.  How many Square customers need to ask for this functionality before it is implemented?  

[EJ_]

@rodlovescanada Inventory alerts on-screen would definitely help with this. Unfortunately I don't have any news around this feature, but I'll try to get some new information and share if possible. 

[photoneffect]

Another vote for being able to toggle on/off the ability to "hide out of stock items".  I get the use case for why you wouldn't want to miss a sale because of a miscount, but that's not my situation.  I sell one-off items and not being able to hide the out of stock items keeps me from going to Square.

[oldedixie]

I’m guessing there has been no progress in this particular area? I’m posting 2 years after the start of this discussion. I help run a food truck and having a reliable inventory management feature is vital when we are slammed with business. The cashier needs to know when we are low or out of stock on a particular item. As it stands now, sometimes they will have sold more items than what we have and by the time the person working the ticket station has had time to figure out we are sold out of something, it results in us having to stop operations to issue multiple refunds. As other users have said, this is a crucial feature that many businesses need. Especially ones with a fast paced environment such as ours. Multiple users have made a very viable suggestion in displaying a pop-up indicating it appears something is sold out or a pop up stating the last item has just been sold. This way, it would give our cashier the option to momentarily pause and ask the kitchen if that is indeed the case. From there, the cashier could remove the item from the interface so as not to sell anymore or they could update the inventory count if inventory was off. It would not need to be implemented to where sales of that item would be blocked going forward. The pop-up would merely be a warning that something may be sold out giving an individual the option to take the appropriate action. As inventory management stands now, it’s completely useless to us. Email notifications for low or out of stock items are not viable in a fast paced environment. There needs to be immediate action on the user interface. We love using Square for our food truck, but this is a feature that is surely lacking. 

[mi-sant]

Definitly second this option.  We sell pastries and need to know when an item is sold out so we don't oversell and therefore have to issue multiple refunds.  On top of that, having disappointed/angry customers because the item is sold out and team members did not know.

[EJ_]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts around this @oldedixie and @mi-sant

Unfortunately there's nothing new to report in regards to whether or not this feature will be prioritized moving forward. It's currently behaving the way our product team intended, but I'm definitely going to continue advocating for a pop-up notification or toggle option to prevent overselling. 

Both of your business specific needs and details will help this case, as we use examples like yours to push for prioritization. 

Hopefully we can get something implemented soon to help with this. 

[BalancedBody]

Please advocate strongly. 

This continues to be a major issue for us and has caused serious customer service issues as well as over a thousand dollars worth of shipping costs for items that we've sold to customers at our popup shows despite being out of stock, that we've then needed to ship from our warehouse at our own expense.

We like the UX of Square compared to Quickbooks POS which is what it replaced, but we're considering switching back because of QBPOS's ability to tell the user when there's no inventory of an item that they're putting on an order.

[Mzboutique]

We need it to be prioritized PLEASE. It’s crucial to running a successful business. I’m having to refund people. Because of overselling. 

[shawndell]

I am starting to think this is the reason that this issue has not been fixed....Square gets paid (again) when we have to issue a refund.  As every one has stated, this seems to be a fairly easy issue to fix and address.  It was "designed" this way??? Wow!  I believe whoever is writing these programs is VERY intelligent, but also has never worked retail.  If so, they would work a little faster on these issues.  Like texting order ready when in store purchase for example.  

And for the life of me, I can not understand when a customer makes an ONLINE purchase, but returns IN store to exchange, why I can not exchange from the register?  I have to issue a refund from the back office and charge customer for new item!!!  My customers have not been happy with that but again.... Square gets paid 3 times just for 1 item!!!!! I think this may be why many issues are not being addressed.  

[Joe]

Hi there, @CTACTC - thanks for bumping this request up and adding your voice in support here. We've noted it and passed your feedback along to our Product Teams. We will continue to update this thread with relevant updates as we have them.

Thanks for your patience!