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]

For how long? Do you see that this trend is more than 3 years long? It’s not rocket science... It is a very standard and simple feature.

And I believe it is the most requested on this forum. I'm trying new solutions soon I won't use square anymore. Square is a good start but I don't want to work with a company that do not hear your users.

[Joe]

@Whatafood - We field thousands of feature requests each week here on the Seller Community, and bringing these features to fruition often takes an ample amount of time and effort from our engineers. We want to ensure that our releases are not just surface level products, but the best all-around resources to help you grow your business.

These requests also span an array of different aspects of our products; some are more major, while some are periphery features. Our Product Teams do have a road-map for future additions to our offering, but the nature of our work includes trial, error, and set-backs. So sharing a timeline would be far from accurate and more than likely cause more confusion and angst. 

We understand that it might be difficult waiting for something to be built out, but our engineers are working on various different requests brought up by our sellers, and working with Apple, Google, and our other partners in order to approve these changes and be able to push them out in future updates.

[davefackler]

I'm sorry @Joe , but that answer is a load of crap.  I come from a software development background and have been involved in various large scale development efforts over the last 30 years.  While I understand your sentiment, not working to implement what is likely the #1 request as a major priority is just bad customer engagement and bad software engineering practice.  Try again or show us a list of all major and minor requests that are being worked on so that we can let you know where this item ranks (because obviously you are not taking customer feedback into account when ranking them and determining what to work on).

[Whatafood]

Let’s start to give the feedback in the Apple Store. Maybe with their stars going down they start to listen to their users.

[kellygreenmen]

Amen, @davefackler! I first ran into this problem 3 years ago this month while helping with a small community festival which is when I found this thread and saw that this very basic feature was missing. Bear in mind, this thread was already a year old at that point. 

The following year I thought surely this has been fixed, only to log in and see that nope, it wasn't. I then posted a couple of comments on this thread to which a couple of community managers suggested silly workarounds or buying additional products / services that wouldn't actually correct the problem. 

That was in August of 2018 - almost exactly two years ago. 

They are not fixing this problem. They don't want to. For whatever reason, the product team has decided that this simple feature isn't worth implementing. 

I'm sorry I gave Square my money, I wish I could get it back, and will never give them another penny, nor will I EVER recommend anyone else ever set up a POS with Square again. 

[AshleyK]

@davefackler

I understand that this is extremely frustrating for you to not get the feature request you want. While me and my team, Joe included, work hard to pass seller feedback along, unfortunately we do not have magic wands, no matter how much frustration you choose to put into your posts. 

I hate stepping in mid-conversation like this and I know you are here because you genuinely are looking for help, but please be mindful and respectful here on the community in line with our Community Etiquette Guidelines. Any violation of these guidelines will result in a warning and removal of those posts. 

Thank you for your time. 

[Lbcreamery]

There was nothing in the OP that warranted a warning of censorship.

From what we understand moderators here have the power to send our requests up to development. I would advise Square to make development spend some time on these boards so they can see what you have to field.

We are expressing frustration because the product we pay handsomely for is failing us at a crucial juncture that can be easily controlled. Everyday we are in front of customers who we have to let down because of overselling a product. We receive one-star Yelp reviews for inventory situations that should never be happening. For us we had to hack another version of Square software and pay more per month for Square for Retail - in order to solve the issue at the register. But that lacks features we used on Square Register (like order searching) that we need. So now, we have two square tablets in each shop running each software. We had to buy more iPads, pay more money for service, take on new and clumsy procedures to answer a relatively simple issue.

[kellygreenmen]

Completely agreed. Well said, @Lbcreamery 

[Joe]

Thanks for the response, @davefackler - obviously our internal protocols and pathways for development are different than your software background, and we have found extreme success for thousands of Sellers by following these protocols. Like Ashlie mentioned in my absence, our engineers only have a certain amount of bandwidth and cannot simply will a feature into existence - as frustrating as that may be. I will continue to pass along your feedback.

We understand that our Sellers need to do what is best for their business, and we will always encourage you to do so. Best of luck going forward and finding a solution for your business! We will continue to update this thread with relevant information as we know it. 

[davefackler]

@Joe and @AshleyK,

While I can appreciate your responses, you, as the voice of the product team and Square as a whole, are doing us, your customers, a disservice by not being more transparent around this issue.  As has been mentioned several times already, this feature request has years of history at this point.  For you to continue to say that the software engineering team just can't get it done because they are too busy or that it is not a large enough priority rings as "we don't really care about this" - as has been theorized by others time and time again.  If this feature request *is* important to you (as it is to several of us - again, your customers), then you should be able and willing to tell us where it falls in line with your current development efforts.  Is it on the backlog for a sprint or iteration in the next future?  If not, what else is more important and how are you prioritizing things?  If this feature request *is not* important to you, then explain why it isn't.

Two other thoughts I'll leave here:

1. Respect earns respect.  If you want me (in particular) and others that come here looking for answers, support, and a way to provide feedback and input to making the Square product line better to be respectful, then do the same.  To me, being respectful includes being honest and transparent when it comes to issues like this where dozens of (if not more) people have complained about and asked about a feature request or update.  If you aren't going to do that, then don't expect us all to be nice when our frustrations run over.

2. As my grandpa used to say "praise in public, chastise in private".  If either of you or anyone else at Square feels the need to bring up the community guidelines based on my or anyone else's post, a simple text, email, or even phone call to that person would likely be better received and a much better experience for a *customer* of yours who is likely already frustrated.

[robbymartian]

Some insight into where this feature falls in the roadmap or recommendations on another mechanism/venue we can use stress the importance of this feature to decision makers would be tremendously helpful. In my opinion, the product manger(s) would love to see this thread. They would quickly realize that this feature is extremely valuable to most customers and ultimately save them from having to invent something from scratch. There has to be a disconnect between the insights provided by this forum and the process(es) used to prioritize new features for the API. 

[Whatafood]

@Joe Just to be clear I’m trying to understand the company position in this issue. What you are saying is that we could complaint as much as we can because square has lots of other customers and some of them are happy. Square will not take any of our request in consideration even though we pay for use square services. Because it has international practices that is working for now.

And if it is not the case how can square justify to do not prioritize the most requested feature in the last 4 years at least.

[MicA]

I was trying to understand why it's taking years for Square to listen to their customers about something that seems like a no brainer ... but I reckon you're right about Square not wanting to lose out on refund charges.  I thought I had very carefully weighed up my options for a sales system, opting for something requiring the least amount of tech know-how.  Instead I can only use it for services as I will not fraud my clients by selling them merchandise I don't have in stock.  There goes online sales.  Frustrating.

[Mzboutique]

I’d rather it give the out of stock at time of purchase and u can easily fix it then. My online site just had a sale but now my employee can’t find 3 of the 4 items because I’m sure they were sold in store and it doesn’t update online inventory. This is a major headache and needs fixed ASAP. I’d rather it show out of stock and not let the sale happen and address the issue before a refund has to be issued. It’d be easier to adjust inventory then to refund a customer, it’s embarrassing that our systems don’t adjust as to what we have on hand. 

[Whatafood]

We can’t sell what we don’t have. In a high traffic business you have to trust your systems.

The ideal would be when added more items than you have in your stock a pop up shows up with some saying like ‘there are not enoght items in your inventory to complete this order. Would like to adjust the order to the stock?’ Two buttons ‘adjust’ and ‘oversell’. 

[Helen]

@AEndelman @Whatafood I appreciate you sharing examples of how this could be improved. I don't have an update to share at this time, but I can see how this is not a good experience right now. We appreciate your patience in the meantime. 

[AEndelman]

@Helen Thanks Helen.  Do you have any information you can share about your team's dev cycle and what features are planned for upcoming builds?  Your appreciation is appreciated but "I don't have an update to share" doesn't give me a lot of confidence that our concerns are being heard by decision makers.

[Artgallery]

Yes, it would be a more than valuable feature for our business to have the POS block, or at the very least ALERT that an item is Out of Stock.  We too are an artist owned art gallery with many one-of-a-kind pieces.  As your system currently is set up we have to decide which pieces are in store, and which can be in our Online shop.  The potential of cross selling a piece is too high.  For us, having to segregate the artwork results in much greater potential loss of sales.

Please fix this! SO many small businesses have needed to create an on-line presence on the fly due to the pandemic.

[justletmein]

Yes, overselling stinks! If I wanted to sell more than what I have in stock, I'd raise the number instead.

[stanward]

I am looking for this, too, for my clients who integrate Square with DEAR Inventory.  Particularly those businesses that do Farmers' Markets and Trunk Shows, so that they can just look at Square to see if they have the product with them, instead of going and looking for a product that they do not have in stock.

Related to this, even if there was no alert, having the stock count for the item visible in the iPhone app would be helpful.  Is the stock count viewable using the Square iPhone app and I am missing it?

Users could always go to DEAR Inventory to find the stock level, but it would be nice to see it in Square since the stock counts are in there on the Square web interface and, more importantly, it would be good to stay in one app when selling.

Thanks,

Stan

[Mzboutique]

This reply created from merging an existing thread: "Can the sold out item not be available for purchase from Retail square register." The author has been notified via email.

My online link will show sold out and not let you purchase, however my square retail register system will allow my associates to still sell an item that is sold out. We had them accidentally hit wrong size and now that messes up inventory can this be fixed to not allow a sold out size to be sold or make the transaction pop up check tag for correct inventory item. I have shirts small-3X and my xl is sold out but it still allowed my employee to sell the xl when it should have been a 2x. If I hadn’t caught this then it messes with inventory