Square for Retail - Unit Costs and Reminders for Modifiers?

[thegrounds]

We run a cafe and have various modifiers for our drinks (ex: hot/iced, varieties of milk, added shots of flavor, etc.). Is there a way to enter the unit cost of each modifier?

[sdwarehouse]

I've been trying to work with some Item Modifiers in Retail and am a little disappointed. In the regular Square POS app, when you add an item with modifiers to the cart, it will automatically pop up and show the cashier the modifiers. This is great because it will remind our employees to ask about theses options. Then when modifiers are selected, it will show the modifiers under the main item in the cart. This is good because it is helpful when reading the cart back to the customer to make sure we have every correct and they are getting everything they need.

In the Retail app, when selecting an item with modifiers, nothing pops up. It adds to the cart with the default modifiers selected and you must click the item again (or click more info when adding it to the cart) to change the modifiers. And after selecting the modifiers, they are not shown in the cart, it only changes the price. This is a bummer because I want it to be quick and dummy proof.

Is there a way to make the Retail app behave like the POS when it comes to modifiers?

[Tom]

Welcome to the seller community, @sdwarehouse, and thanks for surfacing this.

I don't have an immediate suggestion for this behavior, but I'll be raising your post with our Retail Team. We'll circle back with any other insight as soon as possible.

[Tom]

Circling back here to get a bit more information on how you're using modifiers: @sdwarehouse, can you provide some more details or an example of an item sale that requires applying a modifier? If you set up your items with variations instead of modifiers, does that help with your checkout flow?

Thanks for your patience with this.

[sdwarehouse]

@Tom An example of something we would use this for would be when selling a refrigerator, we would have modifiers to add options to the purchase like an extended 5-year warranty, and the water filter that goes with that fridge. We feel it would cut down on errors (like selling the wrong water filter, or the wrong price range of warranty) because we would have it set up so that only the filter and warranty that matches that item would show up as modifiers.

I don't feel like using variations would help as we would have to have variations with each possible combination (water filter with warranty, just water filter, and just warranty) and I feel it might increase the likelihood that a cashier might click the wrong choice and then sell at the wrong price. And frankly I'm not that crazy about how Retail handles variations: Retails shows each variation as a separate item in the register, whereas POS only shows as one item (with multiple prices) and after you click to add it to the cart, it asks which variation you want to add. I like the POS way of handling because I feel it would be less likely the cashier would make a mistake.

[Tom]

Got it. Thanks for this information, @sdwarehouse. I'm surfacing your experience with our Retail Team. We'll be back with any other suggestions that we can come up with. Thank you for your patience as we do make iterations based on seller feedback.

[sunnyb]

I am wondering if there has been any follow up to this. We have the same issue. We can select modifiers on the item, but they never display on the cart (far right side) so when we are doing a final review with the customer there is nothing to read re: the modifier. We have to go back into every item to confirm what has been selected. We have tried variations, but in some cases there are too many to list and we need the modifier option instead.

[Joe]

Hi there, @sunnb - I can step in here for Tom on this one. Changes to item modifiers specifically in Square for Retail are still being developed by our Product Teams. You are correct in that the above workarounds would be your best option in the meantime. I am, however, happy to pass along this specific feedback to our teams for development. Just to make sure I am understanding correctly, are you capping out modifier options and they are not listing on the order itself?

[graaavy]

Hi Joe,

Same issue with the Square Register.

When tapped, some items add directly to the cart on the right-hand side.  Other items pop the list of modifiers when tapped.  All items have modifiers so I expect the list of modifiers to pop up when I tap on an item.

Is there anything I can do to force the pop up when tapping on an item?

Best,

Davy

[AshleyK]

Hi @graaavy! You can do this by requiring these items to have a minimum modifier selected. This should bring up the modifier option as you are describing it because the item cannot be added to the check without having a modifier applied. To do this you will need to edit the item in question, scroll down to the modifier applied, and click "customize."

From there, you can select a minimum and maximum of those modifier choices:

Let me know if you have any other questions. 🙂

[isabelle]

Hey @thegrounds.

Thanks for posting in the Seller Community.

At this time, there is not a way to add a unit cost for a modifier, only for an item. This is a really great idea though. I am going to go ahead and move this post over to our Feature Request board so our Product Team has visibility. 

Please let me know if you have any follow up questions about this. 

[Lga]

Can not see any option to input cost of inventory. Am I missing something.

[JustinC]

Adding unit costs to items are specific to Square Retail which isn't available in Canada at this time @Lga