Why no abililty to enter future purchase orders for new vendors and items not in current stock?

[Mannequinatsd]

Why do we not have the ability to enter future purchae orders for New vendors and itmes not in our current stock?  It would be great to be able to enter what we have on order and when it arrives be able to quickly transfer to inventory and print labels.  As it currently stands, the purchase order field is only for ordering additional items in stock or running short.  It would be nice to have both options.  

Thanks!

[BluePelicanOBX]

I'm trying out Square for Retail.  Ideally, I'd love a way to "receive" inventory through the Inventory Management system Purchase Orders.  With my "old" POS system, I'd enter the purchase order, click receive all, and the items would be transferred into my store inventory.  Right now, from what I can see, I will use the purchase orders to place orders with my suppliers but other than that they will have no real use because I will need to go into each item's inventory management and manually adjust the stock received.  Am I missing something? 

In the short term, and especially if that isn't an option, could you make it where there is an option to add new items through the purchase order screen?  This would save lots of time when ordering new items. Also could you make it so we can do inventory management on the same screen where we set stock alerts?

Thanks!

[Tom]

Hey @BluePelicanOBX, thanks for surfacing. I've escalated your post for further review and will circle back as soon as I have more information. Appreciate your patience in the meantime!

[BluePelicanOBX]

Thanks, @Tom.  I was just getting ready to update this.  I found the "receive all" button.  It does let the purchase order received information automatically update inventory under the inventory management tab.  However, under the items tab it doesn't show the inventory.  

I'm assuming that items and inventory managements are in two separate databases and each of those databases have an inventory on hand field...that's why it's hard to make them talk to each other?  Anyway, if you could put in the request to have these two parts of square for retail talk to each other in a subsequent update it would be awesome.

Thanks!

[Tom]

Glad you found it, @BluePelicanOBX! 💯

You're right on — you can mark an entire purchase order as "received" by heading over to the Purchase Order's page > click "Receive All" and the inventory at the specified location will be updated.

I will flag your request for more continuity with inventory and items to our Product Liaison team. We can certainly see how it would be helpful to permit item creation on the Purchase Order's screen, and that Stock Alerts should be on the Inventory Management tab.

Feel free to reach out if anything else comes up. 🙂

[BookstoreGal]

@BluePelicanOBX   Were you able to find a solution to this problem.. we are doing a trial and this is a big concern for us!

[Helen]

Hello @BookstoreGal! I'll check in with our team to see if there have been any updates on this request! As soon as I have an update I'll let you know on this thread! 

[Helen]

Thanks for your patience @BookstoreGal.

I just heard back from our team and at this time these features aren't available. I'm sorry! I went ahed and shared your request for these features with the team. 

If you have any other questions about Square Retail during your trial please don't hesitate to reach out!

[BluePelicanOBX]

Square has a Beta version that I have been playing with where the Item Library and Inventory Management pages do talk to each other - and you can update the quantity on hand of each item (or account for loss or damage) right on each item's page.  As of right now, I don't think that you can add new items to a purchase order.  You can save a purchase order as a draft and go back into Items and Create the new item.  Then when you reopen the purchase order you can add that new item to it, but there is a bit of backtracking. 

[lukejj]

I think it would be very helpful if you can create a purchase order through the Square dashboard or through the Square dashboard or retail POS app for all your low stock items. And by default it would add one to the quantity of each item and then from there you could go in and change the quantity. Also it would be nice if you could create a purchase order through the POS app on the iPad and be able to just scan items to create a purchase order. Also I would love to see the ability to grab a barcode scanner and in either the of the Square POS apps go to a tab and be able to scan items into inventory. Or be able to upload a CSV document with minimal information (such as item name sku/barcode and new qty) 

[kellyj]

@lukejj

Thanks for this request. It's definitely something we've heard before and we're committed to prioritizing feedback like this to make sure we have the products and features you are looking for.

I'm moving your request to a relevant thread where features like this have been discussed.  We'd suggest looking into Square for Retail, where the product and inventory services are dynamically changing and updated by feedback like this.

In the meantime, here is a little information on how our Feature Request Process works.

[TiffanyNR]

@kellyj 

Agree! I'm wondering why the POS app does not have the functionality to request and create a PO based on low quantities they see. Please add this feature.

[FND]

Hi, is there any way of knowing through the Item library that a determined item was already ordered through (Item management> Purchase orders) ? 

Something like: 

 - ITEM LIBRARY - 

ITEM NAME  -   IN STOCK    -     ORDER PLACED

(product)                 ( 5 )                         (10)

[Valentina]

Hi there @FND 👋 Pending stock received will only show under the Purchase Orders section of Inventory Management within your Square Dashboard. You can choose to filter items in your Item Library by Low Stock Alert or Out of Stock Alert - however, there are no additional inventory-related filters to utilize, at this time.

[PhoenixPearlTea]

Hi, I'm experimenting with Square for Retail, I have the free trial, and I just can't figure out a feature. So, I grasp the Inventory Management, I have learned how to put in item costs, vendors, purchase orders, location quantities, and alerts, but I can't find how to auto-generate a purchase order, let alone how to pull up a list of items from a vendor and make an order from that.

I would like to say "I want to make a purchase order with items from this vendor that are below their alert level in stock." Nice and easy, that's all I need. Honestly, I'd take "Generate an order of items from this vendor with their stock levels attached." But I can't find a way to do either. It's really the last thing I need from Square for Retail to make it work. Without it, it just doesn't seem worth it. Everything else about it seems great, but I really need order generation. Please help!

[lior]

Hello @PhoenixPearlTea, I am a Product Manager at Square working on our inventory features. Welcome to our community and thank you for taking the time to post! Auto generating Purchase Orders is a popular feature request that we are tracking very closely. I can definitely see the benefit and time saved from incorporating this into our existing Purchase Order flow. I'd love to hear about your experience on Square for Retail as we are always looking to improve our offering based on feedback from our sellers.  I'll reach out to you via a private message on our seller community.

[Trish_Yarn]

18 months later, I don't suppose any progress has been made on this? Being able to automatically add items to a PO when the Low Stock Alert threshold has been triggered would be a huge help. Please advise of the status of this.

[Trish_Yarn]

@lior any updates?

[nika]

Hey @Trish_Yarn. Thanks for checking in! I checked in with our Retail Team and can confirm that this is still a feature request. We'll certainly post an update here if and when this changes. Thanks for your patience!

[EggMan]

Any update on this? end of 2020 and now using the square for Retail app.

I'd much prefer not to have another app plugged in for the inventory. Working with two stores and having to manually create purchase orders is both time consuming and can get away from you especially when dealing with 20+ suppliers weekly.

[Littlepnuts]

This is a great question. I too would like the ease of being able to create purchase orders per vendor. My question to you, where are you able to put the vendor in? I have not been able to do so. Are you creating a modifier or a category to enter the vendor name?