Inventory display

[LOG]

I sell outdoor grills and kitchens. 

Some items I only sell from stock, some items I only ship direct from my supplier and thirdly some items its both i.e. I can choose within each transaction to ship from stock or direct from my supplier.

However if I track my stock in Square retail there does not seem a way to mask this information in Square Online (holistically or by item). There is a toggle for 'out of stock' label in item preferences but that is just an shopping cart image label, if you go into an item it still says out of stock. 

So in summary I want to track stock for my own inventory needs but not have my customer see my stock levels (or when I am out of stock). I want that to be at my discretion. 

Previously when I ran Square retail through another website platform I ended up having two records for every product item. One with tracking on (point of sale items) and one within tracking off (website items) but that was very tedious data management and was hoping to lose it. 

[LOG]

To answer my own question it looks like the following would work? (in absence of a software solution)

- In Square Retail (dashboard) use items library and filter on out of stock. For any items that are OOS that I want to keep selling on my website I can turn off tracking. 

- When new stock arrives I turn on tracking and record the stock received. 

It cumbersome but doable. 

or

go back to having two records with item 1) tracking on 2) tracking off and choosing which item is in my online site. 

appreciate any thoughts. 

[Breffni]

Hi @LOG, thanks for your post. 

To confirm, do you want to track stock but don't want stock visible on your published site? 

In Item Preferences there are two settings which may help here: 

1. Low inventory indicator to display when an item’s inventory drops below your specified quantity. Be sure to enter a quantity of 2 or above.
2. Display out-of-stock items on site to decide whether or not out-of-stock items should appear on your online store. If you opt to display your out-of-stock items, you can select the Out of stock indicator to display when an item’s stock drops to 0.

Both can be disabled! 

[LOG]

Hi Alegra, thanks for reply.

Your summary is correct I have some stock which I sell direct from supplier as well as stock so it is irrelevant to my customer what my stocking level is though it is useful to me for inventory control. 

The above toggle switches are image labels which overlay the tile image in the image grid, if you click on the product item it still says out of stock on the actual product. 

To give an example I have a premium outdoor kitchen grill, I just keep one in stock as do with many of my low volume high priced products, I sold my stock item last week but that should stop me selling more online as I can order from the supplier and re-stock in two days if I sell one or even direct ship straight to customer. 

It seems strange that in a world of hybrid fulfilment methods and mixed online/offline retail that you cant separate inventory management from the the stock indicator on the online website - if that is how you want to run your business. I appreciate for fast fashion or restaurants this feature wouldn't work as generally only sell what is in warehouse. 

thanks, 

[k_atie]

Hey @LOG, thank you for your response! I'm just stepping in for Breffni (previously Alegra) while she is out of office. 

I'm going to go ahead and escalate this to our teams internally to see if there is a potential workaround for what you are looking for. I'll update you on this thread once I have more information. 

[Breffni]

Hi @LOG, thanks for your patience! 

Our team took a look into this and mentioned that there currently isn't a way to sell past 0 on Square Online, as we know. There isn't another way to do it besides adding an arbitrary number to all of your items' inventory... if you were to add say 1000 to the 53 that you have on hand. Then you would 'have' 1053'... this way you would never 'sell out' and you can still track inventory through Square Online. 

It's a long-winded workaround and would definitely take some consideration before implementing it! 

[LOG]

thanks for looking into it, maybe one to consider as a future feature!

I had thought of adding a stock level. The idea of a big number prefix '10' which can be parsed out in spreadsheets is a good one, will certainly boost my balance sheet calculations:) 

I did wonder if having multiple locations could help but that is a £600 pilot cant afford to go down. 

I think I will just turn off stock tracking when I sell these items, as adding it back in is part of my 'goods received' self corrects it. 

ta