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Feature Request - Backorder of specific items

Feature Request - Backorder of specific items

All of my items are either made or personalized. I sell both online and locally at craft shows. I need to track my inventory to make sure I have enough of each item for the local sales, but I also need to be able to sell online without having a massive stock of items on hand. Some items are absolutely made to order so I really can't have a "stock" of them in the inventory. 

Example: I make a "Yuma, AZ" ornament. It takes me all of about 30 minutes to make it from raw material. I pre-make 15 of them and enter that count into the inventory for the up-coming show. I also have it listed as visible on my Square Online website.

 

At that next show, I sell all 15 of them. As soon as that stock hits zero, Square Online marks it as "Out of Stock" and online customers are not able to order one even though it can be made and shipped that same day. That makes sense for items that are purchased and resold, however, it doesn't work for crafters who make their own items.

 

The solution is two-fold.

 

First, add a check box to the item that allows for Online sales even if the inventory is at or below zero and include a "Estimated Lead Time" selection for us so we can give the customer an idea how long it will take to produce an item. Then change the button on the item page to "Backorder." Treat it like any other order from there.

Next, add a column to the item table for "Backordered Quantity" to give us a number of items we need to produce to fill those backorders. Or just let the inventory go negative as is possible with Square POS.

 

To make this really functional, add an option to partially fulfill an order and split it into multiple shipments if necessary.

12 Replies
Admin
Status changed to: Has Product Insight

Additional statuses for items like backorder, pre-order, etc, is broader than just Square Online so I've surfaced this a little more widely. I don't have any specific details on adding this at the moment, but we can update the status once we know more.

@AdamB Thanks for the response. I definitely agree that additional status markers for items is something the broader Square ecosystem could benefit from, especially if it is just more than a mask overlayed on the item picture. The ability to sell products in various states of physical availability is a necessity in many types of businesses. I want to expand on my experience selling both locally and attempting to sell online.

My business has been operating for close to two years now. Early on, we had a limited number of items and only sold locally at the craft fairs and farmer's markets. Square POS was the perfect solution for that.

 

A year ago, I decided that I was going to commit to making my business more than just a "side hustle" and hit it hard, including working on an online presence. I discovered immediately how unfriendly the Square Online platform was to a business like mine. I sell very few "generic" items and every item I see is or can be personalized in some way. I also offer completely custom made to order items. Square Online didn't allow for the functionality that I needed at the time so I moved over to Shopify for everything and paid 1-year upfront for Shopify Basic.

 

Shopify Basic checked a number of the boxes that I needed, however, some of the basic functionality I needed still required a 3rd-Party app to accomplish, most of which are poorly made and over-priced. Square Invoicing, even the free plan, is FAR superior to anything I found on Shopify. Some examples of what I really need are:

 

The ability for customers to upload images to me from the order page. One of my most popular items are photographs laser-engraved on various types of material, with wood and slate being the primary. If there is a way to do this in Square Online, I haven't found it yet.

 

The ability to have a customer be able to select exactly what options they want for a semi-personalized item without having to dig through 32 variants to find the exact combination they want. I'm trying to figure this out for an item right now while I slowly get my site set back up after moving my domain back to Square from Shopify.

 

Example for this: I sell a 15" round sign made from Teak. I offer 4 designs for the sign with 8 font choices to start, plus I'll design anything they want to put on that 15" teak round. The personalization for this item comes in the form of their surname being added to the design. "The SURNAME Family" is the general idea. The current system allows for a form box for them to type text in, which is great, but I don't know how to handle the font and design choices. Shopify could do this, but only with the use of a poorly developed and over-priced 3rd party app. Check Box modifiers in Square Online don't really seem to do the job and the drop-down list or "color" choice selector still end up being a huge block of information. I need them to be able to choose the design, hide every variant that isn't that design, then choose the font. Preferably when those choices have been made, some CSS magic makes the text box for the surname appear with an If/Then/Else type statement.

 

Those couple of things would make Square near perfect for what I do. In addition, there are some things that I'd love to see happen to make my life a little easier. I would LOVE if I could use square in a similar fashion to CraftyBase, with a separate Raw Material inventory and a "Manufacture" functionality that takes from raw material via recipes and adds finished products to my Product inventory. It's a big ask, but I'd rather pay Square for an all-inclusive package than have to pay a bunch of other people for the functionality. I would also love it if the mid-tier Square Online subscription included the shipping calculations like Shopify Basic does if you pay for a year at a time. 

 

The problem, ultimately, is that I'm probably part of a limited group of sellers and the things that I'm looking for may be useful for a minority of Square customers. The other problem is that I have current certifications in HTML5, CSS3, and a number of other web development areas. I know what is possible but I just don't want to spend the time to build things myself from the ground up.   Even Wordpress is an endeavor that would take time away from making products and filling orders.

Square is close to getting just about everything right, and for a reasonably right price. Being able to sell items on a backorder status would be my first choice for development above the other things on my wishlist.

It would be super helpful to be able to accept online orders for items that are not in stock. My company does print-on-demand books, and we usually have a handful on hand, but sometimes customers want to purchase more than we have in stock. It's a pain to create "fake" inventory just so a customer can place their order.

@edizionimiglior Exactly. I only make a few generic items that I actually hold in stock. 99.9% of everything I make is custom / personalized and made to order. 

+1 to most of the other comments. My store is also either custom pieces, one offs, made to order, etc.

I agree with this feature request. Below is more information about my situation as a Square Online / Square POS retailer:


I am an artist who sells print-on-demand art prints through my Square Online store.

 

Most of my prints are small-format prints (A4 and A3-size), which I keep on hand, to quickly post to customers.

 

I also sell large-format prints (A2, A1, and A0 size) as print-on-demand. Whenever a customer orders a large-format art print, I immediately get in touch with my printer and get the artwork printed and drop-shipped to the customer.

As you can see, in my case it simply doesn't matter if I actually have an item 'in stock', for me to be able to sell this item to a customer.

 

Right now, it seems that I am forced to simply not track my inventory via Square, so that it is always remains 'unknown' to Square and therefore never reaches 0. (This is a shame, because I would love to be able to have a Square integrated way to list the quantities of stock that I actually do happen to have on hand).

 

I want the ability to be able to sell items through my Square Online store that I have '0' stock.

 

In WooCommerce this is called 'backorders'. As this FAQ page shows, customers can still buy products that are on backorder through WooCommerce. There is an option for 'Allow, but notify customer', as well as an item where the customer is not made aware of the fact that they are buying a product that is not in the store's stock inventory.

 

I want the ability to use Square to manage my inventory levels, but to also allow customers to buy stock with '0' inventory.

@stumcm for what it's worth, I have decided to switch to Woocommerce. It doesn't seem like ecommerce is a priority for square.

 

Although this inventory/backorder issue was a contributing factor in my decision to switch, the biggest issue for me has been lack of support for EU VAT prepayment. Square acts as a marketplace facilitator in the US and should similarly be able to act as a "disclosed agent" for tax purposes in the EU.

 

It should be fairly easy for them to implement both of these features. They just don't seem to care much about the Square Online product. 

It definitely speaks volumes that WooCommerce implemented the backorder feature in 2017, and five years later Square has not implemented such a simple fix to their product.

I've been holding off upgrading and launching a store because of a lack of backorder functionality. I'm about to pull the trigger on an alternative solution but would much rather keep everything in one ecosystem. Any update on this yet?

Backorders would be great to ensure that we don't miss out on sales. We are limited on what we can stock, but we are able to get new inventory quickly. Being able to take orders without full inventory would be great!