[Request]: Button for Enabling/Disabling Sold Out Items For Online Store

[incasperuvian]

Hello, there community. This is my first time trying to get engagement around my feature requests. This is a simple one: a quick way to mark an item as "Sold out" that can propagate from the Dashboard to the online store. 

My current work around:

Personally, I do not use the inventory features that Square has implemented, but I have found that if you mark your items inventory as less than or equal to 0, this marks the item as "SOLD OUT" on your online store. We run out of certain items at our restaurant throughout the day, so having a fast and easier method of doing this process would be #AMAZING.

For anyone still reading, if the Square API could expose more of the backend dashboard functionality, then I could even go crazier and create an apple short cut, make it a Siri enabled shortcut, and I could say "hey Siri, please mark ceviches as sold out on my online store". BOOM, done. But, I am dreaming here. These are trying times, and any minuscule amount of time savings equates to the world for us. Thank you.

[sayra]

Hello @incasperuvian.

Thanks for the really cool feature requests. If Siri could help, we would be golden. As of right now your workaround seems to be the best option. 

We'll make sure to pass this on to our Product Team. 

[incasperuvian]

Thank you @sayra !!

[burbelmaiers]

So I am utilizing Square for my online store. I totally have to use inventory tracking, and the online store portion works great. Now that we have begun exiting lockdown, and take away business has resumed. Many of the same items are sold through the online store AND brick and mortar. So here's the problem.... there is no toggle/option to prevent a zero inventory from blocking a POS sale. My customers could order something online and pay in advance dropping my inventory to zero. Before that online customer picks up, a brick and mortar customer can come along and buy that item (creating a negative stock and a p**ed off online customer) all because POS will not allow me to block a sale once inventory reaches zero. This is DISASTROUS, and causes me headaches every day. A simple option to block sales once reaching zero stock. I realize some merchants might want the ability to sell negative stock, so it shouldn't be a blanket change but an option to block a sale once sold out (the online store does it utilizing the same database, so it shouldn't be hard.)

[isabelle · Accepted solution]

Hey @burbelmaiers-

Thanks for posting in the Seller Community.

Unfortunately if you’re processing a sale from the Square app for in person sales, you won’t be blocked from selling an out of stock item.

This is intended to be this way. The thinking here was that if say you do not keep your quantity levels accurate (i.e. forget to update the amount after you receive goods), we don't want to block your sales if the quantity level goes below 0 on Square, but you actually have the item in stock.

Perhaps in the future we'll create a block feature, with an override feature to accommodate all sellers. In the meantime, this remains a feature request. Sorry about this. 

[burbelmaiers]

I realize the way it is set up and not asking that it MUST block, but the option to block is so needed. I feel like the old Seinfeld skit about rental cars. 

agent: I'm sorry, but we are out of cars

customer: But I reserved and paid on my card

agent: yes, but we're out of cars

At some point, why should anyone pre-order? Since accessing the same item database works on the online store to block a zero inventory sale, it should be an easy coding OPTION to do the same in the physical store.

Any chance of escalating this request please?

Kind Regards.

[Jody2323]

Good Luck waiting, I have been after Square for months to clear this up.....no response from  the "team"

the idea behind inventory is not to over sell.........enjoyed the reference to Seinfeld.

[SinDesserts]

https://www.odeko.com/

Integrates with square and you can shut off an item or the whole store. 

[catawebBrio]

So...to be clear, my online store WILL allow sales even if the stock is at or below zero?

The in-store app allows it.

Just want to be sure that the online store allows it as well.

We don't keep a full inventory on hand, but can get product that is sold out fairly quickly.

Please let me know if I have this right. Otherwise I will work around and adjust my inventory counts to always be above zero. (would rather not have to do that though)

Thank you!

[AshleyK]

@catawebBrio Sorry for any confusion. You will not be able to sell an item in the online store once it has hit zero stock. A message will be displayed telling the customer the item is out of stock. 

Let me know if you have any other questions. 🙂

[Jody2323]

So the online store will not allow you to over sell an item but the POS ( instore) will allow overselling.............why two different systems?

[RITA1234]

The online store does allow selling zero inventory so you must go in and turn off that item to prevent overselling.  There should be a button to prevent selling items with zero inventory.

[Ruckus_Orlando]

I am sorry but as of May 2024, this is not correct.  We have been having multiple issues where we are selling tickets to events and we have limited stock. We enter the amount of stock when we create the item for our Square Online Store.  When our stock hits zero, individuals are still able to purchase the item. They are not blocked or restricted and we do not receive any email or pop-up messages.  This is causing us to refunds sales and have to explain to our customers that we do not have the items but our system continues to sell.

[frances_a]

Hello @Ruckus_Orlando 👋

At this time, the above answer is still accurate. 

Besides entering a stock quantity, you want to make sure you are tracking stock for all items that you wish to mark as sold out once you have a stock of 0. 

Because some businesses allow quantities to go negative, we don't stop the sales of items when the stock is 0 if you choose not to track your stock. 

If you continue to run into issues or need additional help, you can reach out to our team here.

Thank you. 

[Ruckus_Orlando]

It seems very poor thought to allow the stock of all business to go into the negative simply because "some" business choose to sell that way.  A better solution would make zero stock stop selling items and then have a button for buttons to "activate" if they wish to sell into the negative.

[raeniks]

You may not have it because you don’t want to block the customer/shops who allow to go negative, but there should be at least a bare minimum toggle option for that functionality 

ie “Block Sales Online and on POS App for any item with a 0 or Negative quantity”

”yes/on” toggle selection - blocks any oversales from happening when an item or item variation hits a 0 quantity 

“no/off” toggle selection - allows for over sale/negative sale of items or variations when quantity hits 0. 

don’t force all user to process negative sales when we actively want item inventory syncing between our online shops and pos. we now have to do extra work around to avoid this or as others point out deal with refunds and unnecessary issues with our own customers. 

[RITA1234]

We have an online only store due to COVID and there is not a feature to prevent the sale of something with zero inventory.  This seems like a very necessary feature.  I have to remove a size if there are zero available and then add it back once stock is received.  PLEASE add this feature soon.

[Jody2323]

Good Luck!... It seems ridiculous that the Web application has a feature not to sell a zero stock item  but the POS  will permit it. Then you have to look your customer in the eye afterwards and say "Sorry the item is not in stock" and refund them the monies.

Isn't the the idea of inventory is to not sell an item that you have no stock!

Seinfeld Car rental scene....reminds me of Square inventory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKpt2E2Lqcw

[Jody2323]

So the online store will not allow you to over sell an item but the POS ( instore) will allow overselling.............the explanation provided has no logic............

"This is intended to be this way. The thinking here was that if say you do not keep your quantity levels accurate (i.e. forget to update the amount after you receive goods), we don't want to block your sales if the quantity level goes below 0 on Square"

Online...block sale

POS (in store) ...the sale is not blocked??

Back to you Square for an explanation!

[Stewglerfarm]

We would benefit from an option to block sales in the POS when inventory is sold out. We offer in-person retail sales only 1x per week and the rest of our sales are online. One of the reasons we are still using square and moving our online store to 100% square is for the inventory management. Hope your team can offer a feature to block items in the POS when inventory is 0, at least as an option.

[estbrew]

Hi @isabelle

Any chance you can provide an update on this? We also really need an option to provide the limit (or at least notifications) for sales on our POS -- otherwise we risk overselling items when they sell online and through direct POS transactions.

In the meantime, the lack of this feature has resulted in us needing to keep track of inventory as two separate square items, and requires constant  monitoring / transfer of inventory between the two inventory items.

We may have to consider alternate payment systems that allow us to better monitor inventory, as this is taking lots of effort to manage manually at the moment.

Thanks for your help & consideration!