How can I track my purchases/items from my vendor using Square for Retail?

[texasbathhouse]

[The title of this thread has been edited from the original: Tracking my suppliers]

i want to be able to input my receipts where i buy from suppliers. where and how do i do that?

ie: soap supplier ingredients, chicago il, i paid $24.99

they are my vendor (acct payable)...where in SQUARE RETAIL do i enter this information

[artandfiber]

@JustinC This is the first bit of good news we've heard from Square on this topic. Thank you so much for working on this! I look forward to an update including this functionality in the near future.

[isabelle]

Hey everyone! 

We do now have a vendor report for those who subscribe to Square for Retail. This will only show sales associated with specific vendors, not current in-stock quantity. 

It can be found in your Square Dashboard > Reporting > Inventory Reports > Vendor Sales. 

For further instructions, please scroll to the bottom of this article. 

[TCSlaguna]

Thanks for the feature! This is great news! 

However, the feature requested was Inventory by Vendor, not Sales by Vendor. I think it is misleading to mark the above as Best Answer. 

It does not address the need to see Quantity in Stock by Vendor, as shown in the screenshot by  @RabbitFoodGro  ‎09-17-2019 11:22 AM, or the original poster, @Element29 

Desperately need the feature. Can you please let us know if it is on the horizon? 

[isabelle]

Hey @TCSlaguna!

Thanks for your reply. Sorry about that, I see how those two are different.

I want to make sure I understand exactly what you're looking for, because when I view my item library, even though I cannot export a report with this column, I do see a vendor column and current quantity in stock:

Is this not what you're looking for? Are you looking for an exportable report so you don't have to remain in the Dashboard? 

[TCSlaguna]

Hi @isabelle 

I think it is important that if Square provides a Retail solution, it understands how retailers run their business, as mentioned in many of the comments above. 

As a retailer, we order products from different vendors. Many times, we order the same product (i.e. incense) from different vendors. Who I order from this month can depend on a multitude of reasons. 

1) Having to run a report, export to Excel and filter, to order from a vendor should not be necessary

2) Default Vendor means the other three vendors I order incense from will not show in the report

3) As a retailer that needs to reorder products from a vendor, seeing the Quantity In Stock on the Vendor's Item Library page allows me to reorder the amount I need quickly. 

Long story short, retailers using Square are kindly asking that a column titled "In Stock" be added to Vendor -> Item Library

@isabelle I would love to talk more about this if the Square team has questions. Feel free to call anytime. 

[artandfiber]

Very well put, @TCSlaguna. Thank you for putting this so succinctly.

I will say, though... Square has done a fantastic job rolling out highly functional solutions to the current retail climate, i.e. expanded order fulfillment options at checkout online. I will happily defer their efforts on this matter to later this year.

But yes, this Stock on Hand by Vendor situation is in dire need of attention and requests for it have gone unanswered for long enough. And I sincerely hope that when they do develop this feature, that they take it one step further, allowing the option of automatically generating purchase orders based on "Low Stock" or Out of Stock" items by vendor, so as to avoid having to build P.O.s from scratch, one item at a time. I don't know about others, but my P.O.'s routinely (weekly) contain hundreds of items.

[isabelle]

Hey @TCSlaguna and @artandfiber!

Thank you so much for the insight and feedback. These are all great requests, and I can see how they'd be very helpful for business and inventory management. I will pass this along to the appropriate team. 

[YNchick]

This is the thing that is keeping me from switching to Square. It's a vital feature that all other POS systems have... I was really hoping it had been figured out by now. 

[artandfibershop]

Agreed, @YNchick - I actually find it embarrassing how inefficient the order prep and receiving process is when working with my employees and communicating with my customers about when there are sometimes such significant delays in product arriving in the store. It shouldn't take me an 12 hours to prepare a weekly order with one vendor. When I have an order to prep that exceeds about $3000 worth of product, it takes forever to enter all that product line by line.

At least these two things need to happen to improve this side of our POS system...

1. There should be a spot in the variation listing's settings where I can plug in an automatic "reorder quantity."

2. I should be able to look at inventory by vendor, and click a box to automatically generate a PO based on either "out of stock" or "low stock" items that have the automatic reorder quantity entered on the PO.

I was told at the beginning of the year that they were working on a beta version of an update for exactly this issue and I was invited to be one of the testers for the beta version, but could never get anyone at square to actually set me up with the beta. 

Then, when they released the actual update, it didn't address any of these issues that people have been discussing on this thread for going on two years, I think?

I am giving them a bit of a pass because COVID is a nightmare and they have actually launched a ton of updates and new features this year that have been enormously helpful in other ways, but I do very much hope they haven't abandoned our requests here. 

[Joe]

Hi there, @YNchick - thanks for adding your voice here on this thread in Support of inventory tracking by vendor. While we don't have an update to share on this feature just yet, we will continue to bounce back here with relevant updates as we have them from our Product Teams.

Really appreciate your continued patience!

[Boxie]

Joe, there is no such thing as patience when it comes to a person's business.  Either Square can provide the functionality or expect to lose any current and future business.  Inventory tracking with purchase orders is a basic function of all POS systems.  If you are not going to provide this functionality just say so.  Letting your customers hang for two years is not acceptable.   

[artandfibershop]

@Boxie and @Joe - I agree. I have patiently waited for any news whatsoever that Square is making strides toward adding this ridiculously basic functionality and I'm done being patient or making excuses for the company. And I have begun recommending that other businesses look elsewhere for a better software. If Square wants to even play in the minor leagues, much less the majors, they'd do well to consult with actual brick and mortar retail business owners who do in excess of $500K/year to build a platform that meets their needs. 

[Boxie]

@artandfibershop  Square has it place in the business world.  Just not for retailers or wholesalers who sell more than a few thousand dollars per year.  I am looking at taking my company off the cloud and putting the software back on a intraweb.  The ease of cloud programs like Square and Quickbooks are more than offset by these companies wanting you to subscribe to their overpriced service agreements.  I ran my last business using a peer to  peer network with absolutely no problems.  I have asked several other cloud based POS providers about the inventory and vendor tracking.  Everyone one of them is lacking even the basic functionality of a free POS system.  

[DonnaCB]

NEED THIS ASAP!! Definitely need to be able to print sales reports and current inventory reports according to Vendor. We have a multi-vendor boutique and this would allow us to use categories for it's purpose (Clothing, Toys, Home Decor) and then we could separate everything by Vendor instead of category.

[Boxie]

I am considering dumping Quickbooks Online for Square.  Reading this thread has me taking a second look.  I have had other desktop POS systems over the years.  Creating Purchase orders is a very simple process for almost all POS systems.  The same with vendor management.  If I am reading this correctly Square does not seem to know what it is doing with inventory and purchase orders.  It appears that Square is only interested in micro businesses with only a handful of products.  I have several hundred of inventory items that I need to buy and sell from multiple vendors.  There are plenty of other free programs that Square can copy from to learn how to do this function that has been around since the 1980's.

[artandfibershop]

Hi everyone! I can't see where a Square representative has addressed this yet, so I wanted to give you all an update...

Months ago, I was added to the beta test group for the feature that is supposed to address all the issues we have discussed here, but hadn't seen anything come of it.  However, the beta is finally underway...it appeared in my dashboard over the weekend. No idea when it will officially be launched, but it's great news that progress is being made and we will all have these much-needed features soon. 

I won't speak to specific features, mostly because I haven't really explored it much yet, but also because there is no telling what will change over the course of the test. I just wanted to let you know that progress is definitely being made.

[TCSlaguna]

@isabelle  I would like to join the Beta, if possible. This is a feature we have been requesting for two years now. Thank you. 

[ashc]

Hey @TCSlaguna,

You'll want to check out the Beta Community for this as we're not able to add you to betas from our end!

[TCSlaguna]

@artandfibershop @ashc @isabel 

If Stock Forecast is supposed to be the feature to address the request made in the forum, it doesn't. 

We still need "Qty on hand" to be added to Vendor -> Item Library

The Square Support article about Stock Forecast even says "While this doesn’t provide the ability to auto generate purchase orders for all of your items..."

Well, I would like to reorder all items from the vendor. 

[artandfibershop]

Completely agree. I shared this in the Beta Product Feedback thread for Stock Forecast. 

[Kitch]

This system has a HUGE issue with inventory manegement.  It is impossible to track sales or inventory by vendor - only by category. BIG problem when you have almost 3,000 items and 200 vendors!  This makes it almost imossible to re order.  We just opened, and I didnt realize this problem existed untill too late.  For now, I had to go back in and manually ad an alphebetical vendor code to the beginning of each product name - that was fun....2,678 different items to change.  Now, I can run a sales by item report, or a total inventory report, export it to an Excell spread sheet and alphebitize it, then isolate the different vendors to re order.  Not exactly ideal by any means....  Has anyone found a better way around this problem?