Square Item Library Functionality

[PartyManiaMD]

So I've been playing with Square Item Library for a few days and is it just me or does it leave a lot to be desired?

The primary things I need to see at a glance and need to be able to sort by are:

SKU

Vendor Item #

Description

Stock

Cost

Price

Vendor.

Category

Currently Item Library only shows:

Description

Category

Stock

Price

Vendor.

Maybe I'm missing something but not putting the two fundamentals for ordering seems like a huge oversight. Not being able to copy and paste the item # or sku quickly without going into the item seems like an oversight.

The second part of my post concerns the Order More button. It would be great if it could work like a cart and continue to "shop" for items I need to reorder, however the functionality of it taking you to another page and not being able to continue to look at the item library seems flawed.

Any recommendations would be great, I'm still working through it to decide if there's a better way of ordering.

Just to be clear, if you Order more, it takes you to a page where it lets you search for other items, but I would then need to already know what I want to reorder.

I have close to 30,000 skus and item #'s and need to quickly be able to know what I'm out of stock of on a vendor and quickly pull up skus/item #'s.

The order more function after creating a purchase order almost works but it takes you to the purchase order instead of letting you continue to add items. When you're ordering 100s of items at once there should be a better way....

Even an export item library but limited to a selected vendor would be extremely helpful for ordering.

Adding to Order More takes you away from item library

[TCSlaguna · Accepted solution]

Hey @PartyManiaMD 

Great question! I believe the first part of your question is possible. Have you tried adding columns to the report: 

In regards to needing to quickly be able to know what you are out of stock of on a vendor, I understand your frustration. Having Quantity and Unit Price in the Vendor Item Library report has been a request since 2018. See discussion and mockup by @RabbitFoodGro  here: https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/New-to-Square/How-can-I-track-my-purchases-items-from-my-vendor-u... 

I know @artandfiber @artandfibershop @YNchick @DonnaCB @isabelle  would love to have this feature.

[artandfibershop]

Unfortunately, I gave up and am in the process of transitioning to Lightspeed for my POS. Square took too long and I lost patience. I hope they resolve this for y’all, but I’ll be making the final transition as soon as I can get my e-commerce set up and domain transferred. I expect to be ready to cancel my Square subscription by mid-March. 😞

[YNchick]

I’ve been sticking with Quickbook POS after trying Square for a bit with a couple workarounds like you mentioned, but it just doesn’t quite work for how I order and manage my inventory and daily operations… maybe some day…

[PartyManiaMD]

Wow that actually solves almost all of my issues, I don't get why that + sign isn't more obvious.

I guess really the only functionality I'm not seeing is the ability to sort the column.

Being able to sort by quantity would make life a lot easier.

Thanks for the heads up, was getting nervous that ordering would be impossible or extremely time consuming.

Overall thoroughly enjoying the Square ecosystem(they're still working on my inventory) compared to the old system we were using.

Any recommendations on adding items via square register? It doesn't let me add a vendor/vendor item # when I add a new item, is that a design flaw?

[TCSlaguna]

Haha, yes, it is quite hidden. Glad it worked! 

I have not used Square Register, so I am unable to help there. Perhaps @Twpchair @DinaLRosenberg  @homeprogreen @Doran @shopfybr  may know. 

I have always used Square Dashboard on a computer to add inventory. 

[PartyManiaMD]

Just curious how are you adding inventory on square dashboard? Going into each item? Uploading a file?

Square Register has a bulk import which allows you to quickly add items, but the moment you hit a new item it's useless because it doesn't allow vendor information to be added.

Adding via Item Library seems tedious....

To be honest I'm not sure I trust their import tools as getting my inventory imported has been a bit of a challenge.

[homeprogreen]

Creating each item in the item library is the best way I found. Keeps everything very accurate. I have items with 75+ variations and honestly once you get used to it that way it doesn’t take very long. Yesterday I created a new item with 56 variations in less then 30 minutes. That included all the vendor and default cost information 

[homeprogreen]

Unfortunately while you can add new items from the register you can’t add the vendor or cost from the register. You can add the sku or item number. Best way I have found is to set new items up on the dashboard while adding the vendor, default cost, and any variations. Then I jump on the register, open the item up and quickly scan in the barcodes into the proper spots. Really doesn’t add much to the task that way

[PartyManiaMD]

Dang, that's what I thought but like I thought the item library was lacking I was hoping I was wrong. Seems like if Square Register just allowed you to put vendor/vendor # that would solve a lot of headaches...