thread Out of stock items purchased by customers in Online Store

Can I sell an out of stock item?

twowhales — Fri, 15 May 2020 18:49:49 GMT

[The title of this thread has been edited from the original: I can still sell an item from POS when stock is zero]

I have just discovered that I can sell an item when the stock in my inventory is zero - is this correct? After the sale it has decreased the stock level to -1.

On the online store it does not let me buy one and shows 'Out of Stock' as expected.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Inventory

Jody2323 — Wed, 13 May 2020 15:29:59 GMT

Why does square run two inventory processes? One online and the other Square App. they should be the same.

Don't want to sell an item to a customer in person if its not in stock, please fix.

When an item sells out or is no longer in stock, it won’t be available for purchase from your Online Store. The item will appear as “sold out” and can’t be added to your customer’s online cart.

If you’re processing a sale from the Square app however, you won’t be blocked from selling an out of stock item. Your inventory will be accurately updated in your online Square Dashboard to show sold out items as 0 or below, but you’ll still be able to complete these sales.

Re: Inventory

isabelle — Thu, 14 May 2020 19:16:39 GMT

Hey @Jody2323-

Thanks for posting in the Seller Community.

You are correct, as of right now, we still allow sellers in the POS to sell an item that is out of stock while we will not allow this for Online Store purchases. We don't restrict them from doing so, just incase they do not track inventory regularly, and would like to not be prevented from selling an item. We're still developing a more compromisable feature.

In the meantime, please take a look in this thread for a workaround suggestion.

Re: Inventory

Jody2323 — Thu, 14 May 2020 19:41:13 GMT

square should not be running two different processes for inventory tracking.

I believe the purpose of inventory tracking is not to sell an item to a customer that you do not have in stock.

I look forward to square making this change.

Thank you

Re: I can still sell an item from POS when stock is zero

isabelle — Fri, 15 May 2020 18:48:06 GMT

Hey @twowhales-

If you’re processing a sale from the Square app, you won’t be blocked from selling an out of stock item. Your inventory will be accurately updated in your online Square Dashboard to show sold out items as 0 or below, but you’ll still be able to complete these sales. We're still developing a feature which may allow you to limit this possibility in the future. I'll make sure to post in this thread when I hear an update on this.

Re: Inventory

Heather_H — Mon, 18 May 2020 19:26:03 GMT

I'm interested in this update as well. I wouldn't mind if it was just a notification on our Square Terminal that an item is sold out or is about to sell out so it is clearly visible to the sales associate who is trying to complete an in-store transaction. Maybe a warning in the checkout screen under that item or just the current inventory count. This would allow users to still sell the product in-store at the terminal if needed, but also provides a clear warning to the staff so they don't accidentally oversell a product for those of us who rely on the inventory feature.

When we were doing in-store sales only it wasn't as big of an issue because inventory was going directly out the door after the transaction was completed. Now that we are doing a lot of online sales due to COVID it's becoming an issue.

There's "sold" inventory from on-line sales not picked up yet that's sitting with our "unsold" inventory and it isn't always noticeable to staff that something is "sold out" since online orders aren't picked up immediately. We've had employees accidentally sell product in-store thinking we still had inventory remaining, but we didn't. It would be really helpful and save me some headaches to get a better workaround in place for this. I'm sure there are others in a similar situation.

Re: Inventory

BakingLife — Tue, 19 May 2020 19:40:59 GMT

I look forward to this too. Being primarily a bricks and mortar bakery and food market it is quite frustrating when we receive an online order for an item and a customer walks in to purchase the same item. If we haven't had a chance to look at the online order we end up selling it to the walk in customer and having to call and apologize to the online order customer. This has happened to us many times and makes us look disorganized.

Re: Inventory

AshleyK — Wed, 20 May 2020 11:59:53 GMT

Thank you @Heather_H and @BakingLife for giving us this feedback. I do understand how this would be super helpful to our sellers to be able to have this feature and will continue to bubble up this feedback to the development team.

Re: Inventory

PatW — Mon, 25 May 2020 15:20:03 GMT

Please add my request for true inventory management that does not allow an out of stock item to be sold. We have a large consignment store where there is only 1 item available. When it is sold we don't to be able to sell it again.

This should be a requirement for any retail store's inventory management either in store or online. I just discovered this flaw and I am shocked and not quite sure how to handle it. We do not want our salespeople selling a sold out item.

Re: I can still sell an item from POS when stock is zero

twowhales — Mon, 25 May 2020 20:59:20 GMT

Thanks Isabelle. Flagging up the zero inventory on a sale is just another way of minimizing input errors. It doesn't necessarily need to block it but a warning popup would be useful.

Re: Inventory

Jody2323 — Sat, 30 May 2020 17:57:17 GMT

Where is Square with a solution? Its been over 2 months since I emailed Square and no resolution!

I also reported that the Date is wrong in an export of items sold;

Date	Time	Time Zone	Category	Item
2007-05-20	14:11:15	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Books And Beers
2007-05-20	14:11:15	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Membership 20-21
2007-05-20	14:09:55	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Xmas Party DEC 23
2004-05-20	17:19:09	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Xmas Party DEC 23
2028-04-20	17:57:35	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Books And Beers
2028-04-20	12:17:51	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Books And Beers
2028-04-20	12:17:16	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Books And Beers
2023-04-20	12:28:57	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Boat Tour Sept 10
2023-04-20	12:28:57	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Shoptalk

Also the CSV file does capture the customer name on returns;

Item	Qty	Customer Name
Boat Tour Sept 10	1	[Personal Information Redacted]
Boat Tour Sept 10	1	[Personal Information Redacted]
Boat Tour Sept 10	1	[Personal Information Redacted]
Boat Tour Sept 10	1	[Personal Information Redacted]
Boat Tour Sept 10 Total	4		0
Books And Beers	1	[Personal Information Redacted]
Books And Beers	1	[Personal Information Redacted]
Books And Beers	-1
Books And Beers	-1
Books And Beers	1	[Personal Information Redacted]

It would be great to get some of these issues resolved

Re: Inventory

Valentina — Sun, 31 May 2020 01:40:38 GMT

@Jody2323 - we will be sure to post an update right here in this thread when we have one to share about the feature which may allow you to limit this. Please subscribe to this thread if you would like to receive a notification when a new post is added here.

In regards to your question about the incorrect dates on the report above, it may be worth giving us a call so that a member of our team can take a closer look with you.

Are you able to give us a bit more detail about what you're looking for answers to with the CSV file showing customer names?

Is there a way to allow a customer to order a out of stock item?

wnrc — Fri, 12 Jun 2020 13:08:22 GMT

I am starting a new on line store and still setting it up. I am wondering if there is a way to allow a customer to order an out of stock item?

Re: Is there a way to allow a customer to order a out of stock item?

JustinC — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 21:40:24 GMT

Nope, you'll need to add a stock amount for the item so your customer can order it. Sorry about that 😔

@wnrc

Why does my square terminal and my square app let me sell items that show SOLD OUT or 0 inventory??

wnnstore — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 01:07:49 GMT

This reply was created from merging an existing thread: Why does my square terminal and my square app let me sell items that show SOLD OUT or 0 inventory??

The inventory shows up as 0 in square/online store/items/items library

it also shows up as a 0 when I go into square/items/items library

It shows SOLD OUT on my Online Store page

But when I use my square terminal and select library - it will allow me to sell as many of the items as I want. I need the terminal / cell phone app to be linked/synced as well. What am I doing wrong?

Re: Why does my square terminal and my square app let me sell items that show SOLD OUT or 0 inven...

Valentina — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 01:06:50 GMT

I've moved your post over to this thread where @isabelle addressed this question in her Best Answer. Keep your eyes on this thread, as we will post an update here when something changes.

Re: Inventory

wnnstore — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 16:58:44 GMT

I agree. I run a nonprofit second hand store that is run by volunteers. We never accepted credit cards in the passed. Because of COVID-19, I started a square account to have an online store and started taking debit and credit cards. Now that we are trying to reopen, I set up the terminal at the store cash register. Almost 99% of my inventory is individual items with 1 available. The fact that inventory can still be sold on the terminal even if it is SOLD OUT means that I will have to do every credit card transaction myself to ensure that something that has sold but I haven't had time to remove from the online store won't accident'y be sold again. I understand companies that can restock, but I cannot. So now I have spent money on a terminal that my volunteers can't use. If I had known I probably would NOT have started taking credit cards. But now that I have, I can't refuse them, or I will lose customers. This is a HUGE issue for me.

Re: Inventory

wnnstore — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 17:53:53 GMT

I would be very happy with SOLD OUT popping up on the screen with a toggle switch to override it. That way when people who have inventory "in the back room" so to speak, could override the sold out and still sell the item. Just my thought about it.

Re: Inventory

BakingLife — Sun, 21 Jun 2020 23:17:15 GMT

I am in agreeement with you, this has been one of a few very frustrating points for my business. I have apologized to far too many customers for looking foolish because the system oversold items. It's ridiculous that we've been asking for a long time for a fix to this. The amount of time we have spent on this and a few other painfully frustrating 'bugs' with Square/Weebly have led us to analyze if Shopify is a better fit for us. If you need website help best to use twitter to reach someone from tech from Weebly, nobody as Square seems to be able to deal with website IT issues. Just our experience since COVID began.

Online and in-store Sales - Negative Inventory

EricMarshall — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 15:16:53 GMT

I have merchandise that is sold online, as well as in-store. We use inventory management on all items, so we know exactly how many of each style & size we have on hand, which avoids over-selling.

Saturday at 1:50pm, someone placed an online order for 3 t-shirts. All 3 were the last available of their style & size. The person working didn’t see the order.

Someone walked in to our location, and purchased the same 3 shirts. The worker, not realizing they had been sold online, grabbed them and sold them. Ringing them up caused them to go into NEGATIVE inventory, but the cashier cannot see that information without editing the item, and allowed the sale to continue.

I now have 3 shirts that have been paid for online, that we have to refund and upset a customer who was supposed to pick them up today. In a perfect world, my P.O.S. would alert the employee that inventory was 0, and cause them to realize that the shirt was already spoken for.

Please tell me if there is a way to avoid this in the future. Allowing inventory to go into negative ranges without any kind of a prompt or alert makes zero sense...