[CA] Inventory Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Inventory 📊

[Ani_]

Calling all sellers — especially those signed up with Square for Retail and Square for Restaurants! Our product team wants to hear your inventory questions and feedback. 

I'm thrilled to introduce you to Mukta Dhanuka (@Inventory), whose team at Square focuses on inventory accuracy across all Square products. This is an opportunity for you to ask any questions or share feedback on how it's going with Square Inventory. To learn more about Square Inventory and its features, take a look at our Support Center: Basic Inventory Management. 

Post your questions to this thread ahead of time and check back with us on Wednesday, May 11, at 1 p.m. PDT / 4 p.m. EDT as she and her team respond. 

A few example questions:

• What are the best practices that will ensure I'm getting the most out of Square Inventory?

• What are the latest feature improvements with Square Inventory?

• If Square Inventory could take care of "_______," it would save me so much time and help me run my business more efficiently.

• I can’t seem to figure out “______” or I need help with “_________”.

• An inventory issue that keeps me up at night is “____________”.

• I wish Square for Restaurants or Square for Retail would support “________”.

Note: We can't share specific details on our product roadmaps, though this information will be helpful as we continue to make improvements.

Click Reply below to post a question ahead of time, and we’ll address as many posts as we can on Wednesday, May 11!👇

[thesillandsoil]

Honestly not sure if this is an inventory questions, but asking anyway... Why does pick-up need to have a specific pick up time frame? Why can't Square echo what Squarespace and Shopify do and just have customers place orders, and then when our staff/store packs the order and have it ready they are notified for pick up. This would be ideal for pre-orders (where inventory comes in) that way things can sell and customers aren't confused for pick up. You are so closed to having it figured out but just not quite there. 

[faheem]

Hi @thesillandsoil - you're able to do this with Square Online. Here are some steps:

1. Head here to your Square Online pickup and delivery settings

2. Click Edit next to your location

3. Next to the question: "Calculate & assign pickup times automatically", select No 

4. Once this is disabled, customers on your site will no longer see dates and times for pickup. Instead, you can enter a custom message of your choosing (e.g. "We will notify you when your order is ready"). Then, save your settings.

And, you can still use your Orders section on the POS to mark orders as Ready, which will send automatically texts to buyers who have opted into order confirmation texts. Feel free to message me if you have any questions

[SamuelDesgagne1]

Bunbdle item and inventory? Inventory for product with option?

[Inventory]

@SamuelDesgagne1 - Thank you for reaching out. It is currently not possible to set up an item bundle for sale. Our team is actively working on incrementally adding this inventory functionality. We will follow up with you to better understand your use-case as we build this.

Would you please DM me your contact information so that we can set up a follow up call?

[SamuelDesgagne1]

i have just done it

[Ani_]

The time for receiving new questions has closed. Thank you to everyone who asked questions and shared their experiences — we received a lot of useful feedback!

Our Inventory team will continue to address posts that came in during this event. Due to the high volume of interest, it may take a couple of days to follow up on the remaining posts. We appreciate your patience and please keep watch for updates throughout the end of the week

[theuntiedlatch]

Why does my item show as sold out despite inputting the amount of stock on hand as 11? I have updated the low stock alert to 0 and it still shows as out of stock. I've searched the help forums but all of the help is for manually setting 'out of stock' and not removing 'out of stock' when there is stock!! 

[Inventory · Accepted solution]

Thank you for every question, feedback and product request. Every discussion thread made this a very engaging and insightful AMA for our team, especially me, as the new Inventory, Product Manager. Your experience and feedback will help us revisit priorities for the product going forward.

We wanted to share a short recap on three themes that came up during inventory AMA event:

1. Bundles/Kits: This stood out as one of the most frequently requested product features. Our team is actively working on incrementally adding this inventory functionality. We will continue to follow up with you to better understand your use-case as we build this.
2. PO <-> Items Management:  This was another key area of interest that came up often and the overall sentiment was to have a more cohesive workflow as you make purchased items available for sale; and purchase more items from your vendor based on those sales.
3. Inventory Availability: We hear this loud and clear to have more accurate ‘available for sale’ inventory count versus stock you may still have on hand but committed through online orders or invoices. Our team is also actively working on incrementally building this functionality starting with invoices. Please stay tuned for the updates.

Next Steps:

1. Trainings: Our team will set up bite size 30 min live trainings for areas where you may need some help to set up or get used to. Our first session about how to set up and use ‘sell by units’ will be particularly helpful for current and future Square for Retail Plus subscribers. If you are interested, please submit your contact information here: 
   
   

   SIGN UP FOR TRAINING

   
   You can also use this form to share if there are any other topics/areas where training might help as you start or continue your Square inventory management journey.
2. Feature Discovery/Beta: We will closely partner with sellers who have shown interest in product features like kitting/bundling, inventory availability etc. for feedback as we build these functionalities and participation in a product beta rollout.

We are inspired by your diverse businesses and how you want to continue to improve Square’s products to save you time and make better inventory business decisions that directly affect your brand and cash flow. It was also amazing to see a sense of collaboration and trust, especially experienced sellers helping out other sellers with their experience, within and outside of Square.

For the latest updates on Inventory, visit Product Updates.

Again, thank you for your participation and stay tuned for our next Q&A!

[Wigliff]

I'm using the stock count feature for my first full inventory. My team and I spent 9 hours counting, using the iPad and the full count feature. Afterwards, I was left with 4 different counts, for the items that each member counted. Is there a way to merge them? If I start a review on any of them, it will set the counts on all the items not counted by that team member to zero. 

[TyeeValley]

My company is service based where items I'm adding are basically done as purchased as needed or services where there is no inventory tracked. 

Is there a way to turn off stock management at a company level? I won't ever be selling online and keep getting notices of stock issues when adding items to an invoice. 

[_Violet]

Hi @TyeeValley  - I'm sorry to hear that this issue with your inventory has brought you to the Seller Community.

You should be able to disable Inventory Tracking by following these steps:

1. Go to Items & orders > Items from your online Square Dashboard.

2. Click Settings > Inventory.

3. Toggle off Enable inventory management for invoices.

4. Choose applicable locations or select All Locations.

5. Click Save

I hope this information is helpful but please do let me know if you have any additional questions.