Live Q&A: Ask us anything about Items and Inventory!

[Tom]

On Friday September, 25th we hosted a Square Items and Inventory Live Q&A!

With lots of adjustments in how things are sold during COVID-19, we heard some great questions and feature requests relating to managing items and inventory.

Thank you to @elaine_p from Square’s Catalog team, who answered questions about items and inventory. While we're not able share release timelines, we can give a sense of what’s coming soon in our roadmap and discuss what you need for your business.

[elaine_p]

Hi @puravidaart , 

You can change your low stock alert settings for your item variations. 

Can you tell me a little more about what you mean about changing for customers? 

To change stock alerts: 

1. From the dashboard home page, click on the Items tile
2. Click on the item you want to edit
3. Click on the stock count for that item variation
4. For variations that have “Low stock alerts” toggled on, you can change the quantity when you receive the alert via email. 

If you want to do this for many items, you can also adjust it using a file import. (there are instructions for that in this thread)

[JennB5674]

I input a custom sale and did not use the inventory feature. How do I now change the inventory number now that I found it in my item listing. I still want to show that it was sold and not a reinventory. 

[elaine_p]

Hi @JennB5674 ,

Once the sale is final, you won’t be able to edit the items or inventory related to the sale. Your only option would be to adjust the inventory and treat it as a recount. In your Item Sales report, the sale will be recorded as a “Custom Amount.”

To adjust the stock for the item, you can make the adjustment in the point of sale or on the online dashboard. If you tap or click on the item, you will see a row for Stock. If you tap or click on the amount, you can adjust it and choose a reason. In this case, I would use “inventory re-count.” If you are tracking cost of goods sold using our Square for Retail Plus product, a re-count adjusting stock down would increase cost of goods sold and decrease inventory value like a sale would. For more on how each adjustment type impacts cost of goods sold, see this article.  

[vhovar]

I cannot find any way to allow an employee to update the inventory without giving them access to modify Items in general. So this forces us to always have a manager or owner adjust inventory. 

[elaine_p]

Hi @vhovar , 

Thank you for the feedback! Updates here are on our roadmap. One thing we’ve heard is that employees should have the ability to update stock counts, but should not see cost information (available in Square for Retail). Would you say that is true for you as well? 

[vhovar]

I would agree that the cost information should not be available and necessary when allowing an employee to maintain/adjust the current stock.

[CSH_Library]

How do you limit the number of memberships that can be sold? I run classes that have a maximum number of students. I need to make sure that I do not sell more than 20 memberships.

[elaine_p]

Hi @CSH_Library  and @Chelsea3 , 

Today we don’t have a good way of limiting sales to stock or class limits in the Square Point of Sale. If you sell through inventory, we allow you to continue selling. @saumaya , the PM for the point of sale app, shared an update in another thread that we are in the process of updating our cart building experience to surface when an item is sold out. Then you could use stock tracking and you would see a “sold out” notification for the class in the point of sale.

[Chelsea3]

Looking for the ability to show the person who is running the POS when an Item is no longer in stock...rather than allowing the item to be oversold. I have experienced the item to continue to be over sold when amount has been added to inventory. 

[TreeAmigos]

Yes! We've made that mistake a few times lately since we've added an online shop. The item recently sells out before stock is pulled and another customer picks the item off of our greenhouse shelf.

The only option we have is to go in the backend to view the Items dashboard

[reclaimedspirit]

Are you using square for retail? It pops up a warning that it's out of stock and cashier has to select "continue anyway" to proceed. It won't stop human error, but nice to get the warning. 

[melaleuca]

Can I change the quantity for "low stock"?

[TreeAmigos]

We always do this by bulk exporting the item list from square. There is a column that allows you to select Yes or No for low stock alerts and then another column for choosing the the quantity for the Low Stock alert

[elaine_p]

Hi @melaleuca , 

Yes!

To change stock alerts: 

1. From the dashboard home page, click on the Items tile
2. Click on the item you want to edit
3. Click on the stock count for that item variation
4. For variations that have “Low stock alerts” toggled on, you can change the quantity when you receive the alert via email. 

If you want to do this for many items, you can also adjust it using a file import like @thethreeamigos suggested. (there are instructions for that in this thread)

[MannyST1]

Hi, i'd like to know if you have any POS software that is structured to operate a Consignment Shop.  I have read a bit on square POS and my take away is it's geared toward Retailers who own the merchandise and the items are pre-loaded.  In our business we have many different vendors and need to track their individual sales and fees associated with each vendor.

How tedious is it to enter all the items that are sold manually?  Can a keyboard be attached to POS?  

But the big question is any POS designed for a Consignment Shop?

[elaine_p]

Hi @MannyST1  ,

While we didn’t design Square for Retail specifically for a consignment shop, we have seen it used successfully in consignment shops. You can attach a keyboard to the iPad you use for your point of sale to help you quickly create items. Another quick way would be to create items using our online dashboard. This video shows how items are created in the dashboard, and this article includes additional information. 

Square for Retail provides the ability to track vendors, and for consignment shops we recommend setting the vendor as the consignor and using Vendor Sales reporting to understand how each consignor is performing. This article talks more about Vendor Management.

[BeerdBrewing]

We have two locations - any chance there is an easier system to transferring items from one location to another in Square?

[elaine_p]

Hi @BeerdBrewing , 

In our Square for Retail Plus product, we offer the ability to transfer stock between locations. To do this from the dashboard: 

1. Go to Items > Item Library
2.  Click the three dots on the far right of the row for the item or item variation you want to transfer and choose “Transfer Stock”
3. Select your source and destination locations and enter a quantity. Additional line items can also be added. 
4. Click “Complete Transfer”

Note that inventory is updated immediately. If you’re transferring between physical locations and there is travel time, your actual on hand inventory will be off until the transferred inventory arrives. 

Without a Square for Retail Plus subscription, on the dashboard, I would: 

1. Click on the item or item variation and a window opens
2. Click “Manage Stock”  at the top of the window
3. Select a reason in the “Stock action” row - for the destination, I would use “Stock Received;” for the source location I would use Inventory re-count.
4. Save

This isn’t recommended if you’re using Square’s inventory adjustments to track cost of goods sold in another program because typically a re-count that decreases the amount of inventory would increase the cost of goods sold and is not representative of a true transfer that should just only the inventory value at both locations. If all you want to do is change the values at each location, it will accomplish that.

I’d love to hear more about whether you track COGS and how you track them.

[TrulyCreated]

Hi! I have a question about items in Online Store. I currently have many options for customers because they appreciate customizations! My question is why we are only allowed to have 100 variants for customers when they shop online? Is there a plan to fix this soon?

[asw]

Hi there @TrulyCreated — I’m sorry that you’ve run up against this limit! We will look into increasing it. How many variants do your items typically have?

[CuriousCapyShop]

When can we upload pictures on the template? Or create custom fields? I am a bookstore and it would be great to have the opportunity to have an author field, genre field, etc. and it would be so much more convenient if the ISBN pulled cover pictures directly. As of right now, I have to edit them one by one, and with thousands of books, that's not too practical. Thanks!