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.

[TreeAmigos]

For Items in online store, do you plan to create a sort by Availability status (Unavailable, Hidden, Visible) option?

It is extremely challenging going through every page to review and having to toggle the items I want to hide or make visible.

Being able to sort unavailable items so I could quickly toggle which ones I want without having to see my hidden or visible options would greatly improve the experience of inventory management

[leedawn]

I have been having a problem with this as well.  It is very time consuming to go through every item in the inventory to check to see if it is visible.  

[asw]

Hi @TreeAmigos and @leedawn,

We are actively working on introducing filters into the Item Library in Square Online, so that you can filter your Item Library by things like availability, categories, locations, stock, and more. Please be on the lookout for this soon!

[TreeAmigos]

Can you add additional options on creating categories on Square Online?

A Bulk upload option of items would be AMAZING. I understand if inventory wouldn't be included due to syncing concerns, but the ability to manipulate Availability, category, pickup options, seo, would significantly improve the experience

-Adding items to the category page is challenging since it is not sorted and you have to continually scroll

-Individually going through each item to mark the category it belongs to is time consuming and allows for not marking all the items in categories without double or triple checks

[asw]

Thank you for your feedback on categories, @TreeAmigos. We’re starting work on improving the categories page now.

[Elishea]

Does the item/inventory platform of square calculate the total dollar amount of inventory you have? If so, how can I obtain that report?

[leedawn]

following to see the answer as well

[elaine_p]

Hi @Elishea ,

Our Square for Retail product can provide this report. There is a field you will be able to see as a subscriber on your items called “Unit Cost.” (This is also available in our bulk import/export file). 

When your inventory has unit costs assigned, you can see report for your inventory value by category, potential profit, and margin that you can update by date and location using the Inventory by Category report. There is also a Projected Profit report that will show you your inventory value by item and item variation. More about Reports and the Retail product is available here.    

[leedawn]

New question!  I own a boutique clothing store.  I have my items on my website and in store.  If a customer has us hold an item, we are invoicing them, but they do not want to pay until they pick it up.  If I take it out of inventory, when they pick it up, it will already be out of stock.  How can I make sure someone doesn't try to buy it online?

[elaine_p]

Hi @leedawn, 

Today we decrement inventory when invoices are paid, so you will overstate your inventory online until it’s paid. Using Square online you can offer pick up as a fulfillment option to take payment and decrement inventory before the item is picked up, but it sounds like you want to offer a hold without payment option. 

You could adjust inventory with a recount and the reverse the adjustment when it’s paid, but that’s not a great solution and may mess up your counts if an adjustment is missed.

Thank you for the feedback. It is on our roadmap to add support for this kind of scenario. 

[vallevistamail]

I was wondering if there is a way to export the checkout links when I export my items catalog.

[elaine_p]

Hi @vallevistamail, 

It isn’t a part of our export today, but sounds like it would be helpful to have. Thank you for the feedback, and if you’re up for sharing more about how you’d use it in the export, I’d love to hear more.

[monchicdesigns]

is there a way to add a maximum inventory level on one item to where i don't have to go into each time to increase inventory levels.  basically I want to add inventory (or control it) on specific items automatically after 5 items are sold.   the reason is some items require longer ordering periods and i want to only add maximum on items every month and a half.  can this be due automatically and set up as a certain date to import new inventory levels are do i need to manually increase myself? 

[elaine_p]

There isn’t a way to do this today @monchicdesigns , but I can absolutely see how it would be helpful. Today you would need to adjust inventory manually as it is received.

[thenectarylkld]

There needs to be a way to hold or reserve items and remove them from the available online inventory, without removing them from the total inventory or setting up a separate "location".  There is a single pool of inventory which is sold at brick-and-mortar AND online, but sometimes customers reserve items for pickup and payment. These items will be oversold online unless there is a way to remove them from availability. Help!

[elaine_p]

Hi @thenectarylkld, 

The post from @leedawn had a similar request - it’s something that is on our roadmap! I’m curious to hear more about how your customers are using reserve - would it be an option to use online ordering and payment to decrement the inventory, or is reserving now and paying later very important to them? 

[thenectarylkld]

@elaine_p No, immediate payment would not be an option in this case - we need to be able to hold aside plants that are going into a project which is payable only upon delivery/installation. We’d like to be able to start selling online but we can’t until we have this feature!

[elaine_p]

Thanks for the additional information. We’ll be sure to post updates in the community when we have that available!

[zder]

As the owner of a bakery which is now heavily reliant on online orders and a good inventory system.

1. Inventory counts of zero should not automatically be ignored by the Square POS app. If an item has zero inventory, a cashier should not be able to sell it.
2. We have established pars, or total quantities of each item we sell that can be produced and sold for each day we are open. A huge improvement to Square’s inventory feature would be the ability to establish inventory quantities for items that reset on a schedule. This inventory functionality would be linked to a production schedule and preparation time, so once we start taking orders for the next available business day, the pars of our items would automatically be reset to the correct quantities.

[elaine_p]

Hi @zder, 

1. We’re working on adding an indicator to the POS app when inventory reaches 0. We don’t want to fully block the sale because in some scenarios like a Retail store, if a buyer is bringing merchandise to the counter and your count was off, you would still want to be able to make the sale. Square for Restaurants has an Item 86ing feature you can use to mark items unavailable. You can set a daily count, and elect to make items available again automatically the next business day. In the Square for Restaurants POS, the item is grayed out and there is a warning when the item is added to the cart. 
2. The Square for Restaurants count would solve for this too I. Here’s more information about the feature. 

[zder]

@elaine_p ,

Thank you for responding to my questions.

Question 1 - It looks like you are working on a solution to this. Good.

Question 2 - Unfortunately, the solutions discussed in the Managing Items with Square for Restaurants page you referenced are not applicable to our situation.

As stated on that page,
“Note: Setting the quantity for auto-86ing is different than setting your stock quantity from your online Square Dashboard.”

It looks like the Square for Restaurants app’s auto-86ing pseudo-inventory feature is designed for use with walk-in customer ordering only and doesn’t sync up to the online store’s real inventory, like the dashboard inventory does.

Here’s what my business needs - Inventory quantities set in the dashboard, automatically reset based on the relationship between production schedule, business-hours schedule, and prep-time, synced with the online store and recalculated from both online and in-store sales. Otherwise, Scheduled Pickup (or advance ordering) doesn’t work. You can’t assume that a food-service business can produce unlimited quantities of products for any day they are open. There have to be limits, that’s accomplished through inventory control.

From my perspective, Square continues to misunderstand the business needs of bakeries and similar food-service businesses. The restaurant business does not encapsulate all food-service businesses - there are critical differences.