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

[tranguyen]

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 Centre: Basic Inventory Management. 

Post your questions to this thread ahead of time and check back with us on Wednesday, May 11, at 9 p.m. BST 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!👇

[MPBModels]

Thanks for the advice

[MPBModels]

Thanks, I am trying your suggestion

[tomadams7757]

It would be really good if restaurant had a purchase order system like retail does 

[issara_p]

@tomadams7757  Our team is actively working on incrementally adding this inventory functionality to Restaurants. We will follow up with you to better understand your use-case as we build this. Please DM me your contact details so I can follow up.

[tomadams7757]

Hi that would be great my email is [email protected]

[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

[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!

[Bicesterwools]

Why does an invoice not reduce the stock until it is paid? This causes stock inaccuracies when an invoice can be open for up to 28 days before the payment

[Emma_]

Hi @Bicesterwools, thanks for raising this. When an item is added to an invoice, the inventory is not updated unless you edit it manually. I understand how this will benefit your business. I will raise this with our Product team. 

As a workaround, you can manually update your stock. This involves two actions: reduce your stock when sending out your invoice and increase it back when the invoice is paid because the inventory is automatically updated when the invoice is paid by the customer. This is not the ideal solution but it can keep your inventory accurate in the meantime. I will definitely post in this thread if I have any updates on this. 

[Bicesterwools]

Thanks for the update, Emma. Yes, this is what we have to do. Manually alter our stock when we raise the invoice then adjust it again when the invoice is paid. 

[artizansty]

After creating a PO, we're thrown a screen to email the PO to the vendor (and a copy to ourselves) with 6 buttons:

1. 'X' at the top left
2. 'Done' at the top right
3. 'Preview Email'
4. 'Send'
5. 'Save as PDF'
6. 'Save as CSV'

Can anyone explain the difference between the 'X' and the 'Done' buttons? Clicking 'X' throws the PO to a status of "Pending", as does the 'Done' button, as does the 'Send' button. The only difference I can see, is that the 'Send' button sends an actual email.

The issue is that on an email screen, 'Done' has been confused by some staff as the right button to press (or at least equivalent to 'Send'), meaning emails don't actually get sent, but the PO is successfully created.

Also is there any better naming that could be applied to the buttons, or better messaging on the screen, to make it clearer what button is required to be pressed to send the email? Perhaps remove the 'Done' button if it seemingly does the same as the 'X'?

Following on from this, the status "Pending" isn't as clear as it could be - perhaps indicating if an email has been sent (and when), so that we can see quickly if the PO has been sent?

[Breffni]

Hey @artizansty, really good questions and points to raise. 

We have brought these questions (and feedback) up to our Inventory team and should have some insights for you soon! 

[artizansty]

Hi @Breffni, any update on this please? It's been over 1.5 months...

[Emma_]

Hi @artizansty, we raised this again with our team. Apologies for the delay. I'll post here as soon as I have more details from the team.