Online Store Needs

[FlightTeam]

We have a physical store and an online store. Here are some features that we would like to see.

Since our physical store can be busy, we will inevitably miss online orders. We would love to be able to set the online inventory to Sold Out, when the physical inventory reaches a minimum. In other words, when inventory reaches 5, tell the online store we are sold out so we don't over sell.

We should also be able to change the verbage to say "Check In-Store", instead of "Sold Out".

Also, all of our items have different Units. We should be able to select which Units we want visible on the store. For example, I want to sell 4Packs of a beer online, but not Single Cans.

[MayaP]

Hello there @FlightTeam ,

Thank you for reaching out. I would like to gather some more information so we can better assist. Square Online is currently set up so that if you run out of stock it will say "sold out." There is no option to add a check in-store, but it will show online it is sold out. I would make sure you have stock and inventory set up correctly.  You can also show what items you want visible online or not. So if you had an item and created a variation for the 4 pack and then single cans, you would have to hide the whole item, and cannot just do certain variations. But you could create the item again with only the variation you want and make that item visible. 

I hope this helped a little bit. Please provide more insight if not, thank you! 

[PartyManiaMD]

@MayaP  While I can't speak for @FlightTeam , often restaurants and retail stores will "86" an item as out of stock before the quantity hits 0. This ensures you don't oversell the item by having a few leftover just in case someone orders online while someone's buying it in the store. Having a "out of stock" when it hits "5 or less" for example would allow the store to have a buffer between online and in store purchases. I can see it could be incredibly useful especially in restaurants, the workaround currently @FlightTeam would be to "under-receive" the amount of merchandise you have on hand, IE if you have 12 of an item but want to 86 it at 5 you would only receive 7 knowing internally you always have 5 more than what's listed.

As far as selling by units, you can sell by can or by 6 pack, when in your Square item library if you open the item below the SKU field you'll see a sell by unit and you can add a second type IE 6 pack. However online it will still show both, If you don't want to sell by can online then I'd probably put in the description that by can is only available in store. 

These aren't perfect solutions given people typically don't read descriptions but hopefully these can help you in the meantime.

[FlightTeam]

Maya, I see. If I create another item that is a 4 pack and make that one visible online, then make my normal item for in-store only, I suppose that would work. However, that would defeat the purpose of switching from Shopify to Square Online so that I don't have to make the item twice. 

PartyMania is exactly right. If someone buys the item online and then it sells out in the store before we pick it, now we've oversold the item and I have to refund the customer and deliver the bad news. Also, our inventory isn't always exactly right. It might be off by a couple cans for some reason. Maybe an employee took one home and hasn't paid their tab yet. Or maybe we opened one for samples. Online it would say we still have a 4 pack available for sale.

@PartyManiaMD , under-receiving the inventory is a good workaround, and I'm going to do that starting today. It just adds more work, and it seems like it shouldn't be a difficult change to make in the software.

Thanks everyone!

[MayaP]

Thank you @PartyManiaMD for following up with those insights! It has been a while since I have been in the retail restaurant space so I definitely will also need some refreshing. I am reaching out to Square Online to see if there is any more insight on this feature because right now I am not seeing anything. I appreciate you always being willing to teach and explain things further for us, it truly helps! 

[PSGC]

The ability to customize the "Sold Out" messaging would be extremely helpful.

[ScottyN]

The request is simple: let us edit the wording "Out of Stock" to something more meaningful for our business. We would certainly prefer "Sold" but others may need different wording.