Square Stand Inventory Management When Sold Out

[LarsonJ]

I want to use square stand to sell lunch tickets in a trade show type environment at 4 different stations around the venue. I have 8 lunch options, and I would like to be able to stock all stations with more than enough physical tickets, and just have the inventory option display as sold out when the actual number of available lunches are sold out, and not allow any more sales to be processed. This way I don't have to worry about printing the exact number of tickets and some stations having extra tickets when others are sell out even if there is "stock" left. Essentially I want the option to have inventory work like it does for an online store at the physical register. Is this a possibility?

Thanks, Josh

[AshleyK]

Hi @MikeM great question! We still are tracking requests for this feature, so at the moment you still can sell items if they hit an inventory level of 0. We appreciate your patience in this and I have pushed your feedback to our Development Team. 

[Whatafood]

It’s taking too long to fix a thing that is so obvious.

A simple boolean do ‘you sell items with no inventory?’ Yes/No would work.

This post has already couple years, how many years more going to be needed? 

[TrevorB]

I was using Shopify POS and card reader with success but decided to make the switch so that I could accept debit. The lack of this feature has me wanting to switch back to my old system. It seems like an extremely simple and basic feature to have. This feature is very important for my business. I need to know with confidence that my products will not be oversold. How many more people have to request this feature before it gets implemented? 

On another note, is there a way to see the inventory numbers in the checkout process without going to the inventory section in the app? I would like to click on my product to be sold and see immediately how many units are left. This would also make it easier to prevent overselling. 

Thanks

[spicelife]

Hi Joe, 

I also  wanted to request that this option be added to the square online store. We are working very hard to keep our stock counts up to date. Having the ability to sell something that is not in stock is not of benefit and in fact is quite a negative from our point of view.  We are in the process of creating our on line store in square, but now we are not sure we should proceed. Please see what you can do to influence Square to remedy this situation.

Thank you.

[Anthem]

I've hesitated using the online store for any items in my coffee shop that have the possibility of running out of inventory for the very reason described in this thread. However, given the complexity of the selling environment, the absolute need for pickup, curbside and delivery options as well as the benefit for customers of being able to place an order in person, over the phone or via the web I've felt forced to expand my operation into the web-store. I have used a mobile ordering app via an integration partner for over a year now, I've added the marketplace web-store to the mix this week and already caused several problems with customers. While the web-store limits the purchase of an item when it is sold out it leaves lots of room for mistakes while taking phone orders or in-person orders. 

Specifically, customers order frozen items from the retail freezer or pastries for the following day (here lies another issue with the web-store for a different thread - we need the ability for customers to schedule their pickup/delivery). Upon opening, new customers walk in the door and purchase pastries as well as items out of the retail freezer. The problem is neither the square app or stand tell my staff those items were actually sold out because customers have already purchased them for pickup later that day. 

My staff cannot be expected to monitor an email for this info and on a busy morning, even though I have web tickets print at the register, they often cannot get to the freezer fast enough to beat an inbound customer and label something as sold before they pick it up. 

Having experience with software development, being part of the beta team and working with both of Square's previous apps, Order and Pickup, I recognize things are often more difficult than they appear. However, in this case, a full solution isn't needed at the moment, a stop-gap would suffice for every comment I've read. A fairly simple alert, notifying our staff that an item is out of inventory would allow us to mitigate the problems on the spot and make a decision based on the info available. At the very least, we couldn't blame Square Stand anymore.

I suspect there are bigger fish to fry, given our current circumstances and while this stop-gap seems plausible, it seems to me, even in our current situation, there could be an update, by now, on the potential status of a full solution, or a half-measure for this problem. 

[LizM]

Has there been any progress in this feature? We just launched an online store to coexist with our brick and mortar store and find that when we sell out of a product online but haven't fulfilled that order we can still sell that inventory on the POS again is a major problem, and will only lead to terrible customer service. There has to be a way that you could see the inventory level somehow on the POS without going to the item page.

[AshleyK]

Hey @LizM thanks for taking the time to post. At this time, there is still no update to this feature. 

When an item sells out or is no longer in stock, it won’t be available for purchase from your Online Store. The item will appear as “sold out” and can’t be added to your customer’s online cart.

If you’re processing a sale from the Square app, you won’t be blocked from selling an out of stock item. Your inventory will be accurately updated in your online Square Dashboard to show sold out items as 0 or below, but you’ll still be able to complete these sales. 

The only way to resolve this will be to reject the online order, or to maintain and accept your orders as soon as they come in. 

[LizM]

I would think that something as simple as this could be implemented.  It would only need to display when your low stock warning threshold has been reached.  It would easily notify whoever is using the POS if the item is indeed instock. It would also only be displayed if you track your inventory.

Letting the in store POS sell out of stock items does not make sense when both (in store and online) sell from the same inventory.

[TaylorP]

I would also like to +1 this request. As a retail bakery, the way that the current POS inventory integrated with the online store is just not usable in a busy setting. We could have 3 online orders waiting to be packed up and someone at the register could buy out our stock leaving those three online orders empty handed. We update out inventory every night after close for online pre orders but the opportunity for mistakes with the POS are so high that we're considering other POS options as we phase back into reopening. 

A solution as simple as seeing the inventory stock next to each item would solve this problem entirely.

 

[LizM]

@AshleyK I was just wondering if there has been any movement on this?