Unable to Sell Items w/Variations if They are Marked Out of Stock

[ShopGirlNY152]

I am using Square for Retail on a Square Register. Up until two days ago i was able to add items variations that are out of stock to the cart without any hassle. (Our inventory is pretty accurate, but sometimes we miss things or someone wants to buy a display  or there are other reasons that we are trying to scan and sell an item that is listed as out of stock.) If the item has no variations, i can scan it and add it to the cart and checkout as usual. If the item has variations, i have to go through several extra steps to add that item to my basket. A pop up comes up and asks me which variation I am looking for which causes me to have to scroll through all of the variations to find the right one, then, after selecting the right one i have to add it to my cart, then another pop up comes up telling me that item is out of stock and asking me if i want to add it anyway. This is only happening on items marked as sold out that have variations. If the item has no variations it is just added to the cart, no problem. This is a new feature that went in to affect on or around 09/20/26. This is slowing us down and causing a lot of extra steps. The answer you are probably going to give is for me to have more accurate inventory count, but that isn't always possible. I just want the register to act the way it has for the 9 previous years. Can someone please help? I just want to be able to quickly scan and add an item that is listed as out of stock without all of the above mentioned hassles. Thanks!

[daeaglemotivatr]

Did you figure it out?

[roots1]

This is a new aggravation for us as well. We scan most of our items and have been pleased overall for several years. We have a substantial sku database and work to keep inventory accurate but it is imperfect.

If an out of stock item is scanned, it defaults to choose the first variant even if that is not the variant scanned, and makes us select the variant we want before continuing to Add to Cart.

We are able to add it and proceed even if it is zero or negative.

(Out of Stock Alerts is turned OFF)

Square Team Support email has so far gone unanswered which is new. At least historically there is a painful back and forth of account verification and them not understanding the problem until sometimes we finally get a 'yes we know that is a problem and we are working on it'

[ShopGirlNY152]

I called Square yesterday and Support claimed that nothing had changed in the past week and also claimed that the system couldn't have worked the way I claimed it had worked for the past 9 years. When I explained that I wanted the OLD way of doing it back, they said they would put in a NEW feature request with engineering. We also have thousands of skus and our inventory isn't perfect. This is only happening when Variations are involved. The suggestion Support gave me was that I need to have my inventory 100% correct, and that just isn't always possible. The other problem is that the register doesn't give you a dramatic beep or anything when it brings up this screen, meaning that you can be scanning ten items, get through all of them, then realize that the register stopped you with a pop up back on item 2. It is quite time-consuming to have to take all of these extra steps. Thanks for commenting-- perhaps now that Square sees multiple people are having this issue they will believe that there is a problem!

[6Linden]

We are having the same exact issue. Quite a hassle.

[6Linden]

We already have a large amount of perishable items that come/go on a weekly basis, so those items are already set as "Disable Inventory Tracking." I'm currently going through now and switching some others that are more likely to end up at or below zero inventory. Seems to be a temporary fix, but for a lot of stuff I'd rather have relatively accurate inventory in the machine.. So not ideal. 

[roots1]

Yes, we also have inventory tracking turned off for a number of items/variants and those are immune from this problem.  But  disabling tracking for many other items isn't a great option for us.

[SSCBeta]

This is suddenly happening to us and is a huge issue for us as well. Commenting to keep an eye on this situation as it develops.

[ShopGirlNY152]

The September release notes (posted on 09/10/26) talk about a new feature: 

Separate item settings for variation preselection and skipping customization

Two behaviors now turn on and off independently for each item. "Automatically select first variation" pre-selects the first variation — a size, for example — when the item is tapped, and staff confirm or change that selection. "Skip customization when possible" bypasses the item details screen when every required selection is already satisfied.

I could be wrong, but I wonder if this update has something to do with the problems we are all now facing. We need to be able to put our settings back as they have been all along and opt out of whatever this new situation is. I fear that the language that states "when every required selection is already satisfied" means that when something is marked as out of stock it is going to prompt those multiple pop up screens. Maybe? Hopefully Square can fix this soon! If you read the entire release notes surrounding this new feature, it appears to be one more thing Square has done with restaurants in mind, not other retailers.

[ShopGirlNY152]

Attached is the screenshot of the choices we now have on each individual item. I have toggled on and off each setting and restarted my Square Register after making each change. I tried "automatically select first variation" then tried "skip customization when possible" then tried it with both toggled off at the same time, then tried it with both toggled on at the same time. None of these options allowed me to scan in an item (with a variation) marked out of stock without being sent to a pop-up screen requiring me to scroll through my choices and select a variation, then confirming that I want to sell an out of stock item. If the item is in my hand and I am scanning it, then it clearly isn't out of stock... my inventory is just slightly off. This process is untenable. We cannot do this every single time we have an item marked out of stock, and we cannot turn off inventory tracking for these items because we need to keep track (as best we can) of the stock of each variation. This is really slowing us down when checking out customers. We have 30+ variations of some items. Please create an option for us to go back to the way things worked previously.

[SWCMD]

Hello @MayaP 

Can you take a look into this thread please and provide us all with some options / explanations. 

We are facing this issue also. 

[roots1]

Square email support finally answered with the following. None of these actually are changing the behavior as far as I can tell if an item variant barcode scanned and that variant has a zero or negative count.

Is anyone else seeing different results with the "Skip Customization.." toggle?

Turning off inventory tracking certainly could stop this problem but create others. We need to retain tracking on many items, we know variant counts won't all keep perfect precision because of certain reasons. We do pretty good but don't have an army of inventory specialists

-- From Square support 9/24/26

I understand how frustrating this situation can be, and I'm truly sorry for any inconvenience it may have caused. Please know that I am here to support you and will do my best to assist you every step of the way, so thank you for taking the time to reach out to us

When an item contains variations, a newly defaulted or reset setting now forces the POS app to pop open the variant detail window upon scanning or clicking, rather than bypassing it. 

• The Remedy: Toggle "Skip Customization"

To stop the app from opening the detail screen every time you scan or select an item, you need to verify or flip the Skip customization when possible toggle. 

How to fix it for your items:

1. Log in to your Square Dashboard via a desktop web browser.
2. Navigate to Items & orders > Items > Item Library.
3. Click into an affected item that has variations.
4. Scroll down to the Manage Checkout (or Checkout Behavior) section.
5. Toggle Skip customization when possible to ON.
6. (Optional) Turn Automatically select first item variation on POS to ON if you want the main variant to drop directly into the cart without asking.
7. Click Save. 

• Turning Off Inventory Tracking in Bulk

Because you mentioned wanting to turn off inventory tracking for some of your thousands of SKUs to ease this problem, and doing it one-by-one is painfully slow, you can actually do this in bulk via a spreadsheet export/import

How to bulk update inventory tracking:

1. From your Square Dashboard, go to Items > Item Library.
2. Click Actions in the top right, and select Export Library to download an Excel or CSV file.
3. Open the file in Excel or Google Sheets. Look for the column titled New Quantity [Location Name] or Tracking Enabled.
4. For items where you want to disable tracking completely, you can delete the numbers or switch the tracking indicator to turn it off.
5. Save the file, go back to Actions > Import Library, and upload it to push the changes live to all SKUs simultaneously. 

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to help you.

[ShopGirlNY152]

As I mentioned in a comment above, I've tried this and it doesn't work... this isn't a viable solution from what I can tell. I have tried the skip customization but I think what is that the popup is triggered by the out of stock variant.

It just needs to go back to working the way it previously did! I'm so frustrated! Thanks for sharing what Support sent you. I can't believe no one will help us and give us an actual solution that works.