Auto-restock / inventory adjustment feature for bakery items

[skafte]

Hi there guys 👋 hope you are well!

I'm really interested in an auto-restock feature. We have bread and pastries delivered every day and if Square would automatically restock these items, then it would be much easier for us to keep track of sales and waste. With that, I mean adjust the stock level completely and not just add more items to the inventory.

It would also be really useful if it was then possible to auto-comp leftovers that can't be sold the day after so that we could easily generate a report of waste. Hope that makes sense.

This suggestion was posted here back in 2021:

https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Feature-Requests-Point-of-Sale/Auto-restock-inventory-adjustment-...

Hope to see this improvement and many thanks!

[BitterRose]

Each morning my coffee shop receives baked goods, the items and quantities of which are pre determined and unchanging. And each morning my baristas have to manually adjust the inventory levels for each item before the shop opens. 

I am requesting a feature whereby an item's quantity can increase by a certain amount at a certain time on a schedule. For example, Monday through Friday mornings we receive 10 croissants (each morning), and 12 on Saturday and Sunday mornings; the inventory levels for croissants automatically increases by these amounts on their respective days. 

This would save my team a great deal of time in the morning. 

[JJ_]

This is a pretty interesting feature request @BitterRose. Something among the lines of Scheduled or automated inventory restocking.

I will pass this one over to the product team for their visibility and consideration. 

[BitterRose]

Much appreciated JJ_

[Breffni]

Welcome back to the Community, @skafte

Your feedback and insight on this feature request is greatly appreciated.

I'll make sure to let you know if we have any future updates here and on the original thread 🙂

[sbroco]

I run a coffee shop, and we get the same amount of pastries delivered everyday. (some days like Monday-Thursday it's lower stock, and Friday-Sunday its a higher amount). But mostly the same everyday. And manually updating inventory every day is impossible. Just not feasible. 

And now with self order Kiosks, customers are placing orders for things that may have gone out of stock before my staff can mark it as sold out. 

So is there a way to AUTO restock items everyday at midnight, and as we sell the items through the day, the system AUTO 86's the items to marked as sold out?

This feature would be a massive help.

[Candlestore]

@sbroco ;

As far as I know there is no way to automatically restock all inventory at a certain time.  

Best way I know how to do this is create a csv template of all items that you stock daily.  Export your Square catalog of the category you get daily Say Pastries.  In columns AG and AH of the csv file I believe are :

Current Quantity

New Quantity

Change the New Quantity to the quantity you will get the next day or as asoon as you know these quantities for the day, then upload this csv file to your square catalog.  Since your Weekeday supply is the same you could name the csv as Weekly resupply and the others for weekends as the day if they are different.  I just forget if you need to change the Current or the New Quantity.  As long as these are the only fields you change you will be fine.  Square uses the Token and Refrence handle columns to match items and if they are blank, square thinks they are a New item.    I know this might not be the answer your looking for but may save you time each day changing the Quantity of your Pastries.

As for Inventory counts not updating when am Item is sold, seems like a bug.  when we sell an item my inventory drops by the quantity of the item I sold.   This might be either a bug or the way you have your items in Square.  If you have item Pastry with Modifiers of flavors, this might be the issue for example.  We sell candles, and have 165 scents.  Our candle Item is the Scent with Variations of Sizes.  Each Variation can have a Quantity and a uniques SKU or GTIN to track quantities.  I do not believe this is possible with Modifiers.  

[RobynR]

Thank you for your workaround @Candlestore.

@sbroco I understand how challenging it can be to manually update inventory every day, especially in a fast-paced environment like a coffee shop. While Square doesn’t currently offer an automatic daily inventory reset feature, there is a workaround using Scheduled Inventory Adjustments to help streamline your process.

Here’s how you can set it up:

1. Go to your Square Dashboard → Select Items & Orders > Inventory Management > Stock Overview.
2. Choose the item you want to adjust and select Schedule Adjustment.
3. Set a recurring schedule for your restock. You can choose daily or specific days of the week (e.g., lower stock Monday-Thursday, higher stock Friday-Sunday).
4. Enter the desired stock level for each scheduled day and save.

Regarding Auto-Sold Out (86ing Items):

Square’s system doesn’t currently auto-mark items as sold out in real-time. However, staff can enable stock alerts to quickly update inventory when items run out. Additionally, keeping your self-order kiosks synced with accurate inventory levels will reduce customer confusion.

While these features don’t fully automate the process, they can significantly reduce the manual workload.

If you’d like to see fully automated daily inventory resets and live 86-ing become available in the future, we recommend submitting a feature request here on the Ideate Board — our Product Team regularly reviews feedback for future updates.

Let us know if you run into any trouble setting up the scheduled adjustments!

[BlewburyBreadCo]

Please can you allow Automatic inventory restocking each day for certain items. 

I run a bakery and we make the same quantities of certain items each day, items not being auto restocked each day is a real pain, having to update inventory each day for 15 - 20 product lines. 

I've had to turn off tracking, however this then allows people to order online stock that we might not have, which will result in disappointed customers and us as a business having to offer refunds. 

This would be for items such as brownies of which we make 20 per day, and always do, so I would like this item to restock each day we're open, so that people ordering ahead of time can't push us into negative stock. 

It would also be very helpful to schedule restocking of other products on a day by day basis, for example if we know we're making 30 sourdough on a Thursday and 50 on a Friday, we could then input this in the system, so that people can order ahead of time and it would all tally with our inventory. 

I've seen this issue discussed a few times and it seems very surprising that Square's inventory management is as basic as it is, considering how much the integration between the POS, loyalty, online and payment systems is sold to us customers as a major feature. 

Surely proper stocks management would be a benefit to all businesses, not just restaurants / cafes.

Please can you look to improve these issues in the future?

[BlewburyBreadCo]

Hi, 

I have just posted another thread on this topic in the square online forum.

Please can we have this, it seems like it would make life easier for a lot of businesses, and the rest of Square online and pos work together really well, stock and inventory should do as well. As its a major part of the sales process!

Jack

[Laurie_]

Hi again, @BlewburyBreadCo! It's great to see your name popping up more regularly in the Square Community.

Thank you for sharing your feedback. I completely understand the frustration of having to manually update inventory every day. We know that the current Square for Retail and Square for Restaurants plans don’t always apply to businesses outside these industries, and we’re actively advocating for more advanced inventory management features through Square Point of Sale with our Product Team.

In the meantime, if you have any further questions or need help with the current setup, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We're here to help!