Display an alert at checkout for Out of stock items

[Horns]

When we have items out of stock Square register allows us to sell even though the products aren't on hand and inventory says 0.  We need a feature to flag the item in the cart or pop up a message that asks if you want to sell it even though it shows out of stock. Something needs to alert my sales staff to check inventory so we don't have to continue doing refunds constantly. 

[MudFire_Dex]

My staff notices the negative number and sometimes slack messages come about that but in large part they ignore that stock # too so I totally understand the frustration @Horns   (clay boxes often get opened/miscounted/86'd for classes and we don't have great control there until we recount to order - we don't do online sales of clay for this reason so this isn't a major issue for us as far as overselling). I can see from a lot of threads and past convos in researching that others are also struggling with this. I can't seem to see if there is an answer for you that I'm not aware of. I just checked settings on my items and I think this is still a problem with the POS/Register sales. 

Tagging in some folks with more register experience to see if there is something I am missing. @DinaLRosenberg @alexandriak @Bronze_Palms @homeprogreen @JUYBoutique20 ?

[homeprogreen]

There’s a setting that you can enable to prevent selling out of stock items or at least give the popup message that the item inventory shout of stock. I will be at the shop in a little bit and will look and see if I can find it to tell you where it is. Been years since I’ve had to miss with it

[homeprogreen]

Ok. It looks like they took away the ability to not allow people to sell out of stock items in your brick & Mortar stores while keeping it for online sales. You can turn on the low stock/ out of stock alerts though so it pops up on the screen when the item is being added to the cart.has to be done in the dashboard on computer, Go to Items & Services, scroll down and click on settings, scroll down to inventory and toggle on inventory tracking. That will allow you to set stock alerts that show up on the cart. I am using Square for Retail but I believe it works for all versions 

[MudFire_Dex]

Yes it does show an alert, but it doesn't prevent the sale which I think would be a good option for people whose staff will click past a warning. I think it would be a good addition for those who have in person and online sales - I know you can turn the sales off online - I wonder why the difference? Is it for stores where inventory entry lags behind when an item could be sold? or like our situation where numbers may be off a bit?

[homeprogreen]

No clue why they made it online only. Used to be able to set it the same way for in person sales but that was years ago. I don’t have employees so didn’t realize it had changed until I actually started hunting thru the settings for it 

[JUYBoutique20]

I think if you have the banner active it will say out of stock over the item, but I haven't seen where the item can't be sold when it reaches stock level of zero.  This would definitely be a great feature to add. For now, I have a weekly task of archiving out of stock items until I decide to restock.

[Horns]

We are selling in bricks and mortar, not online. I have low stock alerts set on products and I do receive email alerts daily summarizing all items that are low in stock.  I have items that have zero available in my system that are listed on my low stock email I receive but when my employees are at the square register they add the item to the cart and there is no indication that the item is low or out of stock. If you click on each item in the cart to expand details you can see how many are on hand but that would take forever to check every item we sell. We need a little red flag on the line item or something in the cart or a pop up that says "this item shows out of stock, add to cart anyway?"  Am I missing something?

Thanks for all the input so far everyone!

[homeprogreen]

@Horns yeah you missed a setting in your stock alerts. There’s 1 that when they add an item to the cart that’s showing 0 inventory it will pop up a banner in the center of the cart alerting the person to check stock level or at least there used to be. I know I get the pop up on my register. Should be able to find it following the instructions I posted earlier. 

[JUYBoutique20]

@Horns I guess I'm confused with how your employees are scanning and selling an item that's not in stock.  We use barcodes so when the customers bring the items up to the register, we scan it out.  If stock levels are input wrong, we may have items out of stock online but instore it can still be scanned which gives us the -1 in stock levels. 

[Horns]

@homeprogreen I found an option to get a warning and I toggled it on but I still don't get a warning in the cart even if the item is at 0 availble or -1 inventory. 

I went to the dashboard on my computer (not my square register), clicked settings, click device management, click modes, click retail mode, scroll down click manage and toggled on negative stock warning.

@JUYBoutique20 we are a garden center and sell bagged good like soil and fertilizer that we don't scan because they are outside or in our warehouse across the street. We have icons on our square register screen that we tap to add them to our cart. If I tap mulch right now I have zero on hand but it lets me add it to the cart with no indication that I am out unless I go over to the cart, click the item and expand the details to see how many are on hand. 

Thanks again for the help everyone! I feel like I am talking to people with totally different systems though. We don't sell online and we use square registers on store if that helps clarify.