Customers can add more stock to the cart than I have available.

[CP55]

My website allows my customers to add more stock to the cart than I have available.  I have all stock with stock on hand numbers correct.  I have the tracking on.  I have gone in and turned it off than back on.   The low stock alert is also set and on.

I was working correctly, and I haven't changed anything and now not working on any item.

I've tried so many things; any ideas are most welcome. Thankyou.

[_Violet]

Hi @CP55  - I'm sorry to hear that this issue with your Online item inventory has brought you to the  Square Community 😞

Could you please share a link to your website, as well as the name of a few of the items this is impacting, so we can take a closer look?

[CP55]

Hi Violet, unfortunately this is impacting every item.

[DebbieS2112]

I have the exact same issue and when I reached out to square via email I was told this was a decision made by square going forward to only enforce stock limits at the check out stage. 

[CP55]

I hope this is not true because even when you take the extra stock out of the cart it says "the item is no longer available. Please update your basket." This message will not disappear until you go back to shopping and then back into your cart.  No customer wants that. That means less sales.

My customers would need to purchase more than 1 of some items.

What did you do?

[DebbieS2112]

In my case I noticed that you can add way more into cart than in stock and you only get a stock alert in cart for 1 item at a time, so if a customer has 10 items which they have added more than in stock it is only going to tell them one item at a time only updating each time you hit checkout. Squares reply to my email was exactly as I mentioned that this action has been deliberately done by square. I stated this will cause customers to go else where if they keep getting adjust qty errors in cart all the time. I lost customers when they removed PayPal, now this. I am currently looking at moving to wix and integrating square that way. 

[CP55]

thanks for the info. not sure what I will do.

[ShawKim]

Did you update any apps lately? If not yet, download the latest version of cx file explorer, as it'll help you keep your files, such as customers' receipts, organized.

[CP55]

I have updated apps before and now after the problem.

but no change

[doc_choc]

@CP55 have to agree, this does seem a little off track, you really need to know how many items are available when adding to the basket, the customer doesn't want to get to the checkout expecting to buy 10 units but it only allows you to buy 9 at check out as this is all the stock that's available. I don't seem to remember this ever being an issue in the past so whether something have crept in during the development process/updates 🤔

[elliestreasures]

Sorry to say I have just come across this too and am not impressed. Having just listed a new item, I've noticed the "Inventory" section on the listing page (using the desktop) has changed with "change tracking". But, as others have said, even if you enter a stock amount, customers are able to add more than this amount to their basket, only to find they have to remove them again once they check out. Really clunky and unprofessional.

[CP55]

The problem is the customer does not know to remove and then go back to the website and back to the cart again and again till it works.  They just get the message "the item is no longer available. Please update your basket." 

and then they will look for the item somewhere else, and not come back.

[mphelver]

I was just online with Square about this same issue. Below is their response. It's is absolutely frustrating and not how it worked just weeks ago. We are getting ready to launch our online store and this makes me disappointed in choosing Square. Shopify sites notify the customer on the item page and only place the inventory amount in the cart. I am hoping that Square listens and changes quickly.

"I checked with our Advanced Support team. The message shown in the cart is working as intended — it prevents customers from purchasing more than the available inventory. If you’d like that message to appear on the item page, unfortunately that feature isn’t available on Square yet."

I also got this message when I said this was unacceptable and it needs to be shared with the team that works on improvements. 

"Unfortunately, Square Online is a "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" platform, which means it has some inherent feature limitations. I will forward your feedback to our Engineering team."

[DebbieS2112]

Sounds very similar to what I was told by support when I emailed them. 

"Square Online’s current, expected behaviour is to allow buyers to add more items to their cart than the available inventory, and only enforce stock limits at the checkout stage. This means a customer can add multiple units of an item—even exceeding inventory—to their cart, but will encounter an error message at checkout such as "you have exceeded available inventory. Please adjust quantity to continue to checkout."

This workflow is a deliberate platform decision that aligns with Square’s backend modernisation and reliability goals."

What baffles me is even Amazon and other larger websites dont allow you to add more to cart than what is in stock so why square think this is a good move is mind boggling and I think it will cause customers to go else where.

[mphelver]

I completely agree. I now wish I had chosen Shopify. I really hope they realize no other platform does it like this unless it is extremely old technology. 

[doc_choc]

I wouldn't dash out the door so quick. I did notice this on a Shopify site this week, went to buy this item, shows lots of stock but unable to add item to cart. Not sure if its a setting on the Shopify backend but it really didn't behave as nicely as you would expect it to. May be its a qunaitiy buy limiting feature they have, I don't know but it would allow me to buy 105 units, more than this and it was a no no. see below

I think the take away from this is these systems, shopify, Sqaure, Woocommerce etc are not always that perfect, but also its important that the developers prioritse and jump on board when impactful issues are raised by multiple customers. They should be prioitised and corrected in a timely fashion.

[kearneycattle]

Are there any updates to this issue? It is causing me major issues and losing customers.