‘Pre Order’ Out of stock items

[Jackoptfc11]

Hi All,

Relatively new here, but I do have an increasing number of sales coming through the sites rather than other channels. 

Some of my items are frequently out of stock as I Import much of my stock. I know the obvious answer is to have more stock, but it’s not that simple as a small business with limited capital. 

I would like to make it possible for a customer to order an item which is out of stock on a ‘14-21 day lead time’. It’s not a pre order as such. Obviously this can be done, but can it be done with Square online, or do i need to consider moving elsewhere?

Im happy to upgrade my plan (currently on professional £16 a month UK), up to the £24 a month Plus plan, but only if it will offer enough feature to merit doing so. 

The only reason I didn’t use Shopify when I set up was because its £25 a month, but it does include every feature, which this does not

[_Violet]

Hi @Jackoptfc11 - I see this is your first post in the Seller Community so I'd like to officially welcome you! 🎉👏 My name is Violet and I'm one of the Moderators here.

I'm not sure there's a way to allow selling out of stock items, as the "out of stock" state should prevent your customers from purchasing these items past the amount of stock you've indicated as available. You could potentially add more to the stock count than what you actually have, in a way to cheat the system, but that may pose for some issues as well if it would take longer than the projected shipping date to get more stock and ship out to the customer.

I'll check in with the Square Online Support Team to see if they have any suggestions that would accomplish this. I'll let you know what they say!

[_Violet · Accepted solution]

Hi again @Jackoptfc11 👋

The Square Online Team has confirmed: At this time, there isn't a way to sell out of stock items online. You would need to either increase the stock so you don't run out of the item, or disable stock tracking. Otherwise, what you've described would be a feature request.

In the meantime, you can keep an eye out for any updates on our Product Updates board for Square Online. We appreciate your input! 🙂

[doc_choc]

@Jackoptfc11 as mentioned by @_Violet this is not something that is currently available.

Something you might want to add your support to over in the ideate section which I believe has been raised as a feature request is an email alert so when an item is out of stock customers can enter their email address and when the item is returned to stock they receive an email notification of in stock.

The current Square pre-order system will allow customer to purchase in advance and you can specify a fulfilment date or date range.

Would this work? Perhaps it might be a little cumbersome as you would need to keep updating the item with new date ranges.

Set up items for online preordering | Square Support Centre - GB