How to Track Inventory When Selling Multiple Design Variations

[krismccbhoy]

Hi,

I sell personalised items ie mugs, tshirts so on. I am hoping that someone can help with the best way for me to be able to track my items sold between my designs.

I have a design say called square, I can print this on a white mug, black mug, red mug so on.

I have a design called circle which again I can print on a white mug, black mug, red mug.

How do i keep track of the mugs sold, I have added both designs to my site and added variations ie options to select mugs and so on but as i get an order of white mugs how do i add them as stock so that they are coming off the same stock.

Hope that makes sense and someone can help with this.

[Laurie_]

Hi and welcome to the Community, @krismccbhoy! 🙂

Thanks for reaching out to us, and yes, that makes perfect sense! You're trying to sell different designs (like "Square" and "Circle") that can be printed on the same types of mugs (white, black, red), and you want to track the stock of the mugs regardless of design. Totally understandable!

Right now, Square’s inventory system tracks stock at the item variation level, which means that if you’ve created separate items for "Square" and "Circle," and added variations (e.g., white mug, black mug) under each, Square will treat those variations as separate products, even though they share the same physical mug stock.

A potential workaround that could help could be to set up your mug types as items, and your designs as modifiers.

This would allow you to track mug inventory while still letting customers choose a design. For example:

1. Create one item per mug type ("White Mug", "Black Mug", "Red Mug")
2. Under each mug item, enable stock tracking so Square can deduct inventory as orders are placed.
3. Set up your designs as modifiers ("Square", "Circle")
4. Apply the modifier set to each mug item. 

Something to note: modifiers can't be tracked but you are able to view which modifier was associated with each order.

This alternate setup would allow you to accurately track your mug inventory while still giving customers the option to choose their preferred design.

That said, it does shift the focus, the mug becomes the main item, and the design is treated more like an add-on, which may not align with the customer experience you’re aiming for.

If that's a dealbreaker, then manually tracking mug stock may be the best option based on how your items are currently structured.

I hope this at least helps to show you what other options are out there. Let me know if you have any further questions about these recommendations!

[krismccbhoy]

Thank you for the reply.

I thought I would need to do something like that but just wondered if there was another way around it, not ideal for online shop but ok for when I do stalls as it will be me selecting the items and designs with customer so not a big issue.

Thanks