Inventory Management

[maleego]

Hello!  I am new to square.  I have three retail mens clothing stores.  

Coming from Quickbooks I see many great advancements and features.  However, I feel there are alot of basic features that are lacking or unnecessarily tedious on square.  I hope my feedback can help improve Square as it is an amazingly great POS and I am certain other business owners like myself would appreciate the improvement.  

When adding new items in inventory...there should be an option to price each item at set amount all at once.  Its unnecessary to manually type the same price for so many items.  For example, I receive a shirt from company XYC style number 123 in sizes Large, X-Large, 2X, 3X color Black, White, and Navy.  These items are identical, just color choices and sizes, and I want to price them at $29.99.  Square requires me to go into each item sku to adjust the price at that amount where at any retail store you visit the item will cost the same, unless discounted due to slow selling etc.  In my business the only reason for difference in price is if it is a plus size, 4X, 5X, 6X etc as my cost is slightly higher for the larger size.  In this case, I would usually manually adjust those sizes to higher price.  Please help to improve this feature.  

Also, bar code printing should be in the register, not in the back office.  When my stores receive items it is the staff at the location that does the stock.  Having ability to print labels in the dashboard, which is typically for the owner, makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  

Furthermore, this feature should be part of the register without having to be on Retail Plus.  Its a basic function to operate the business, there is nothing extra having to be done by Square to require a fee.  

I was told that there is works for the feature to be available on the register anytime now, however, the Retail plan must be purchased.  I am not happy about this and hope Square can understand and relate to my thoughts of how its a very basic feature of day to day business which should be part of the POS at all levels.  

[Candlestore]

@maleego ;

Different ways to do this is :

1- Options:

You create the ITEM 123 then tell Square to apply Option set XYC Sizes then all these sizes are created and you can adjust pricing and SKU from the Dashboard

6689-item-options 

2-What you could do for your clothing example of :

" For example, I receive a shirt from company XYC style number 123 in sizes Large, X-Large, 2X, 3X color Black, White, and Navy.  These items are identical, just color choices and sizes, and I want to price them at $29.99.  Square requires me to go into each item sku to adjust the price at that amount where at any retail store you visit the item will cost the same, unless discounted due to slow selling etc.  In my business the only reason for difference in price is if it is a plus size, 4X, 5X, 6X etc as my cost is slightly higher for the larger size.  In this case, I would usually manually adjust those sizes to higher price. "

Is create Sample shirt for Company XYC in all available sizes etc that you sell or may sell.  After you do that export your Square Catalog to a csv file for Excel or Google Sheets.  Name the Shirt SAMPLE XYC so it is easy to find when creating it in Square on the spread sheet and all variations.  Select all of these items you just created.  So lets say you created Item 123 in sm med large etc,

Pull just those Items and all fields out of the catalog spread sheet and past to another spread sheet with all the same Header columns.  Delete the cells below Token and Refrence ??  usually the first 2 columns.  Those two columns are assigned by Square when creating an item.  Now since all your items should be something like "Shirt 123 sm", "Shirt 123 Med" etc for the rest.... save this as shirts for XYC company or whatever.   Then when you get Shirt 234, open this Template, select Edit, Find and Replace.... then Find Shirt 123 and replace it with Shirt 456 for example then with your computer type in the sku or scan it in with a barcode reader.  When all lines in that sheet are changed as needed save it. Then upload that to squares catalog as Modify the catalog.   I have been doing this with my New scents for a candle and its great.  I made up a dummy Scent and did this then search for Dummy Scent and change it to Lilac and bam all 18 sizes of candles with Barcodes are uploaded as I use (size scent) for my SKU  example '28oz Lilac' or 'dzn Lilac' or 'Melt Lilac' but you could type in or scan the barcodes into the sku column for each item before uploading.  At least this way all Barcodes can be entered on one screen instead of clicking here there to get to scan in your items. plus if the Prices are all the same as your Shirt 123 you do not even have to edit them before uploading.

As for printing Labels, I have a computer and 5 label printers in another room where I print all my labels from.  I do not use Square for this so I have more flexibility with a wider range of labels and information that I can put on my labels.  Depending which Label Printing software you use, if you go this route, you can connect it to a csv file to extract the data right from it with out typing or copy pasting it to the labels.  I just created Folders for each type of label with a sub folder for the items or categories vendors etc.  Then I just open that folder and get the label I need and then press print 50 for example.  Since my store is 16,000 sqft I keep my POS system up front and have a receiving area in the back so printing from the POS would be a pain for me but I understand that for others it can be useful.

just food for thought.

[maleego]

Thanks Keith!