Looking for Better Inventory Management Integration with Square – Frustrations with MarketMan

[cupzcoffeeaz]

Hi everyone,

I’m reaching out to see if anyone else is in the same boat or has found a better solution for inventory management, especially for coffee shops using Square.

Background:
I currently use MarketMan for inventory and ordering, but I’m seriously considering switching. Over the past year, MarketMan has raised their prices significantly, but I haven’t seen any improvements for my use case—in fact, I’ve noticed more bugs and less reliability.

My main issues:

• Not Coffee Shop Friendly: MarketMan seems built for restaurants with set recipes, but coffee shops like mine need more flexibility. For example, a latte can have different milks, espresso types, and modifiers, but MarketMan struggles to handle these variations without a fixed recipe. This makes costing and inventory tracking for drinks with lots of options really clunky.
• Poor Notification System: They used to offer text alerts for low inventory, but now all notifications are only inside the MarketMan platform. As a small business, I can’t constantly check another dashboard—I need texts or emails, especially for urgent stock issues. When we asked for better alerts (like including the item and recommended order), they just removed the text feature altogether.
• Manual Processes: Despite being a robust company, everything is still manual—inventory tracking, ordering, and even basic reporting. I would expect some AI or automation by now to help streamline operations.
• Weak Square Integration: We use Square Online for orders. Even if MarketMan shows an item or modifier is out of stock, we still have to manually update Square to mark it as unavailable. There’s no automatic sync, which defeats the purpose of integration.

Bottom line:
For the price, MarketMan just isn’t working for us. I feel like it’s a better fit for full-service restaurants, not coffee shops or businesses with lots of customizable items.

Has anyone found an inventory management tool that:

• Integrates seamlessly with Square (especially Square Online)
• Handles flexible recipes and modifiers
• Offers real-time, actionable notifications (text/email)
• Automates inventory tracking and ordering

Would love to hear what’s working for you, or if you’ve found any creative workarounds with Square’s own tools!

Thanks in advance for any advice or recommendations!

[Summer2024]

Hi @cupzcoffeeaz ! 

I'm super interested to see what other sellers have to say regarding this, but I wanted to provide some options within Square too. 

• Item availability sync: Use Square’s “Inventory per modifier” feature to create SKU-level tracking for common combinations (e.g. Oat Milk Latte → OML SKU). Limited, but workable.

• Alerts workaround: Set low-stock email alerts in Square > Items > Inventory Management, and if needed, use Zapier or IFTTT to reroute those to SMS.

• Vendor integration: If you manually order from the same suppliers weekly, you might try Square’s Purchase Orders tool (available with Square for Retail Plus) Not perfect, but useful for streamlining stock reorders.

I'm sure there are better options out there, but I wanted to at least provide some insight here on Square's side! 

[cupzcoffeeaz]

Thanks Summer for the recommendation. I tried it and it would work for a very simple menu. In my case unfortunately it becomes extremely manual as we have two sizes, and about 4 types of milk. Plus, temperatures and for here and to go cups 🙂 

It gest complicated very quickly, as I want to be able to track paper cups, PET cups with my orders depending if they are for here or to go. 

It is a pretty interesting solution though for cafes that have simpler menus and options.