Invoices and Inventory Management is just a mess with Square

[EricCR]

Now that I have your attention.

The fact that invoicing will only decrement inventory once the invoice is paid just creates fundamental problems with inventory tracking. I don't see Square addressing this anytime soon.

So my question, how have other business sorted this out? It seems like a third party app is the solution, but I haven't found one.

The root use case.

We have a customer we deliver product to. That delivery is invoiced and payment will be received at some point later, whether on net terms or not. It is at the time of delivery, or packing that we need to reduce the inventory. Note this is very different than committed inventory.

[MayaP]

Hi @EricCR, thanks for sharing your thoughts on this — I can definitely see how this setup makes inventory tracking tricky for your workflow. And I understand the frustration with this being a long-standing feature, and no movement. 

I am tagging some Square champions who can share their feedback: @a440 @AimeeJ @anucrown @balmonte @DinaLRosenberg @doc_choc 

I’m hoping someone has a workaround for now!

[EricCR]

Thanks!

[DinaLRosenberg · Accepted solution]

It does reduce inventory once invoiced- I actually ran a test for you. I Ran a voice on all available stock of "The Lovers" Stainless Steel Water Bottle. I have 3 on hand and 3 available.

I went ahead and invoiced myself for all three

Which took my stock to 3 in stock but 0 available

I then went to our website and it's showing out of stock- note I didn't pay for the invoice

[MayaP]

You are a rockstar! Thank you for testing this!! @DinaLRosenberg ❤️🙌

[EricCR]

Hi Dina,

Thanks for laying this out. This is a great example of the "committed" inventory I mentioned. As you can see in your example there are still 3 tarot water bottles in stock. You just have zero available because they are committed. This works well to keep new orders from over selling.

However from an inventory management standpoint this still creates big problems. Especially when you have invoices which may takes days or weeks to get paid.

Because the inventory still shows as in stock you can't do a single stock count correctly and all of your sales reports are wrong.

[DinaLRosenberg]

We don't release inventory until it's paid for- so for us, we have the inventory put aside once invoiced, but don't give it to the client. 

I wonder if it would work If you listed the customer as a house account? We don't use them but perhaps inventory would deduct the way you want it to?

[DinaLRosenberg]

this is likely the answer based upon your description you are giving your customers a "line of credit"

[EricCR]

Very interesting. The terminology takes some getting used to, but this may just work out. Running some testing on my end to see if this accomplishes my goals.

One thing I did note already. You can only process the house account through a Square POS. You can't do it through the website. The person who does the packing and order processing is sitting at a computer...but using the App on the iPhone may be okay.

I'll follow up more if this gets the job done.

[DinaLRosenberg]

Great- curious how this works for you! 

[EricCR]

Well...this is indeed a Square Peg in a round hole.

Some feedback.

- Pro's. The inventory is getting updated when the order is packed.

- Pro's. We get an "order" that allows us to more easily manage these deliveries.

- Con's Packing list is not easy to get to.

- Con's Customers are a bit confused as they are notified that they have paid for something, when they haven't

- Con's Customers are also being confused by an invoice that is more of a statement. They need to look at the original receipt to verify what they got.

- Con's We are having to print up three pieces of paper to keep everything organized.

Deal Breaker

Invoices that are still outstanding are in turn being invoiced again when you try and generate a new invoice for payment. - This makes sense when what's being sent is a "statement" not an actual invoice.

Scenario

A customer has an order for 10/15 for $382 which gets charged to the house account. For the outstanding balance invoice 0001 is created to collect that payment.

This same customer has another order for 10/22 for $290.69 which again gets charged to the house account. However we still haven't received payment on invoice 0001 yet. Which is okay, they have net 15 terms. However I can't generate an invoice for $290.69. Rather square will only let me invoice for the outstanding balance of $673.69

I don't see how I work around this yet...

[MayaP]

I hope this works for you @EricCR! As @DinaLRosenberg stated keep us updated. 

Thanks again for your help @DinaLRosenberg!