Square
🆕 Sell-by units and stock conversion for retail

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Square for Retail Plus subscribers will now be able to sell an item in different units, and track inventory with those units - for instance, sell candles by a case of 12, by a bundle of 6, or by a single candle.

 

This works great for businesses that sell an item in multiple ways, but want to decrement inventory from the same quantity.  This can work for wine shops that sell wine by the case, bottle or glass.  We’ve seen Sellers use it for wholesale pricing, and price breaks for bulk buying.  

Each unit can have its own SKU or GTIN, so the barcode on the case is different from the barcode on the single.  

 

Retailers can set up a stock conversion in their Dashboard:

  1. Navigate to the Items tab of your online Square Dashboard.
  2. Select an existing item or click Create an Item.
  3. In the Variations section, select Add unit in the price field, or select Edit variation details > Add unit. If your item contains multiple variations, select the variation name and then from the Edit variation details modal, select Add unit.
  4. Select a unit, or create a new one, like “case”
  5. Under the Conversion section, enter in the conversion details specific to the item variation. For this example, a conversion for a case of candles might be “12 candles is equal to 1 case.”
  6. Click Done to save.

 

In the Retail POS app, these units will be selectable as variations during checkout.

 

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This first version of this stock conversion tool only allows you to create sellable units. These will show in your POS and on your Square Online site.  It does not allow you to create gift baskets or recipes at this time.  When creating purchase orders or counting inventory in the Retail POS app, you’ll only be able to receive/count by the first unit entered.  We are working on more tools to help you receive, count, and make units non-sellable in the future.  

 

You can repeat this process for any items that you sell in multiple units, as well as create multiple conversions for single items.

 

For a detailed walkthrough of how to add sell-by stock unit conversions, visit our Support Center here. 

 

 

JANUARY 2023 UPDATE:

 

In addition to "Sell-by Units and Stock Conversation," we have now launched "Sellable / Non-sellable Item Variations."

 

This provides Square for Retail Plus sellers the ability to toggle item variations either sellable or non-sellable. This feature will work great for sellers who want to track inventory by a specific unit of measure but do not want that unit quantity available for sale.

 

Read the full update for Sellable / Non-sellable Item Variations.

38 Replies
Square Champion

This feature must have been made for us, because we sell candles exactly that way! 

Going to start using it right now. Thanks!

Square

@TCSlaguna Glad to hear! Sounds like it was meant to be!

This doesn't do a lot of good for people who need to use option sets in their item variations, unfortunately. LOVE the concept and would be super helpful to us if we could actually use it!

When will the option come to create gift baskets and then add multiple items from different categories to make one item and track inventory be coming?  For instance, I want to make a Build Your Own Easter Baskets and let people pull from different items/SKU.  Is that the next step for this update?

This was absolutely a challenge at our business.   Thank you for finding a solution.  We will be putting this to use.

I think this is exactly what I need but on the Square for Restaurants side.  I sell beer in many sizes and want to use one unique inventory management.  Basically sell beer in 5/16/32 oz pour sizes off of draft. I know each keg is a specific amount and want it to pull out of that quantity I define in inventory management.  If this is possible already, please let me know!! It would be a life saver.

Neat feature! Currently we don't have items that we sell this way but are certainly looking forward to seeing the ability to sell disparate items as a bundle! 

Square

@creeksidescoop @mythicrunning 

The product teams are actively working on gift bundle functionality. 👨‍💻👩‍💻😄

This would be HUGE for me with my Square Online store but apparently it is not available to me.  I do not use Square for Retail and it is my understanding that this is only available for those users.  Please bring this to Square Online!!!

@Ryan_M I was SO excited for this feature, but unfortunately for me, it doesn't quite hit the mark. For example, I sell chocolate bars both at my retail shop, and wholesale to other businesses. I pull them all from the same stock. I used this new feature, setting up the conversion to simply be 1 bar = 1 bar, and then I set one at my retail price, and one at my wholesale price. In theory, this works perfectly to track the inventory properly, except BOTH variations show up in my online shop. I can not have my wholesale options visible. So far as I know, there is not an option to hide one variation...? This fix would be life altering! ....as of now, every time I sell a wholesale item, I have to go in and subtract it manually from my "retail" inventory. So close! 

Square

@cocosnap The functionality for non-sellable units is in the works. Stay tuned! 👨‍💻😃

@Ryan_M Is there any hope that this could be available for items with option sets? For instance, we received bags of 100 balloons but only sell them individually at the moment. Someday we may also sell the bags. However - each item has options assigned - for instance 11", white or 11", blue (down the line for tons of colors). It would be awesome to have single 11" white and bag of 100 11" white.

I am loving this edition to inventory but am stuck with beverages.  I sell them by item but receive them in multiple configurations (12 pack, 24 pack, 36 pack).  I have been tryting to figure out if it is possible to setup multiple receiving case quantities for one sold item.

So.. Would this work in a Bar Scenario where we have a keg of Lager which equates to say 88 Pints which we sell in Halfs or Pints? Or a bottle of Vodka which is 1.5 ltr and we sell it in 25 ml shots or 50 ml shots?

Finally!  This is great but we are only using retail plus on the back end and not POS so it doesn't show on our FOH POS.  We would upgrade to retail POS but I cant get an answer on whether or not tips and open ticket are available on Retail POS.  Anyone have the answer?

I have a question regarding the sell by unit / stock conversion.  In our store we sell beverages and must charge customers CRV fees for each can or bottle sold.  When setting up items by units or case the CRV amounts charged to customers are different.  I could not figure out a way to program separate CRV fees.  Am I missing something or is the feature not available?

 

Thanks

Square Champion

@The_Good_Life ;

Yes You can use the Saved Cart as an Open Ticket in the Square for Retail App

Also Yes you can enable Tipping in the Square for Retail App  https://squareup.com/dashboard/business/devices 

I would like to know the exact same thing as @The_Sun_Inn  .

Also Is this feature available with Square POS yet? Retail version does not support COGS.

 

What do you think @tranguyen 

Square

Hi there, very good questions. 

 

I'm going to have to come back to you on your question @The_Sun_Inn.   

 

As mentioned in Tra's post we do have a detailed walkthrough of how to add sell-by stock unit conversions on our support centre which includes some examples which may help put things more into prespective for you: Stock Conversion: Sell-By. However I will try to get a more detailed answer for you. 

 

@Dirky this is feature is only available for Square for Retail at the moment. If you are looking for Cost of Goods Sold reports you would need to be subscribed to Square for Retail plus

@Breffni @Would it be possible to reinstate the ability to test the square for retail again as have previously tested and expired! It would be good to see if this would work for us! 

Square

I inquired @The_Sun_Inn but unfortunately once a free trial for any Square subscription has expired we can't extend it. The only option would be to pay for a month's subscription or create a new Square account and subscribe to the free trial and do some tests there, I know that wouldn't be ideal. Sorry I couldn't help more!

Hi @Breffni 

Sorry, are you saying that this feature is not available in the Plus version of Retail? Only available in the regular version?

I'm sure that cant be correct. I posted a more in-detail question in the main Retail discussion board regarding this just today.

I'd like some expert help setting it up, is that possible, but only with somebody who is very familiar with it and understand what we want to do.

Thanks

D

 

Square

Hi @Dirky, thanks for tagging me. 

 

Are you referring to the selling by units and stock conversion feature? If so, this is a feature of Retail Plus. It's not available in the free version of Retail. Hope this answers your question? Let me know if not! Will keep an eye out for your other post, we'll do our best to get you the answers you need. 

Hi @Breffni 

Yes that's what I am referring to. I do have the Retail Plus subscription. You may want to update this page

https://squareup.com/help/gb/en/article/7237-stock-conversion-sell-by as it does not mention that it is only for the Plus version as far as I can see.

Who do you think I should speak to to attempt setting this up for our bar?

 

Thanks

D

 

Square

I see what you mean @Dirky, that's definitely not clear. Thanks for flagging. 

 

For your second question, I've responded to your other thread! 

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