How to change to see negative inventory vs “Sold Out”?

[MikeSL]

Today, my items list switched from showing negative items to “Sold Out” this is huge issue. How can it be switched back???

[#2]

You'll find the toggle in the Square Dashboard. 

Click on Items > Click on an item > Click on Stock. In the overlay that opens, you will see a toggle with the label "Tracking."

I expect we will be able to remove the Sold out label tomorrow! The red highlight styling will remain.

[#3]

Hi everyone 👋

I saw that a few of you had posted about this topic, so I brought the threads together so I could respond to you all! Sorry to hear about the troubles here. I've gone ahead and reached out to the team that launched this feature, and directly provided them quotes and feedback from this thread.

I'll be back with another post to provide updates when I have them.

[elaine_p · Accepted solution]

Hi @collinsandcoupe, I can give some more details about this. 

When an item variation does not have inventory tracking on, the toggle gives you the option to mark it as sold out manually. If you turn it on, then the item will have the red highlight in the Square Dashboard: 

In Square Online, the item will have "Out of stock" displayed on your site: 

  

In Square Point of Sale, it displays in your item grid grayed out with a strikethrough, and in the item search with a Sold Out label: 

 

In Square for Retail point of sale, there is no change. To see current stock at a location, you can tap on the item in the cart and there is a current stock row. When you do not track stock, it will say "Receive Stock". 

 

In Square for Restaurants point of sale, the item will be grayed out like several examples in this screen shot.

Hope that helps! 

[RofT]

Talk to your Inventory Product Team.  I have never added inventory.  I have never used SKU.  I should not have to go in and reset something that I never set.  I have no idea what you are talking about with "Export Library"   I simply use my Square as a cash register with no inventory.  I am a thrift store.  I will chat with you and your team as needed.  Because whatever upgrade or change was made in your department isn't working on our side correctly.

@ScottyV @GLG @Grassroots1 @mcellitti@bmmog1959 @villagebeer 

[RofT]

I tried to book your appointment and you aren't available today (26Aug).  I'm not available after today.  

[elaine_p]

I'm sorry our availability doesn't match up. I can take a look at your account specifically. It should not display as sold out if you did not set it and do not have inventory tracked with less than or equal to 0 inventory. 

I still see your previous message above.

[RofT]

Please check my account.  Lots of Categories showed "Sold Out" yesterday.  I did track inventory on one thing only in the past - swag/logo t-shirts.  That's it.   We rarely sell those anymore and haven't touched that.  I don't remember all the categories we had issues with but furniture and art for sure were showing "sold out".  Like I said we are a thrift store, so we don't track inventory at all.  We just input the prices as they sell.

[elaine_p]

Thank you for the additional info. Are your Art and Furniture items no longer showing sold out? 

[RofT]

Sorry Elaine, I'm not yet at work.  But when I left last night at closing these were two of the categories showing sold out.  There were more though.  I'll be at work in 45 minutes (10am PST).  Thanks!  

[RofT]

I have 11 categories showing sold out. Here is my main checkout screen. Never had inventory in these categories. Never. It won’t let me add photo. 

[elaine_p]

Thanks! I just wanted to confirm because of the past tense.

An engineer took a look and sees inventory sold into the negative on your items showing sold out. It is good news that it's behaving as expected and is not a bug. 

I'd like to try to understand how tracking is getting turned on I hear you loud and clear you are not adding stock or using the "track inventory" toggle in variation details. Sometimes an integration may cause this. For example, if you have a website and integrate it with Square, the website may turn on tracking to sync. If it is something like this, there may be a setting on the eCommerce platform you are integrating with about tracking inventory. 

The best thing to do may be to test turning tracking off on an item, and then seeing what happens before going to turn tracking off everywhere. 

[RofT]

Hi Elaine,

I need help and need to book an appointment as you offered before.  I'm not seeing any toggle.  I'm seeing lots of negative inventory.  When I tried to fix our Art category, it would not let me ring items up anymore under that category.  

Can you send the link again to book a time with you?  Desperately need to fix!

[elaine_p]

Yes! I'll send a message to you to set up some time.

[Grassroots1]

We use the negative stock values a couple of ways, it may seem unusual but it was a work around for our situation.

Our parent company is our biggest vendor, and in some instances there are items that come into our store that do not go through the proper purchase order process, the negative stock values allows me quickly to scan my item library weekly and see which items I need to manually receive into square and properly calculate the cogs for those items.

Our situation is not ideal but having to export the item library is just too time consuming for a location with several hundreds of sku's.

Another problem is not being able ring up something in a bundle, we sell numerous items in various bundles and our inventory levels need to be adjusted for all items sold in the bundles, and the negative stock values helped to make this process easier to reconcile my inventory.  

I have noticed some items instead of "sold out" are just showing 0, it seems these are the items in my library with no sales history.  But anything that has a sales history went to "sold out".  

I never really thought I would miss my negative stock values but I use them daily to actually help mange the our inventory.  Please bring them back soon!

[elaine_p]

Thank you for the additional context! One other idea that may help you get the list faster is the filter in the Dashboard item library. It won't show the negative values in most circumstances, but it may help you do less scrolling and scanning. At the top of the library, click on All Inventory and then choose "Sold Out"

The logic for display style is this: 

• Some variations are sold out some locations: value with red circle
• All variations are sold out at all locations: Sold out appears instead of the number

[GLG]

This is absolutely not a solution to my problem. I need to see it on my screen, in the Square dashboard so I can make quick changes in inventory history and "product received." Sorting through an Excel sheet with 3,506 items is not realistic, efficient, easy, practical, or possible. 

The display style logic is flawed and is not reflective of how many users use Square. Most of my items that are in the negative are NOT sold out.

If items are "sold out" and in the negative, it is because the wrong item was sold with the wrong sticker. I need to see that very visibly so I can say, "There is a problem," look at similar items, find out what has (1) item in stock when I know it is out of stock, check inventory history just to make sure my assumption is correct, and edit inventory history by transferring the cost of the item that should have sold to the cost of the item that accidentally sold, thus properly accounting for my costs and correcting the quantity of both items, which is (0). Does that make sense?

Again, flawed logic and honestly, a worthless feature. There are actual problems users have been reporting for years that need to be addressed and that Square is not addressing. For instance, why can't I print a draft invoice? Why can't I export a report of my losses so I can add up and easily see what was lost to theft, damage, etc.? Those are important and valuable features. 

[GLG]

You also assume we have the ability to export when we need to see negative numbers. That's not reality. I can't do that from my iPad.

[mcellitti]

Hi Elaine,

---

@elaine_p wrote:

Hi 👋

I'm on the Inventory product team responsible for the launch.

I'm sorry this isn't ideal for all of you. I would love to better understand how you are using negative stock values

---

We use negative values to balance our inventory at multiple times every day. The main reason we have settled on this as a workaround is because Square has never had a way to "link" items together, which would solve our problems in the first place.

For example, we sell beer in 4pack containers as well as the same beer in 16 oz single cans. We create different items for each quantity and they share the same SKU. Once I have sold -24 single cans, I know that I can do an inventory recount and adjust the 4pack from 6 to 0.

That is why negative inventory on the iPad is essential to me as I can immediately tell that stock is balanced. Showing Sold Out is detrimental. I walk around the shelves with the ipad and balance inventory daily.

If there was an option to simply link both items together, I wouldn't even have to do this. If Square made a determination that allowed me to say " ITEM X 4PK contains ___ 16 OZ Cans" it could then remove a 4pk as soon as 4 single cans are sold.

Either way, I'm content with having negative numbers reinstated. It is essential to our business. I'm aware that I can export a list (and I do this regularly) but it is cumbersome, bloated, and inefficient compared to the workflow that was just disrupted after this update.

Thanks,

Matt 

[elaine_p]

Thanks @mcellitti and thanks for booking some time to talk more about your use case. We're looking to show negative numbers again in the Dashboard. 

[ScottyV]

elaine_p,

Thanks for popping into this discussion.

As you have heard from others here that have misgivings about the "Sold Out" tag vs listing the actual negative number, I won't continue to beat that dead horse.
Instead, I would like to ask YOU (as you are part of the "Inventory Product Team") why you thought getting rid of the negative number display was a good idea?

It was already in place and functioning as intended and a valuable asset to many users here.
Did somebody request this feature change?
As I detailed out in an earlier post, you should have made it an option that could be toggled.
At that point, you should be able to see (on your back-end, I assume) how many users choose the "Sold Out" tag rather than the negative number field.
I understand that I can export my inventory data and see the negative numbers. It may not always be practical, though.

At the end of the day, please, PLEASE remember, you have (what I assume) is a nice, solid, well paying job. The rest of us here are trying desperately to keep our little "Mom and Pop" business afloat in these very trying times.
We don't have the time to deal with sudden, unexpected and unnecessary changes to our inventor control/back-end processes.
Additionally, on the webpage display and (even more importantly) in the Android app, it just looks ugly.
It clogs up the display with extra, unnecessary information. Did I mention it's ugly?
It's very distracting with all this red text.

I (and everybody else here) implore you, please, just put it back the way it was.

Thank you,

Scott

[JLSGLG]

Thank you Scott. I agree wholeheartedly!

I often wonder if anyone at Square has actually used the software to run a business. Every crap change hints at a solid "no." I also often feel like the real changes we need and request en masse are not addressed.

Square: Please put the negative numbers back. I cannot continue to use this software without this feature. There are too many other unaddressed issues. This is my breaking point.

[RofT]

Where is my previous message outlining my problems with this issue?  Please don't delete this message.  

Export Library is not the answer for me.  I have NEVER TRACKED OR ADDED INVENTORY.  I have never used SKUs.  I'm a thrift store and use my register like a normal cash register - just adding up sales in categories so that I can see what sells well for tracking.  No inventory at all.

Why is it showing "sold out"?  Why do I have to do anything to fix something that I didn't create? Whatever was done by your inventory team behind the scenes is causing an issue.  It needs to be fixed. Please advise status of bug and fix.  Thanks.

[bournebrilliant]

This post was very helpful as I had the same concerns!

[mcellitti]

Export library is definitely not the answer.