Is it possible to see the date an item was added to inventory?

[mikesclub]

We sell a lot of one-off items brought in by our club members. Is there any way to see when an item was added to our inventory, so we can reduce the price of items that haven't sold after a certain period of time?

[Helen]

@mikesclub It's not possible to see the date an item was added. That's a very interesting request - I can see how it would be really useful. I'll share this with the Item Library team. I'll keep an eye out for any workarounds for you - if you find one I hope you'll share it here in the meantime! 

[pessosices · Accepted solution]

@Helen 

Wouldnt you be able to go into the web dashboard, go to items, click on the item, then Inventory History?

[docdutton]

please provide a way to have this date that is in the inventory history to appear in a report of all items. We have multiple vendors and only allow them to keep items in our gallery for 6 months. As we have hundreds of items, checking each individually is not practical.

[MayaP]

Hi @docdutton ,

I noticed it's your first post, welcome to our community  

At this, we do not have a report that provides this. I suggest adding this request to our Ideate Board and that is something our Product Team can monitor and track. 

I appreciate the feedback and if you need anything else let us know. 

[Helen]

OH you're right @pessosices! My mistake, thank you! But you would have to go and look at each item one by one to view the history. Hope that helps @mikesclub! 

[mikesclub]

I just looked at the item history of an item that we sold today. It doesn't show anything. Not the date it was received, or the date it was sold. 

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but Square is very frustrating. It seems to be designed to provide some very basic functions, but doesn't provide users with much information at all. Information that I know is contained within the database. 

I've only been using Square for 3 months now, but I'm starting to feel the need to explore other service providers. There is so much Information I need, which I know the system has access to, that Square does not let me see. 

And by the way, I noticed this thread has now been marked "solved". That's not correct. This is still a pending issue until you either solve it or tell me it can't be done. I'm starting to understand why some issues, that people have been requesting for years in this forum, remain unresolved. You can't just mark it "solved" and make it go away.

[pessosices]

I don’t think it’s possible to see when the item was CREATED, but if you then added a quantity of the item to inventory, then that should show up. 

Did you add a quantity to inventory of the item?

[mikesclub]

@nika @Helen Someone in this thread mentioned that Square does track the date stock was added IF you set the quantity to at least 1. That’s good to know. 

Here’s my question: why doesn’t the system automatically set the quantity to 1 when any item is created? The default should be set to "1" rather than zero. Doesn’t it make sense that, if I create a new item, there’s a very high probability that I’m adding at least 1 of those items? Much higher probability than the idea that I created a new item but did not add at least 1. 

Please, please ask your programmers to change the default for this from "off" to "on". It probably only involves editing a single line of code. 

[Valentina]

Thank your for this specific feedback, @mikesclub - every detail helps when discussing potential features we'd like to see. I understand that the ability to add an item to your item library when you don't have the physical inventory is not useful for your business. I certainly see how it could benefit you to have a default setting option that would automatically set the inventory for an item to 1 when adding a new item.

The reason I suggest different default settings instead of changing the way inventory functions across the board is that there are businesses needing to retain the ability to add an item with 0 inventory. For example, a crafting or woodworking business that makes each item by hand does not always have physical inventory. They need to be able to add items to their item library with 0 inventory, so that they can take payment before creating the piece. Would a default setting option work for what you're wanting to accomplish here?

[mikesclub]

Yes, a default setting option would work great. What I think you mean is that I could set the default to either 0 or 1 myself. That would solve my problem.

[lovejoysonmain]

I share your frustrations.  Square POS does not even let you input the COST of an item.  So, basic business calculations cannot be made.  We are adding a date code (YearMonth, i.e. 1912) at the beginning of the Description field to indicate when the item was first added to inventory. (However, this limits where you can display the Description field for the public to read.)

I believe that Square for Retail might offer the reporting that you desire.  (Unfortunately, our store/restaurant cannot use it because it does not allow for open tickets.)

Hope this helps!

[nika]

I double checked with a Retail specialist, and @pessosices you're correct. With Square for Retail, you can see when inventory is received, but not created.

Sorry for the frustration @lovejoysonmain. Hopefully at some point we can have something built out that fits all of your needs!

[MtKW]

I can't see an item history - the option is not in the inventory!

[JustinC]

Hi, inventory history is found on the edit item page. Can you send a screenshot to show me what you see from that page? 

@MtKW