Track modifier quantites/costs

[Sydeswept]

I SO want to be able to track the cost of my modifiers and how much of each modifier I have. For my business, I sell shirts, tumblers, merch etc, and have different design options--it allows my customers to customize their own items. 

The issue: I may have 500+ shirts available, but only 20 of one design available (this is why I. can't just create variations for each shirt, and that would take way more time than a modifier to add into stock as it's available). Modifiers would also be much more beneficial if we could track their costs. Different designs cost me different amounts to print before pressing onto my shirts. 

Right now, modifiers seem to benefit only one kind of store, but adding just a couple more capabilities to our modifiers would make them so much more helpful for a wide variety of stores and solve so many problems that have seemed common in the community. 

[_Violet]

Hi @Sydeswept - Thanks for reaching out with your feedback on tracking the cost of your modifiers. 

I've shared this with our product development team for consideration. While we cannot provide a specific timeline for when this feature might be implemented, please know that we value your input and are always looking for ways to enhance our services to better meet the needs of our users.

In the meantime, I'm tagging in a few of our Square Champions to see if they have any tips or suggestions for you: @Candlestore @TheRealChipA @TOTSC @JUYBoutique20 

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the shoutout, @_Violet.

@Sydeswept Currently, what you are trying to do just is not available in the Square ecosystem right now.  Square seems to be heading in that direction (based on what I’ve seen in some public beta tests going on right now).  But even if they are mapping out a plan, the fruition of that plan will be months — if not years — away.  Component inventory is a very complicated thing with lots of moving parts.  If you are dead set on not using variations/options, your only choice is to head over to the Square App Marketplace and look for third-party inventory solutions there.  Most of those that you will find are based on restaurant inventory and costing which is VERY complicated.  For example, one that I know of is Restoke.  Anyway, while these solutions are restaurant-oriented, there is nothing stopping retail sellers from using them, as long as you learn the restaurant/bar lingo that is used and modify it to your needs.

That being said, have you explored Options at all?  Options allow you to create “sets” that can be combined to automatically create lots of variations quickly.  For example, say you have:

• Five shirt sizes
• twenty shirt designs
• Five shirt colors

You could create three option sets (as shown above) and tell Square to create all of the possible variations automatically.  Then, you could export your item list to a spreadsheet, update your starting inventories, and then re-upload your items.  If you are using a spreadsheet to set initial inventory levels, that should be much quicker than manually trying to update variation inventories using the dashboard.

While that is not a real solution to your issue, it is possibly a work-around.  Unfortunately, those are the only two options that I really see that could work at this time.

[Sydeswept]

Thank you for taking the time to respond! The options/variations are where I'm running into trouble because I can't set quantities for the options themselves 😕 so each shirt design I have risks selling out if I link the options to all of my shirts and sizes available. 

[Sydeswept]

Thank you! I would really love to hear back from Square on the idea. I've seen several things from individual suggested over the years I've been with Square but never actually see them go anywhere. It would be super awesome to see these ideas in the works 🙂