Can I sell an out of stock item?

[twowhales]

[The title of this thread has been edited from the original: I can still sell an item from POS when stock is zero]

I have just discovered that I can sell an item when the stock in my inventory is zero - is this correct? After the sale it has decreased the stock level to -1.

On the online store it does not let me buy one and shows 'Out of Stock' as expected.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

[estbrew]

@isabelle This feature would be very much of interest to us as well; without it, we end-up maintaining two inventories so that we don't oversell items. An alert might be all we really need.

Could you please provide an update on the potential timeframe for completion of this feature? 

Thanks!

[wiltshirett]

Just adding to the convo so we see the updates to this post...

Hoping to resolve this for our Woocommerce/Square online/in-store setup...

thanks!!

[Stitching]

I see this is marked as solved - is this the case? I can't seem to find the solution to avoid the inventory to go negative. 

Direction is appreciated. 

[CB22]

Might it be possible to set per item "low stock" thresholds to have notifications seny immediately and then a similar notification when stock levels hit zero?

Specifically thinking about items that have shelf space and additional stock in a backroom. The notifications would be useful reminders that specific items need to be restocked.

Along those same lines for those with multiple locations it would be nice to have inventory counts.and notifications based on locations.

[wnrc]

I am starting a new on line store and still setting it up.  I am wondering if there is a way to allow a customer to order an out of stock item?

[JustinC]

Nope, you'll need to add a stock amount for the item so your customer can order it. Sorry about that 😔

@wnrc

[2familynotions]

I am in the same boat. We make to order some items.  We would like the option for someone to order and "out of stock" item and that would let us know that we have to make the item......frustrating

[bfwteamstore]

I've been there for two years, and it's very frustrating.  We have physical inventory, but we also make all of our inventory.  We don't always want to continue having that physical inventory on every item, but we would be glad to make one to make an online sale.  We moved our site over from Shopify, and Shopify would allow sales of out-of-stock items.  This was great.

[wnnstore]

This reply was created from merging an existing thread: Why does my square terminal and my square app let me sell items that show SOLD OUT or 0 inventory??

The inventory shows up as 0 in square/online store/items/items library

it also shows up as a 0 when I go into square/items/items library

It shows SOLD OUT on my Online Store page

But when I use my square terminal and select library - it will allow me to sell as many of the items as I want.  I need the terminal / cell phone app to be linked/synced as well.  What am I doing wrong?

[Valentina]

I've moved your post over to this thread where @isabelle addressed this question in her Best Answer. Keep your eyes on this thread, as we will post an update here when something changes.

[EricMarshall]

I have merchandise that is sold online, as well as in-store. We use inventory management on all items, so we know exactly how many of each style & size we have on hand, which avoids over-selling.

Saturday at 1:50pm, someone placed an online order for 3 t-shirts. All 3 were the last available of their style & size. The person working didn’t see the order. 

Someone walked in to our location, and purchased the same 3 shirts. The worker, not realizing they had been sold online, grabbed them and sold them. Ringing them up caused them to go into NEGATIVE inventory, but the cashier cannot see that information without editing the item, and allowed the sale to continue. 

I now have 3 shirts that have been paid for online, that we have to refund and upset a customer who was supposed to pick them up today. In a perfect world, my P.O.S. would alert the employee that inventory was 0, and cause them to realize that the shirt was already spoken for. 

Please tell me if there is a way to avoid this in the future. Allowing inventory to go into negative ranges without any kind of a prompt or alert makes zero sense... 

[Valentina]

Sorry to hear about the trouble here, @EricMarshall - I can definitely empathize with this situation as a former retail worker. Your Square Online Store will show out of stock items as sold out, and your customers will not be able to purchase them online. However, you won't be prevented from selling an out of stock item through the Point of Sale app.

I've moved your post over to this thread where @isabelle explained this a bit more. While it's currently not possible to prevent the sale of items with negative inventories through the app, we'll be sure to post here in this thread when we have an update.

[BakingLife]

There is not a way to avoid this and many of us have raised this issue with Square to no avail.  We have the exact same problem and have had to refund online customers regularly and apologize and they are upset and it makes us look foolish.  It's a very frustrating issue, it seems there should be an easy fix but Square isn't doing anything about it that I am aware of and it has been raised many, many times over.  

We are now looking at another POS system because of this issue and a few others that are web related (Weebly).  Square is truly not listening imo.  

[dogeatdog]

We too, are looking for another solution because this problem has reared another ugly head. When you sell an item in store that a customer on the internet has bought already, it changes the stock from 0 to -1. And the online store sees -1 as a sellable value, and allows a customer to buy it. So what was now out of stock, is able to be sold online and you didn't own it in the first place, which was what caused the problem. Now I have to look at all my items (all 5000 of them) every night to see if any have gone negative or someone will purchase them online and I will have to refund their credit card. We look like idiots having to contact the customer telling them the item is oversold and we are losing money on the credit card fees with no sales to show for it. 

I can't believe that this has not been changed. This and the not being able to apply discounts after taxes are ridiculous. Our town's tourism board has put out vouchers to get people to shop local and we can't have people use them because the right amount of taxes will not be collected. I am really, really disappointed and now have to search for another POS as I can't deal with the stress of overselling. We only have a one staff member working at one time. That person can't hear our phone or app ding with an order, tell a customer she is helping to hold on a minute, and then go pick that order before the customer in the store buys it. 

[BakingLife]

I echo your words exactly!  I have brought this up months ago and there is still no fix, in fact it's gone from bad to worse.  I have had to call customers far too often, embarrassed because the system 'oversold' an item.  I look stupid, my business suffers.  

[vlewis55]

This reply was created from merging an existing thread: Why did Square oversell my items?

I had a ticket sale today and each item was set to sell 34 tickets. Two of my sessions oversold my items; 1 ticket oversell on one session and 7 tickets oversold on another session. It even lists the stock as -1 and -7.  How can this happen?  Now I have angry customers that I have to refund!

[Valentina]

I've moved your post over to this thread where @isabelle provided an answer to this question.

If you're using your Square Point of Sale app to process payments, you will maintain the ability to complete a sale for an item, even if it is out of stock in your inventory. We'll be sure to post an update to this thread when we have one to share here.

[WarwickSkatepar]

Hello,

I’ve been having the problem of certain items that have an inventory of 0 being loaded into customer carts and being purchased from my Square website. Why are those items not coming up as out of stock and then prevented from being added to customer carts? Maybe I’m not syncing my Weebly & Square pages correctly.
I don’t sell in a retail location. I ship all of my items from home. I see a message coming up with a few items saying, “ It looks like you won’t be able to sell this item online because it’s unavailable at the shipping location.” How do I fix that? All of my items ship from my house and that’s my only shipping location. 
The inventory issue is my biggest problem right now. I’ve had to email several customers to tell them that the item they ordered is out of stock and that’s not how I want to run my store. It’s unprofessional.

Thank you in advance.

[Goldneye]

HI, you would need to track stock even on 1 item in inventory.  If you do not enable track stock, the system will behave as if there is unlimited items.

Hope this helps!

Terri

🛍 Shop my store

Resale Collection - http://bit.ly/HangerHues

[sritts]

I would like to see the option made available to buy items when they are out of stock.  When you are selling apparel, or other items of that nature and want to take backorders, the backoffice allows me to take their order and leave it in pending status until I can fill it and tracks that there is a negative number available.  But online it stops folks from being able to place a backorder, which then deters folks and costs us sales.  True inventory management in a POS should allow for backorders, so why not just add a flag on the product set up that says Backorder available, when checked the backoffice and frontend allow for the orders to go through, when unchecked, that product cannot be ordered through either location.  Seems pretty simple and is common functionality in systems.  Some systems have a higher level store setup that has to be set to control all products, but that usually causes issues and folks like me have to design customizations to implement to stop that.  More common is the logic on the item level to allow you to control it per product, as some products that are seasonal or one time only, you would not want to allow it, but then long term items you allow it for.

[k_atie]

Hey @sritts, thank you for your very detailed feedback. We hear you loud and clear, and I can definitely see why this would be beneficial for you and your business. I'll be sure to pass this on to our team for them to take into consideration. 

In the meantime, make sure to read up on how Feature Requests and the Seller Community work. 

Let me know if you need anything else in the meantime!