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

[isabelle · Accepted solution]

Hey @twowhales-

When an item sells out or is no longer in stock, it won’t be available for purchase from your Online Store. The item will appear as “sold out” and can’t be added to your customer’s online cart.

If you’re processing a sale from the Square app, you won’t be blocked from selling an out of stock item. Your inventory will be accurately updated in your online Square Dashboard to show sold out items as 0 or below, but you’ll still be able to complete these sales. We're still developing a feature which may allow you to limit this possibility in the future. I'll make sure to post in this thread when I hear an update on this. 

[Jody2323]

Why does square run two inventory processes? One online and the other Square App. they should be the same.

Don't want to sell an item to a customer in person if its not in stock, please fix.

When an item sells out or is no longer in stock, it won’t be available for purchase from your Online Store. The item will appear as “sold out” and can’t be added to your customer’s online cart.

If you’re processing a sale from the Square app however, you won’t be blocked from selling an out of stock item. Your inventory will be accurately updated in your online Square Dashboard to show sold out items as 0 or below, but you’ll still be able to complete these sales.

[isabelle]

Hey @Jody2323-

Thanks for posting in the Seller Community.

You are correct, as of right now, we still allow sellers in the POS to sell an item that is out of stock while we will not allow this for Online Store purchases. We don't restrict them from doing so, just incase they do not track inventory regularly, and would like to not be prevented from selling an item. We're still developing a more compromisable feature. 

In the meantime, please take a look in this thread for a workaround suggestion. 

[Jody2323]

square should not be running two different processes for inventory tracking.

I believe the purpose of inventory tracking is not to sell an item to a customer that you do not have in stock.

I look forward to square making this change.

Thank you

[BakingLife]

I look forward to this too.  Being primarily a bricks and mortar bakery and food market it is quite frustrating when we receive an online order for an item and a customer walks in to purchase the same item.  If we haven't had a chance to look at the online order we end up selling it to the walk in customer and having to call and apologize to the online order customer.  This has happened to us many times and makes us look disorganized.  

[wnnstore]

I agree.  I run a nonprofit second hand store that is run by volunteers.  We never accepted credit cards in the passed.  Because of COVID-19, I started a square account to have an online store and started taking debit and credit cards.    Now that we are trying to reopen, I set up the terminal at the store cash register.  Almost 99% of my inventory is individual items with 1 available. The fact that inventory can still be sold on the terminal even if it is SOLD OUT means that I will have to do every credit card transaction myself to ensure that something that has sold but I haven't had time to remove from the online store won't accident'y be sold again.  I understand companies that can restock, but I cannot.  So now I have spent money on a terminal that my volunteers can't use.  If I had known I probably would NOT have started taking credit cards.  But now that I have, I can't refuse them, or I will lose customers.  This is a HUGE issue for me.  

[wnnstore]

I would be very happy with SOLD OUT popping up on the screen with a toggle switch to override it.  That way when people who have inventory "in the back room" so to speak, could override the sold out and still sell the item.  Just my thought about it.  

[BakingLife]

I am in agreeement with you, this has been one of a few very frustrating points for my business.  I have apologized to far too many customers for looking foolish because the system oversold items.  It's ridiculous that we've been asking for a long time for a fix to this.  The amount of time we have spent on this and a few other painfully frustrating 'bugs' with Square/Weebly have led us to analyze if Shopify is a better fit for us.  If you need website help best to use twitter to reach someone from tech from Weebly, nobody as Square seems to be able to deal with website IT issues.  Just our experience since COVID began.  

[Donica_L]

I also need to stop sales of items that are out of inventory.  We use this system for classes.  If a class has a capacity of 6, we can easily oversell.  Any updates that happen would be helpful!

[Valentina]

Hi there @Donica_L - I moved your post to this thread, where @isabelle mentioned that we're working on a feature that may allow you to limit the sale of items that are out of stock. While this is currently a feature request, now that your post is here, you'll receive a notification if we post any updates.

[Heather_H]

I'm interested in this update as well. I wouldn't mind if it was just a notification on our Square Terminal that an item is sold out or is about to sell out so it is clearly visible to the sales associate who is trying to complete an in-store transaction. Maybe a warning in the checkout screen under that item or just the current inventory count. This would allow users to still sell the product in-store at the terminal if needed, but also provides a clear warning to the staff so they don't accidentally oversell a product for those of us who rely on the inventory feature.

When we were doing in-store sales only it wasn't as big of an issue because inventory was going directly out the door after the transaction was completed. Now that we are doing a lot of online sales due to COVID it's becoming an issue.

There's "sold" inventory from on-line sales not picked up yet that's sitting with our "unsold" inventory and it isn't always noticeable to staff that something is "sold out" since online orders aren't picked up immediately. We've had employees accidentally sell product in-store thinking we still had inventory remaining, but we didn't. It would be really helpful and save me some headaches to get a better workaround in place for this. I'm sure there are others in a similar situation.

[AshleyK]

Thank you @Heather_H and @BakingLife for giving us this feedback. I do understand how this would be super helpful to our sellers to be able to have this feature and will continue to bubble up this feedback to the development team. 

[PatW]

Please add my request for true inventory management that does not allow an out of stock item to be sold.  We have a large consignment store where there is only 1 item available.  When it is sold we don't to be able to sell it again.

This should be a requirement for any retail store's inventory management either in store or online.  I just discovered this flaw and I am shocked and not quite sure how to handle it.  We do not want our salespeople selling a sold out item.

[Salbel]

Are there any updates to this very worrying issue? 

I have products that are marked as 1 in stock but you can add as many as you like of this item to the checkout even though only 1 should be allowed, this is not ok.

[JJ_]

Thank you for taking the time to share your interest in this feature @Salbel I recommend you submit a Feature Request here. This will help our product team get visibility and track other Sellers with similar interest in your request. 

Important: When submitting a request, make sure to include the desired feature, and provide the details of how this feature will help your business succeed (how would you use it and what you expect from it).

[Tina27]

This update would be extremely helpful because we have limited stock as well.  Please let me know when this feature is available.  Thank you. 

[Jody2323]

Where is Square with a solution? Its been over 2 months since I emailed Square and no resolution!

I also reported that the Date is wrong in an export of items sold;

Date	Time	Time Zone	Category	Item
2007-05-20	14:11:15	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Books And Beers
2007-05-20	14:11:15	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Membership 20-21
2007-05-20	14:09:55	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Xmas Party DEC 23
2004-05-20	17:19:09	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Xmas Party DEC 23
2028-04-20	17:57:35	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Books And Beers
2028-04-20	12:17:51	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Books And Beers
2028-04-20	12:17:16	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Books And Beers
2023-04-20	12:28:57	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Boat Tour Sept 10
2023-04-20	12:28:57	Eastern Time (US & Canada)	None	Shoptalk

Also the CSV file does capture the customer name on returns;

Item	Qty	Customer Name
Boat Tour Sept 10	1	[Personal Information Redacted]
Boat Tour Sept 10	1	[Personal Information Redacted]
Boat Tour Sept 10	1	[Personal Information Redacted]
Boat Tour Sept 10	1	[Personal Information Redacted]
Boat Tour Sept 10 Total	4		0
Books And Beers	1	[Personal Information Redacted]
Books And Beers	1	[Personal Information Redacted]
Books And Beers	-1
Books And Beers	-1
Books And Beers	1	[Personal Information Redacted]

It would be great to get some of these issues resolved

[Valentina]

@Jody2323 - we will be sure to post an update right here in this thread when we have one to share about the feature which may allow you to limit this. Please subscribe to this thread if you would like to receive a notification when a new post is added here.

In regards to your question about the incorrect dates on the report above, it may be worth giving us a call so that a member of our team can take a closer look with you.

Are you able to give us a bit more detail about what you're looking for answers to with the CSV file showing customer names?

[TresLatinas]

has this been resolved?  it shouldnt be so hard... once it gets to 0 dont let me click on it as you dont let online buyers click on it.... why is it so hard to disable the item in person and online once it reaches 0 in inventory?

[twowhales]

Thanks Isabelle. Flagging up the zero inventory on a sale is just another way of minimizing input errors. It doesn't necessarily need to block it but a warning popup would be useful.