How to account for online sales in stock inventory

[sharkie_rich]

We use Square Register for our physical gift shop. We also have an online store, using another website service, which sells some of the same inventory that is located in our gift shop. When we make an online sale, we have to take the physical product from the gift shop and use it to fulfill the online sale. 

We manage our physical inventory via the SquareUp dashboard.  Our accounting department would like to be able to have a report that shows what products were used to fulfill online orders, including the "cost" of the item (not the retail but our cost), so that they can account for inventory in the gift shop being used to fulfill online orders.  I can't figure out the best way to do this. Does anyone have any ideas?  Thank you in advance.

[Kassi_]

Hello, @sharkie_rich - 

Do you have your items linked between your Item Library and Online Store? If not, here is a Support Article with how to get this setup. 

This would allow the inventory to be linked between the two. 

When it comes to the reporting it can get a little trickier for Inventory. Having a Square Retail subscription would give you more in-depth inventory reports. 

Besides that option, only the Reports currently in the Dashboard and the Online Dashboard would be able to used to the inventory. 

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

[sharkie_rich]

Thank you for this, Kassi.  

We don't have our items linked between your Item Library and Online Store because our online store is not Square - it is an independent (Wordpress) platform.  We do have a Square Retail subscription, but I still can't find an easy way to record and report on items being transferred from the physical store to the ecommerce operation. A report that says on this date xx we took xx amount of bags of granola, jars of jam and cosmetic cream out of the bookstore inventory and shipped it for online orders. And the cost of those items (not the retail).  I'm thinking this report doesn't exist, which surprises me since it's such a common action.

[Candlestore]

@sharkie_rich ;

I am running into the same situation.  To subtract from Square couldn't you just get a Report from you Wordpress online store of all your Daily, weekly sales and use that report to subtract from Square?

If not here is what I have been trying to semi automate this process:

What I have come up with is using My accounting software as the Middle ground.  My Retail, Online and Accounting software all have a common column.  The SKU column in Square. The headers might be different but using that column it is possible to link these three items.  By using the SKU as a 'Key' you could make an adjustment to cost in the accounting program and have it back fill to Square and your Online store.  

In my accounting software I enter the Item Details, Cost of Item etc.  This should be the same if Retail or Online.

At the end of my day I will import all my Retail sales to my accounting software, which decreases the Inventory in my accounting platform.  Then I run the same thing for my Online sales, again decreasing my Inventory.  This I can do in about 10 minutes.  Then I will export my inventory from accounting and will import it to Square and my Online Store which should keep my inventory accurate in all 3 places.  This is what I am working on now and just testing it before messing up my Inventory.  

This would be a lot easier if Square had the same type of adjustment columns in the catalog export that it does when we adjust an items quantity.  Meaning 2 columns that Added or Subtracted to inventory.   Square's catalog export only shows Item Quantity and New Quantity columns in the Export.  If we had Current Quantity, Received Quantity (add to Stock), Damaged Online Sales (Reduce Stock) and a New Stock Quantity that would be great.   Then we could just import our Online sales quantities of items to Square column Damaged Online Sales (Reduce Stock) column and the the New Stock Quantity would be Current - (Reduce Stock).   Then Update it with Import to Square Items Catalog.

I came up thinking about this because I realized that both my Square and Online Sales go into my Accounting program and subtract the inventory there.  You may have this with your Accounting Program too.  

If you do not have an accounting middle ground, You should be able to Export your Online Daily sales which should have the same SKU field for an item somewhere and could use Excel or a spreadsheet program to automatically decrease the Current Quantity in Squares export of the catalog and and create a new Number for the New Quantity in Square.  

This is why Square recommends using Square with Square Online.  

[sharkie_rich]

Thank you for this, Keith. I will check on these suggestions to see if we can use any.

[BearCenter]

On your square dashboard, go to settings then app integrations.  There is an an app to connect Wordpress to Square.  Just make sure you do your research on how to do it.  When we connected our Woocommerce site, we ended up with duplicated items.  We got it all straightened out and it works well now.

[sharkie_rich]

Thank you for this info, Bearcenter!