Stock control at restaurant pos

[DebThreeBirdies]

Is there a way to control stock at the pos for restaurants?

so if I only have say 10 serves left of a particular dish can I set it up so my staff can’t sell more than 10 serves?

I can see low stock alerts but an email is no help on a busy night when I’m tied up in the kitchen cooking

[Seamus · Accepted solution]

Hey @DebThreeBirdies,

"Item availability" is a feature of Square for Restaurants Plus! Check out this video on how to use the feature and let me know if you have any questions 🙂

[DebThreeBirdies]

Thank you!

ive been trying to do it via the dashboard 

[threebirdies]

hi Seamus,

you put me onto this feature a while back and its suddenly disappeared with an update yesterday
Do you know anything about this?
its left me with zero stock control, all the item availabilities have vanished off the screen and when i rest my finger on the item i am now taken to the edit item screen

HELP!!

[JJ_]

Hello there!

I am sorry to hear about the experience @thethreebirdies. 

Would you mind sharing a video of the current behavior? I would like to surface this with our team to confirm whether this is working as intended or if something is missing on the most recent version. 

[threebirdies]

I can’t see how to upload a video

here’s what happens now if you rest your finger on a menu item at POS

You are take to item edit, you can mark an item as out of stock but even if you say there’s a limited stock quantity it lets you sell more and just goes into negative, NOT useful in a restaurant 

[bburger]

Further to this, why cant you update via the dashboard? That would be more convenient for being prepared.

I see that you can enter stock via the dashboard, but it doesn't seem to sync thru to POS - and/or behaves differently if you are out of stock..

Additionally, if you are managing your stock via the POS, how do you then stop an online self-service site from selling items that you are low stock on?

[threebirdies]

if you manage stock via the dashboard it allows you to go into negative, so you can say you have 10 schnitzels left and it will let you take an order for 11 and helpfully send you an email to say you now have -1 🙄
the item availability function lets you quickly adjust items on the fly during service when a menu item runs out, it shows the stock amount on each menu item and adjusts it with orders so you dont oversell
in my case my online ordering is a totally different menu so online orders arent really an issue

[bburger]

I really don't understand why the Dashboard is a different function to the option on the Terminal. This alone shows how poor Square are at software design.

If you manage stock via the Terminal, will it stop the online orders from being taken if the stock gets to 0?

How do you manage your stock for online menu so that you don't sell anything past 0?

[threebirdies]

no, it lets it go into negative, and sends you and email
you CAN say there is zero stock and it greys it out at the POS

the old system showed the remaining serves available which was really good, if a customer wanted to order two of something with only one available you only need to look at the till button to see there was only one avail

[threebirdies]

in my case i have a separate online order system that i control separately, in saying that i think that if there is a stock item that is on both menus (online and POS) it does correlate stock availability

[threebirdies]

additionally - the stock control function on the dashboard is really for retail selling of "items", as in you order 100 widgets and put a low stock amount in and it tells you when to reorder, lets your stock going into negative and has backorders etc
None of that really works in a restaurant situation, we might prep up 20 serves of an item for the night and that goes into item availability and we know how many we can sell for that night, it actually works (worked) really well, way less time consuming than using stock control from the dashboard. busy restaurant, i dont really have time to fart around with stock control at the beginning of service, i just need to know i've got 60 schnitzels, 35 steaks, etc for that service

[threebirdies]

the really annoying part is that THIS feature was what made me upgrade to restaurants plus, if theyve taken it away im downgrading 😠

[lawnbrook]

please know that development are aware that the current functionality does not really suit hospo

I’ve had a couple of calls with them and my requirements are pretty much in line with what everyone’s suggesting. 

a quick method of editing daily counts without justification as it’s not really stock control. In addition to this having a visible count on screen.

the item availability that is/was available in the restaurant pos seemed very much an afterthought.

I think the idea is to use the stock control for this purpose but introduce a streamlined method of editing the counts so that we can do this at the start of the day or on the fly.

they have advised that they will be reintroducing on screen counts

@threebirdies ,

The item availability was a feature they were able to toggle off/on and it occasionally got turned off on my account ~ being replaced with the edit items on screen functionality you are seeing. I too have lost this with the last update and have fired off another email to see whether this is gone for good.

when we’re finished for the day I’ll have a look through the forum and suggest the best place for you to paste and add your voice (here could well be the best place).

bruce

[lawnbrook]

@threebirdies ,

I spoke with my development contact again, I think the removal of the item availability might have been a glitch with the last update. I believe they are going to try reach out to you so keep an eye on your email/message.

Bruce

[threebirdies]

Yep, I’ve got a phone call booked to sort it hopefully 👍

[Breffni]

We're glad to hear you've got a call set up. Please let us know if there's anything we can assist with here on the Community @threebirdies 

[bjbccatering]

Please post how you fix this, as I need to have this function back in mt restaurant. Easy toggle on / off and the reducing number available count showing on screen. Don't have the ability to manage this manually from my emails mid service, and need the seller to see how many items are left to sell. Please advise how you get this fixed.

[threebirdies]

I spoke with square and they turned it back on for me. I’m the same, can’t muck about with emails during service and it lets you oversell regardless. 

[bjbccatering]

Ah ok. So they can reactivate it, but you've still retained the new format?

I'll call them today. Thank you. 

[lawnbrook]

@bjbccatering ,

I'm not sure support will be able to help you with this one. I have alerted the dev people I know to this thread.

One thing to note, this is not currently available in the new UI. So you will need to revert to the old look to get the item availability (at this stage).

If you revert, you may well already have item availability turned on.

Bruce