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Why would my inventory go negative for no apparent reason?

The title of this thread has been edited from the original: Negative Inventory

I have been having issues with items going negative on some of the item variations. For example, I have a shirt that showed -1 for one of the variations (small), even though I only had one small sold; I had 2 smalls in stock, now I have one. 

 

Does anyone else have issues with inventory levels going negative for no apparent reason? I looked at the item sales for this past year for one of the items in question, and it should definitely NOT have negative levels based on the sales.

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@brju2013 - Sorry to hear about the trouble with your inventory! This definitely shouldn't be happening. I'd be more than happy to dig deeper into this for you. To get going, would you mind providing me with a very precise example, including timeframes? Our engineering team requires VERY detailed issue descriptions before escalating. I'd also like to try and replicate things on my end, or see if I can possibly offer an explanation. 🙂  Thanks a ton! 


Sean
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Product Manager | Square, Inc.
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The thing is, I don't know when exactly it's happening. It has happened randomly, even if the items in question did not have any sales for the week. I only noticed because I did an item import into our big commerce website, and a CSV is generated containing errors; the error showed "The field 'inventory_level' is invalid" for several items, so I went through each of them and each had one or more variations that were negative inventory. I have only ever seen -1 for the items with the issue.

 

I looked at the sales history for each item, and they only showed up a few times, but not enough to make inventory go negative. For instance, one item was a hoodie. When I went to look at the inventory levels for it, it showed -1 for Small. However, looking at the sales for the entire year, there was only 1 sold, but we had 2 in stock when I entered them into the system. 

 

I also checked big commerce sales, and it didn't show up in any orders.

 

As I said, it appears to be happening at random. There really is no rhyme or reason. It just does it to random items at random times, even if we haven't sold any. This also was happening before we got our big commerce website.

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Square

@brju2013 - Thank for the follow up. Since your inventory is integrated with BigCommerce, it could be a glitch on their side. 🤔  Have you already reported this issue to them? 


Sean
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Product Manager | Square, Inc.
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This was happening before we integrated with big commerce.

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Square

@brju2013 - Appreciate the follow up. If you can monitor this closely, and then provide a specific example when it happens again - we can definitely connect with our engineering team. Does that work? 


Sean
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Product Manager | Square, Inc.
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It happened again yesterday with several items, some of which no one ordered. One item went negative in two variants (Small and Large), while Medium went to 0. We only sold a Medium. The other items that went negative weren't even sold at all, they just went negative for literally no reason.

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Square

@brju2013 - Sorry to hear! Can you specify exactly which items these were? I'd be happy to open a case with our Engineering Team. 


Sean
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Product Manager | Square, Inc.
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An example is:

 

Mocha Turtle Neck Long Sleeve Tunic w/Lace Crochet

 

I already fixed the inventory and don't recall the other two items, but this is the one that had negative inventory for Small and Large yesterday.

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Square

@brju2013 - Thanks for confirming. I'll report this to our Engineering Team. 


Sean
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Product Manager | Square, Inc.
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Yeah, what the hell, this happens all the time for us.  How come Square keeps defelecting the problem.  There should just be a setting that puts an item inactive

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Square

@brju2013 - Thanks for your patience while our engineers took a closer look. They saw the stock adjustments for the items you listed,  but it is difficult for them to pin stock adjustments to their source. On 12-14 both the Small and Large "Mocha Turtle Neck Long Sleeve Tunic w/Lace Crochet." show a reduction in stock count by 2. If you go to https://squareup.com/dashboard/apps/my-apps you'll see that you have several apps other than BigCommerce, including an Ecwid store. These adjustments are most likely a result of the integrations. Can you please take a look at these other integrations? 


Sean
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Product Manager | Square, Inc.
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I've removed the apps, so I will monitor to see if that fixes the inventory issues. Thanks!

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Square

@brju2013 - Thanks! Please let me know if the issue persists after this point. Thanks! 


Sean
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Product Manager | Square, Inc.
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Is there a way for us to view a log of stock updates? I think that would be very helpful as a feature in the dashboard.

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Square

@brju2013 - There isn't, but it would definitely be a great feature addition! For now, you have to track inventory adjustments through sales. 


Sean
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Product Manager | Square, Inc.
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I finally found the root of my issue, the same issue as what you have. It appears to be that if you are integrated with Big Commerce, all of your inventory management should be done in Big Commerce after initial import. What was happening to me was that inventory levels I was entering were not being sent to big Commerce. Moral of the story, maintain your stock levels in big Commerce, and you should be good. 

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I have been having this exact same issue. My problem with troubleshooting has been the inability to predict which items will change, so it has been hell trying to document this. I contacted support today on the phone with an example, and they said they would escalate. I doubt these are one off issues, and it was occurring before we integrated with Big Commerce as well. We do not even sell on Big Commerce yet. I wasn't given a ticket number, nor have I seen any confirmation emails about this yet.

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Admin

Hey @scortinoandson, thanks for taking the time to contact our Support Team with an example. You should have received a case number. I'll reach out to the email address that's tied to your account. If you could reply to it with any additional details that you went over via phone as well as mention the item that was causing the trouble — we'll make sure nothing slips by. Thanks again for your help with this!

️ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
Find step-by-step help in our Support Center
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Contacting support again today. Have not received an update, and it continues to happen.

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Hey @scortinoandson I see that you we're able to reach out and get ahold of a supporter! Our team will make sure to get this straightened out.

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