Managing Items with Square for Restaurants
Update Item Availability
You can update the availability of items directly in your Square for Restaurants POS App. Check out the full comparison of features between Square for Restaurants Free, Plus and Premium Plans.
Manually Remove Items
To manually remove an item on the fly, log in to your Square for Restaurants app:
Press and hold the item tile you’d like to make unavailable.
Scroll down and select Manage stock next to the item or variation you’d like to mark as unavailable.
Select Unavailable.
You can turn stock tracking off in your Square Dashboard.
If an item is only temporarily unavailable, you can select Make Available at End of Day. You can enable this in your Square Dashboard and you can configure at what time to make the item available again.
Set Up Auto-Removal
You can also set up automatic item 86ing by tracking the item quantity from the Restaurants app or Dashboard – so your employees will only be able to add available items to a bill.
To get started:
From the Restaurants app, tap and hold a menu item.
Select Manage Stock and select Stock Received to enter stock for that particular item or variation.
Tap Save.
During the course of a shift, each time an employee places an order to the kitchen or bar, the item quantity will reduce. When the item count reaches zero, employees will see that the item is greyed out on the POS grid. When adding the item to a bill, employees will be prompted to confirm whether they want to add the item even if it’s sold out.
Remove Modifiers
You now can easily mark modifiers as sold out/available from either the Square POS or Dashboard. The sold out/available state will be respected across Square Online, Dashboard, SPOS and RST POS.
To 86 modifiers from your online Square Dashboard.
Visit the Items page and select Modifiers > Create Modifier Set.
Toggle off Disable the Stock status of each modifier and click Save.
From the Restaurants app:
Tap Account from the navigation bar at the bottom of your screen.
Tap Items > Modifiers > Manage Modifier Availability.
Toggle off Disable the Stock status of each modifier and the availability status will automatically be updated.
Note: The sold out modifier functionality will not extend to third-party integrations at this time.
Discounts
When you need to set up discounts for things like happy hour or specials, you can use Square’s advanced features to automatically trigger a discount for specified items and timeframes.
Learn more about advanced discounts with Square for Restaurants.
Inventory
Square for Restaurants inventory management gives you basic tools to keep a clear count of in-stock items in your item library. 86ing from the app is great for specific dishes, drinks or appetizers – items you might run out of on a daily or weekly basis. Inventory tracking from your Square Dashboard is geared more towards wholesale items, like liquor or wine bottles.
When you enable inventory levels, you can receive alerts in your dashboard for low-stock or sold out items, so you’ll know when to reorder and restock.
Keep in mind, inventory management works best for finished goods, like beer, wine or merchandise.
New to managing inventory? Make sure to check out our best practices for inventory management.
History
You can view your inventory history and gain insights into the flow of your inventory by viewing historical adjustments.
To get started:
Visit Items & Orders > Items in your online Square Dashboard.
Click on a specific item to bring up the item details page.
Select View Inventory History.
You can filter by location, adjustment type and item variation.