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Managing Items with Square for Restaurants

Updating Item Availability

You can update availability of items right in your Square for Restaurants POS App. Check out the full comparison of features between Square for Restaurants Free, Plus and Premium Plans.

Manually Make Items Unavailable

To manually remove an item on the fly, log in to your Square for Restaurants app:

  1. Press and hold the item tile you’d like to make unavailable.

  2. Scroll down and select Manage stock next to the item or variation you’d like to mark as unavailable.

  3. 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.

Automatically Make Items Unavailable

You can also set up automatic item removal 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:

  1. From the Restaurants app, tap and hold a menu item.

  2. Select Manage Stock and select Stock Received to enter stock for that particular item or variation.

  3. 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.

Mark Modifiers as Sold Out

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 remove modifiers from your online Square Dashboard.

  1. Visit the Items page and select Modifiers > Create Modifier Set.

  2. Toggle off Disable the Stock status of each modifier and click Save.

From the Restaurants app:

  1. Tap Account from the navigation bar at the bottom of your screen.

  2. Tap Items > Modifiers > Manage Modifier Availability.

  3. 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 time frames.

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. Removing items from the app is great for specific dishes, drinks or appetizers – items you might run out of on a daily or weekly basis.

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.

Support for decimal quantities in the Restaurants app is something our team is actively working on.

New to managing inventory? Make sure to check out our best practices for inventory management.

Manage Items and Inventory in Bulk

The Item Import tool allows you to download a report of your current item library and manage items in bulk.

To get started:

  1. Visit Items & Orders > Items in your online Square Dashboard.

  2. Click Actions > Import Library.

  3. Select Modify Item Library to add new items and update existing items, or Replace Item Library to delete all existing items and replace them with your uploaded items.

  4. Click Next > Download your item library. Choose between Excel (recommended) or CSV file.

  5. Open the file and add or edit items as needed.

  6. Save the updated file to your computer.

  7. Drag and drop the file into the upload area of the Import Inventory window or click select it from your computer > Upload.

  8. Review your changes and click Confirm to upload your new item library.

To print this information for your records, Visit Item Library > click Actions > Export Library and follow the on-screen prompts.

Library File Field Descriptions
Token Your Square Dashboard will automatically populate this token. If you are importing a new item, leave this field blank. If you are editing items, do not change the token.
Item Name Can include numbers, letters or symbols. Maximum 128 characters.
Description Can include numbers, letters or symbols. Maximum 1024 characters.
Category Can include numbers, letters or symbols. Maximum 128 characters.
SKU Each variation should be assigned a unique SKU.
Variation Name Can include numbers, letters or symbols. Maximum 128 characters.
Unit and Precision Unit type and precision. The precision helps you keep track of your inventory and item sales price by allowing you to set the item count up to the hundred-thousandths place (.00000).
Auto Add Item to Bill Y (yes) or N (no). Choose items to automatically add to the bill without displaying additional options during order entry.
Price Numeric. Must be £0.00 or greater (a fixed price needs to be a positive number). You can also leave blank or write in ‘Variable’ to indicate a variable price.
Enabled [Your Location Name] Y (yes) or N (no). This will set your item as visible in individual locations. If you only have one location and see this column, make sure all items are set to Yes.
Current Quantity [Your Location Name] Numeric. If you are using Inventory Management this is the current quantity of this item defined as in stock. Changes to this field are ignored on import.
New Quantity [Your Location Name] Numeric. If you are using Inventory Management, enter your current stock count here. This count will replace any existing stock count.
Stock Alert Enabled [Your Location Name] If you are using Inventory Management, you can set Y (yes) or N (no) to enable or disable items for inventory alerts.
Stock Alert Count [Your Location Name] Numeric. If you are using Inventory Management, and have alerts enabled, this is the quantity at which you will be alerted.
Price [Your Location Name] Numeric.
Tax [Your Tax Name] If you have created a tax, set to Y (yes) or N (no) to apply it to the item.

History

You can view your inventory history and gain insights into the flow of your inventory by viewing historical adjustments.

To get started:

  1. Visit Items & Orders > Items in your online Square Dashboard.

  2. Click on a specific item to bring up the item details page.

  3. Select View Inventory History.

History

You can filter by location, adjustment type and item variation.

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