Stock Conversion: Sell-by
With Stock Conversion, Square for Retail subscribers can manage inventory when selling items in different units of measure. Tracking at the component or ingredient level is beneficial to know:
How much of your cash flow is tied up in your component inventory
How much you can sell of a given item that is composed of components
How much does your finished product cost as a total input costs
What your margins are for a sale
When to order more component ingredients or WIP inventory
How to measure lost waste, spoilage, theft, or inaccurate portions in your business.
Stock Conversion
If you need to track inventory for items you sell in multiple units, you can do so by utilising the stock conversion feature in your Item Library. For example, if your retail business sells wine by the bottle and by the glass, you can now track all of your inventory on a single item variation so that whether you sell it by the bottle or by the glass, the inventory is reduced.
To get started:
Go to Items & Orders > Items > Item Library from your online Square Dashboard.
Select an existing item or click Create an Item.
Under "Variations," select Add unit in the price field, or select Edit variation details > Add unit. If your item contains multiple variations, select the variation name, and then from the Edit variation details modal, select Add unit.
Select a unit, or create a new one, like "glass".
Select the precision. For new units, enter an abbreviation. Click Create.
Under "Conversion," enter the conversion details specific to the item variation. For example, a conversion for a bottle of wine might be "4 glasses is equal to 1 bottle".
Click Done > Save.
You can add multiple units to any item that does not use Item options. This process can be repeated for any additional items sold in multiple units.
Note: If you are tracking stock for an item, the stock column in the Variations table will display the quantity of that item available in each unit. (In the example below, there are either 12.5 bottles of the 2018 wine available, or 50 glasses available).
Sell Your Inventory
From the Square Retail app:
Go to Items and select the item you’d like to sell.
Select the Variation you’d like to sell, then select Add to cart.
If there are multiple unit types for a single variation, you’ll need to select the variation and then select the unit.
Input the quantity by selecting the item.
A new screen will pop up. Type the quantity and select Done.
Select Add to cart, and the item will now be in your customer’s order. There are a number of ways the by-unit information will differ as it is displayed throughout your reports and online Square Dashboard.