Track Your Square Inventory
To create a seamless checkout experience for your customers, you can track and manage your inventory to help prevent overselling—this will allow customers to only purchase available goods or services. Inventory tracking is available via the Square POS app on all Square devices, online Square Dashboard, Square Invoices, or your Square Online website.
Track Inventory with Stock Alerts
If an item’s in-stock quantity count falls below the alert threshold, a low stock alert is generated. Stock alerts can be viewed in two ways:
From Items > Item Library in your online Square Dashboard, items that have low stock and have stock alerts enabled will have a yellow notification in the Stock on Hand column.
Stock alert notification emails are sent to the email address associated with your Square account daily if any item with alerts enabled falls below the alert threshold. The email will list any items that fell below the alert threshold today, as well as any other items that fell below the alert threshold on previous days.
You can disable email alerts for an item by unchecking the "Alert" box for that item selecting the item and scrolling down to Edit Stock Tracking > Alert toggle off. Additionally, you can configure your email notifications from the Email Notifications tab on your online Square Dashboard.
Note: Keep Track enabled to continue tracking stock for the item.
Inventory in the Square App
When you complete a sale with Square, inventory stock automatically decreases to reflect the updated item count.
Sold out items will not block a sale for purchases accepted with Square. Your inventory will be updated accurately on both your POS and your online Square Dashboard, but you still can complete sales for sold out items.
Reserve Inventory for Unpaid Orders
Track your inventory by:
Items available to sell at any given time
Items included in open (unpaid) orders
Items in your overall inventory
With inventory tracking enabled, you can view the current stock on hand plus the number of items available to sell. When you add item variations to an open ticket and send the ticket to the kitchen, these variations are marked as Committed and the Available to Sell count decreases by the number of units added to the ticket. When item variations are sent to the kitchen, they are no longer available to sell online or in person because those items are claimed in an unpaid ticket.
To turn on inventory tracking for unpaid orders:
Tap Items > and select an item.
Tap Manage Stock for the item variation you want to track as committed inventory.
Select Receive Stock.
Enter the amount of inventory on hand for that item.
Select Save.
To view stock for unpaid orders in app:
From the navigation bar at the bottom of your screen, tap ≡ More > Items
In the Stock Details section, scroll down to Committed. until the ticket is paid for. The Stock on Hand and Committed counts will decrease in number once the ticket is paid.
Note: The Available to Sell and Committed counts will not extend to 3rd party integrations at this time. If an item tracking stock becomes unavailable, the available/unavailable state will continue to sync with third party integrations.
View and Edit Inventory in the Square App
You can view how much stock you have for a particular item and make adjustments right from the Square app.
From the navigation bar at the bottom of your screen, tap ≡ More > Items.
Create or select an existing item.
Enter a stock amount under the item details or tap Prices, Sizes, or SKUs to add stock to an item with multiple variations.
To adjust stock, tap the stock amount > select a reason > enter the amount to be adjusted.
Tap Save.
You can also go straight to step 3 by pressing and holding an item from your in-app items grid.
Inventory for Square Online Sales
When your customer places an order online, your inventory is reduced immediately. To finalize the sale and update item count, navigate to Orders and complete the order.
Stock count depends on the current status of an order:
If an order is canceled, your stock will automatically adjust to reflect actual item count.
If an item is sold out, customers will see the item listed as Sold Out in your online store. Customers will not be able to add sold out items to their cart or purchase sold out items on your online store.
If an order is refunded, your stock count will not automatically increase for returned items. You can manually adjust your stock count to reflect the returned item.
Inventory with Square for Retail
With Square for Retail Plus, you can manage your inventory on-the-go from the Square for Retail POS app on iOS devices, Square Terminal and Square Register, as well as your online Square Dashboard.
Learn how to Track Your Inventory with Square for Retail. You can also learn how to Manage Inventory With The Retail POS App.
Inventory for Invoices
Invoices Inventory Management allows variation availability counts—also known as "committed stock"—at selected locations to automatically decrease once an invoice is paid. This feature helps prevent overselling stock prior to the customer paying the invoice.
When creating a new invoice, you will receive a warning if you do not have enough inventory available to sell in the selected location. You can identify which invoices or Square Online orders are attached to the committed stock under “Line Items.”
To use this feature:
Make sure that you are tracking stock on any of the items that you want to use this feature.
Verify that the adjust inventory levels through invoices setting is enabled (this is enabled by default).
To enable this feature:
Go to Items & orders > Items from your online Square Dashboard.
Click Settings > Inventory.
Toggle on Enable inventory management for invoices.
Choose applicable locations or select All Locations.
Click Save.
Now you will see an orange banner if items in your invoice don’t have enough stock available or are sold out. If stock levels have changed or if you’ve received new stock, click Manage Stock to update your inventory prior to sending the invoice.
Note: Committed stock will show two values; one that shows how much stock is available, and one that shows your stock on hand count. Making a stock commitment will adjust the available to sell amount, but the stock on hand won't update until the invoice has been paid.