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Use stock conversion with Square for Retail

Who is this article for?
  • Sellers with general items and inventory permissions. Set permissions in the Square Dashboard.
  • Square for Retail Plus subscribers.
  • About Stock conversion 

    With stock conversion, you can manage inventory when selling items in different units of measure. For example, if your retail business sells wine by the bottle and by the glass, you can 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. Stock Conversion allows you to:

    • Break stock of an item into smaller components to allow for easier tracking and management.

    • Save time in receiving and stock tracking by using units of measure that match how you receive and count items.

    • Supports those who sell an item by multiple units (i.e. 6 ounces, bottle) and want to use a single source of inventory to generate different views of that inventory.

    Before you begin

    You can set up your stock conversion in Square Dashboard, and edit your sell-by units in both Square Dashboard and the Retail POS app.

    Before you set up your stock conversion, you should learn how to create and edit items.

    Stock conversion calculations must be made based on the stocking unit (e.g. per bottle, not per glass).

    Create a stock conversion 

    1. Sign in to your Square Dashboard, then go to Items > Item Library from your .

    2. Select an existing item or click Create an Item.

    3. Under "Units," select Add unit.

    4. Select a unit, or create a new one, like "glass".

    5. Select the precision. For new units, enter an abbreviation. Click Create.

    6. Under "Conversion," enter the conversion details specific to the item variation. For example, a conversion for a bottle of wine might be "4 glasses are equal to 1 bottle".

    7. Click Done > Save.

    Edit sell-by unit

    1. Open the Retail app

    2. Select the unit you want to edit > Edit custom unit screen

    3. Add custom details > click Save.

    Note that this can also apply to situations where stock-by is a custom unit but sell-by is a standard unit.

    Delete sell-by unit

    There are two ways to delete your sell-by units from your Retail POS app.

    Option 1: Items details

    1. Open the Retail POS app.
    2. Select the Unit you want to delete and click on the X at the end.
    3. In the Remove unit popup, click Remove.

    Option 2: On the unit

    1. Open the Retail POS app.
    2. Select the Unit you want to delete.
    3. An Edit Unit screen will appear > click Remove.

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