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Track your inventory with Square for Retail

What’s in this article?
Who is this article for?
This article is for business owners and their team members with inventory permissions who want to track their inventory and item variations and enable or disable stock tracking from their online Square Dashboard. Learn more about Square Staff and custom permissions.

About inventory tracking

With Square for Retail Plus, you can set up inventory tracking by default for any item variations created by you or your team members through your online Square Dashboard, Square for Retail app (Free and Plus) or Square Online.

Before you begin

Your device needs to be compatible with Square for Retail in order to Create and Manage Item Options with Square. Learn more about Square for Retail by device.

Set up inventory tracking

You can enable inventory tracking by default for any item variations created by you or your team through your online Square Dashboard, Square Online, or Square for Retail app (Free and Plus plans). To do so:

  1. Log into your online Square Dashboard and go to Items & orders > Items.

  2. Click Settings > Inventory.

  3. Toggle on Enable inventory tracking for new items.

Enable inventory tracking settings on Retail Dashboard

If you have already created items and want to make sure tracking is turned on for all items in your library:

  1. Go to Items > Settings > Inventory from your online Square Dashboard.

  2. Ensure the toggle for Enable inventory tracking for new items is on.

  3. Click Enable for all existing items. This will turn on inventory tracking for all items and set the stock count to zero for items that have no stock added previously.

  4. Click Enable tracking to confirm.

Bulk enable inventory on Dashboard with Retail

The setting Enable for all existing items is automatically disabled until you toggle on Enable inventory tracking for new items.

Turn off stock tracking for all items

The import tool allows you to download a report of your current inventory and update your inventory quantities in bulk. This is especially helpful for adding new inventory and verifying current stock.

To download an inventory report or make updates to your inventory in bulk:

  1. Go to your Item Library from your online Square Dashboard.

  2. Click Actions > Export Library.

  3. Update your Current Quantity [Location] and New Quantity [Location] values in this report and save the Excel (XLSX) or CSV file to your computer. Note: At this time, Excel and CSV file templates are the only supported file types for bulk import. Custom templates aren’t supported.

  4. Drag and drop your saved file to the Import Inventory window, then click Upload > Confirm > Done.

Print inventory

To print this information for your records:

  1. Log into your online Square Dashboard go to Item Library.

  2. Click Actions > Export Library and follow the on-screen prompts.

Disable inventory tracking

  1. Go to Items > Settings > Inventory from your online Square Dashboard.

  2. Click the Enable inventory tracking for new items toggle to disable inventory tracking. The toggle must be to the left and greyed out to disable inventory tracking.

To disable inventory tracking in bulk, you must export and reimport your item library. To do so:

  1. Export your item library.

  2. Paste "N" in the New Quantity [Your Location Name] column for all variations.

  3. Import the newly altered file back into Square.

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