Conduct full inventory counts with Square for Retail
About full inventory counts
A full inventory count is an examination of your entire stock, where each item’s quantity is physically verified and documented to align actual stock levels with the recorded data.
Before you begin
Learn how to Set inventory permissions with Square for Retail to allow your team members to conduct inventory counts. For periodic audits of a subset of inventory, check out how to Conduct cycle counts with Square for Retail.
Full counts aren’t available while you have a cycle count in progress. Full counts are meant to count every single item in inventory at a location, therefore any uncounted stock is set to zero. In order to avoid having uncounted items set to 0 stock, we recommend using a cycle count.
- From the navigation bar in your Square Retail POS app, tap Inventory > Stock counts.
- Tap Count stock > Full count.
- Tap the search bar at the top of the screen, and select the appropriate variation, and tap Continue.
- Tap the item variation to input a quantity using the number pad, then tap the check mark.
- Repeat this process across all applicable variations.
- Tap Submit progress > Confirm.
- From the navigation bar in your Square Retail POS app, tap Inventory > Stock counts.
- Tap Count stock > Full count.
- Use a compatible barcode scanner or the built-in camera on your iPad or iPhone to scan the item.
- Continue to scan item duplicates individually or tap the item list on the screen to input a quantity using the number pad. Then, tap the check mark.
- Repeat this process across all applicable variations.
- Tap Submit progress > Confirm.
To perform a full count by item category instead of adding items ad-hoc, you can use search filters available as part of item lookup.
To add items to your counting session by category:
- From the navigation bar in your Square Retail POS app, tap Inventory > Stock counts.
- Tap Count stock > Full count or select an existing full count that is in progress.
- Tap the search bar at the top of the screen, then click on the Filter icon next to the search bar.
- Select an item category you would like to count inventory for and tap Show Results.
- From the list of results, you can either select specific items or click on Select All.
- Tap Confirm when done selecting your items.
Once you have finished adding items to your counting session, you can tap any item or variation and enter a quantity for it. After you complete counting all of your items, tap Submit Progress to save your work.
Multiple devices can be used to contribute to a full count. To perform a full count with multiple devices via your Square Retail POS app:
- On your primary iOS device, start a full count by clicking Count Stock in the ‘Stock count’ tab.
- Once a full count has been started on an initial device, navigate to Inventory > Stock counts on your secondary device(s).
- From your list of stock counts, tap on the Full count you created on the primary device listed as In progress. Do not create a new full count on the secondary device, as all devices should contribute to a single in-progress full count at a time.
- On the ‘Full count details’ screen, you can choose to Count items or View count summary. You will also see the options to Delete count or Start review with your secondary device(s) but these may not be relevant when a count is in progress.
Stock counts with multiple devices can only be done with Full counts. All devices contributing to the full count must be logged into the Square Retail POS app and assigned to the same location.
You can save or cancel a full count at any time by tapping the X icon next to Stock count in the corner of your screen. You’ll see a pop-up that says Save Changes, and you can either save and close or discard without saving.