Re: Inventory setup

LunchPad · ‎06-09-2017

I'm trying to have Square manage my inventory for my food cart business.
For example, if I sell one (1) "Meal Deal", I need Square to go in and adjust my base stock levels to reflect that I used two (2) hot-dogs, two (2) hot-dog buns, one soda and one bag of chips. Whereas if I sell a "Big Man's Meal", I need it to adjust for three hot-dogs/buns and two drinks.
I've looked and looked but cannot see how I can have the inventory feature work like this. I've read on the web it's possible.
Help me please.

EJ_ · ‎06-12-2017

Hi @LunchPad

The basic inventory features are tracked on a per-item basis, so if you create a "Meal Deal" item, it will not reduce inventory for other individual items that exist in your Item Library.

In order to track the sale of these items, you'll need to add each item to the sale.

I can see how this would be a helpful feature, so I'll let our Product Team know this is something you'd like to see going forward.

Hopefully a fellow seller that has a similar need can share a workaround that they use for their business.

Gigis · ‎06-15-2017

Fantastic idea of tracking a bundled product, but unfortunately I can't think of a way of doing it in Square. (Please if there is someone who knows how please post!). Items in Square are very simple and can not be bundled.

As a food cart business I'm sure your tablet Point of Sale is your main device, but unfortunately you can't even update or view your inventory from the POS! This feature has been asked and asked for but as you saw you just get the standard we are looking into it. We are a mainstreet business and more and more businesses up and down from us ask in our month merchant meetings about this feature in Square. One business has moved on to Clover and we are waiting to hear about their experience with regard to entering and viewing inventory at POS.

A work around for Square would require for you to use a computer (windows,mac,chromebook), login to square.com and export your transactions on a daily basis into a spread sheet and with some clever spread sheet work you could "expand" your bundled items back to the basic items. Next you could export your items from the square website, update the inventory and import that back to Square. So yes it can be done, it will require some spreadsheet wizard work.