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How do I track items with multiple price variations from the same inventory?

Our company has just recently switched to Square after using QB POS for over ten years. We love how intuitive and userfriendly it is, but there are a few things we're worried Square isn't going to be able to do for us.

 

Many of our items are sold at multiple price points: retail, wholesale, employee, etc... The issue is, we sell those items from the same inventory stock. When you create a new price variation for an item, it seems to automatically create a whole new item whose inventory is to be tracked seperately.

 

Is there a workaround that can help us with this issue? Customer service has submitted this feature request on our behalf, but it's very difficult for us to function day to day when we can't keep accurate track of our inventory. Someone mentioned leaving the price blank until time of sale, but that effects our reports. 

 

Any suggestions?

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21 REPLIES 21

Me too! Any help yet?

 

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 We have the exact same issue and would like to hear back from Square with a solution. 

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I also would like to be able to do this.  I sell items to both wholesale clients as well as retail, and it all comes from the same inventory.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to do this.  😞

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Yes! Me too!! Any word or update on this?

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Square Community Moderator

@wildwoods Nothing new on this as of right now, but it's definitely been raised to our Product Team. 

 

If anything comes up we'll chime back in with updates. 

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Hi,

 

I would like to start tracking inventory but need the inventory to track by Item no matter the variation.

 

E.g. Item = Wine 1

 

Variations are Price #1 = RRP, Price #2 = Case Price, Price #3 = Wholesale.

 

So if I sell one unit at Price #1 and two units at Price #2, then the item inventory for 'Wine 1' comes down by 3.

 

Is this possible OR does Square only allow tracking by variation which would not work for me.

 

Also is it possible to create "bundles / kits" where say I have a six pack box of two units of three wines (2 xWine 1, 2 x wine 2 and 2 xwine 3) , and then have it deduct from the inventory of each "item" individually?

 

Cheers, Brett

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Square Community Moderator

Hi @pokolbinguy

 

I've moved your post over to this existing thread that we're using to track interest in this feature for our Product Team. 

 

You're not able to deduct sales of price variations from the same inventory stock at this time, but there might be a few workarounds that you can implement until we get a better solution out for you. 

 

Leaving the price point blank was one suggestion, and another that I've seen a few sellers use is to create entirely new items for each variation e.g. "Wine - RRP" and "Wine - Case" as their own individual items. 

 

Hopefully we can get something implemented for you all in the near future. Keep an eye out for updates. 

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I too would love a solution to this same problem.

 

In the meantime, what is the suggested inventory correction - or does anyone have a method they've used that works?

 

These were the thoughts I've come up with options however I don't know if they work. Feedback would be most appreciated.

 

Option 1. All inventory is entered and tracked under item Variation #1. Item is a free gift and "sold" at Variation #3 - price $0. After sale manually adjust so inventory is moved to Variation #3. Main question - will Square know to remove the inventory based on the sale that previously happened? (I'm thinking this method would not work - when I look at the Adjustent History on that item it doesn't show the record of the sale. It does show it in the receipt.)

 

Option 2. When customer selects the items they want (buy 3, get 1 free), adjust inventory tracking pre-sale so inventory is moved to correct Variation. Downside to this is adds an additional step and time during check out. I do a lot of on site events and don't always have access to the internet to do adjustment.

 

Option 3. After sale, manaully adjust inventory to remove any items sold under the variaton. Downside - reporting might not be accurate.

 

Anyone have other options/workaround solutions?

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Admin

Hey @CaraColorStreet, thanks for checking in. I had a look through your options and it sounds like two and three may be the most straight-forward. That being said, I understand how having to add steps to the sales process leaves room for possible errors.

 

If you haven't had a chance already, I would also suggest having a look at the following:

 

  • We've partnered with a number of inventory services who may offer a solution that works well for your business. To view a list of current options, head over to the App Marketplace > Items & Inventory.

 

 

Hopefully this helps get you where you need to be. Thank you for your patience as we're always making improvements based on seller feedback.

 

️ Tom | he/him
Seller Community Manager | Square, Inc.
Find step-by-step help in our Support Center
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Items with multiple skus carry description only for the 1st sku's row in an export.  The item name and item category are populated on every exported row but description is not.  This makes reporting description for specific sku types or variations impossible.  Surely it is simpler to populate description for every row instead of making an exception for the rows following the first sku for each item.  Please export description on every row.

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Admin

@AACglass You're right, if you Export your item libray to a spreadsheet the description of the item is not included in the each variations.

 

Can you let me know a bit more about how you're using the description field and why this is important to your business? Your feedback will help our team to understand what you need! 

️ Helen
Seller Community Manager

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I'm using description as a way to classify items and there's no other place for me to set up a classification field.  

 

I need to report sales by this classification.  I can join the catalog items containing the classification/description to the exported item sales and and produce a report of sales by classification.  So far, I have populated the description/classification field manually across all variations for the same item.  I have nearly 2,700 item variations and do not wish to have to continue the manual update of the spreadsheet rows.

 

Besides my problem as described above, it is illogical not to populate description for all variations.  What if I need to report for specific variations?  We use variation for quantity and, if I wanted to report all items for a particular quantity/variation, I would not have description available except for when reporting on the primary sku/variation of the item.

 

Please let me know if you need clarification. Thanks.

 

 

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Admin

Thanks for the additional information @AACglass. I've moved your post to this thread where other sellers are discussing workarounds for tracking variations and @Tom has provided some other resources too. 

 

I will share your feedback to the Inventory team, I do see how manually updating a few thousand item variations is not practical in the long term. Thanks for brining this to our attention.

️ Helen
Seller Community Manager

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Super Seller

Just wondering if this ever got solved by the Product team? Been a number of years and sounds like it’s something desperately wanted by many - we definitely need it too!

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Also wanting this feature to be implemented, its hard to track stock against items when you are offering different price points for the same items.

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It's been almost 4 years since this feature was first requested.

Can you share where this is on your roadmap? 

@Helen @Tom @kevinyien 

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Super Seller

+1 visibility on this, +1 to having visibility on roadmap initiatives in general, not even needing to see epics or anything more detailed!

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Square Community Moderator

Hi there @HALIFAXPRIDE & @ARTIZANSTY Thanks for providing your feedback on this popular feature request.

I understand it can be frustrating when we do not have a feature to meet your business needs. I think this is a great idea and I can see how it would be beneficial to your business.

 

I’ve shared your feature request with our Product Team, as they are constantly improving our products based on feedback like this. To learn more about how feature requests work, please see this post from one of our Seller Community Moderators.

 

In the meantime, keep an eye out for any updates, here, in our Seller Community. We appreciate your input.


I did reach out for suggestions on workarounds for this. The best approach would be to use discounts for wholesale and employee pricing. When component inventory comes out, you could set this up so that multiple variations with different prices come from the same stock bucket.

I hope this information is helpful but please do let us know if you have any additional questions.

Violet
Community Moderator, Square
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Hi community,

 

Did this ever get changed in square? I’m having the same issue years later. Please help!! 

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I got it to work the way I wanted by using "Modifiers" instead of "Options". This lets customers select different variations of an item to come from the same stock pool, and you can set additional costs for each of the modifiers!

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