Square Bolsters Its Retail Management App With New Inventory Management Tools

Square Inc. announced Thursday the addition of three inventory-management features to its cloud-based retail-management app, Square for Retail. Merchants can use the new features to build an inventory library, track inventory by warehouse or store, transfer stock as needed, and reorder inventory with one click.

The new features arrive as Square looks to cement its position with its growing base of sellers and as those sellers look for ways to cope with a rising tide of e-commerce sales. Seller gross payment volume for 2020’s fourth quarter totaled $29.4 billion, up 5% year-over-year. And Square merchants continue to get larger on average, with sellers at or above $500,000 in annual volume accounting for 30% of total Square processing volume in the quarter, up from 28% a year earlier.

The new features, which were among the most requested by merchants, are intended to provide sellers with more control over how their inventory is managed and counted, and make re-ordering more efficient. 

The Easy Item Create tool allows merchants to quickly build an inventory library by matching new items in their catalog to information in Square’s system by scanning a UPC barcode. Inventory is listed by the name of the item, item image, and other information.

The Quick Inventory Counting feature makes it easier for merchants to run small inventory counts more often by scanning the barcode on the item in stock, which in turn keeps their stock accurate on an ongoing basis. Merchants can scan either a manufacturer’s barcode or an SKU to count inventory as long as it’s associated with the item being counted within the Square system.

Retailers add the barcodes to their item when they create them in Square Catalog for the first time. Square for Retail supports manufacturer barcodes such as UPC, EAN, or ISBN, as well as SKUs that are entirely customizable by the Retailer.

The Smart Stock Alerts tool forecasts how long available inventory will last based on sales, and alerts merchants when inventory is running low. A re-order button allows merchants to re-order with a single click. 

“These new features help streamline and automate many of the most difficult parts of inventory management,” Roshan Jhunja, general manager, Square for Retail, says by email. “Sellers can spend less time wrangling their inventory and more time with their customers and building out new channels and new ways to sell.” 

With the Covid-19 pandemic prompting merchants to sell across multiple channels, including online, social media, and in-store, the need to keep up-to-date inventory counts has taken on greater importance. A recent survey by Square reveals that 88% of merchants are selling online and that sales through social media account for 40% of revenues for online retailers. The survey also shows that 74% of retailers plan on using real-time inventory technology this year.

“A retailer selling a popular product online that actually turns out to be out of stock creates a negative experience for the customer and additional work for staff,” Jhunja says. “We released these features to better enable any retailer to confidently sell any way they want.”

Square for Retail has two subscription options: Square for Retail Free, which is available at no cost to merchants, and Square for Retail Plus, for which merchants pay $60 per month, per location.

“Inventory can be tedious to manage, costly to maintain, and labor-intensive,” says Jhunja. “Many other retail systems are strong in one area, like online selling or inventory management. This means that sellers are left cobbling together a number of different systems to effectively run their business. Square for Retail offers a cohesive ecosystem of tools for retailers, and these new inventory features continue to strengthen the value of the overall package we can provide to retailers.”