Does the Stock multiplier function on variations only work for the pro version?

Yes, multiplying product stock requires functionality only available in the full version. In the lite version multipliers only affect attribute stock quantities, but not product stock quantities.

Thanks, I went ahead and purchased the full version and the multipliers are working now, but I noticed that my product inventory doesn’t sync back to Square when a sale is made.

e.g. – I made a test purchase of the 8oz variation of the product in the screenshots below. The inventory in Woocommerce was correctly reduced by 8, per the stock multiplier. However, this 8 oz reduction in inventory was not synced to Square. I am assuming this is because the “Send product data to Square” box is not checked on the General tab, but as you can see in the second screenshot, that option is greyed out with a message about adding a SKU to every variation. But I do have a SKU on every variation. They product and each variation are all the same SKU, 4009.

Any idea here what I’m doing wrong? How can I get it to allow me to check the box to sync the inventory to Square?

Hi again. Thanks for the purchase and glad to hear you got the multipliers working.

I can’t begin to guess why syncing to Square is disabled / not working. Unfortunately I don’t have any experience with syncing products to Square. All I can say is that our plugin shouldn’t affect this in any way.

I’d recommend reading carefully through the guides/instructions for the Square sync plugin you’re using, otherwise reach out to their support for assistance.

Have you tried removing the SKUs from the variations? Since stock is only enabled at the product level so technically none of the variations should have an SKU.

If this doesn’t work you’ll definitely need to contact the Square plugin’s support and ask why it’s not possible to sync product-level stock of variable products.

I reached out to the WooCommerce Square Sync support and they basically said that it won’t work to use variations in this way and still have it sync to Square: https://www.ads-software.com/support/topic/why-cant-i-sync-variations-to-square-that-are-just-a-multiple-of-one-sku/

Do you have any idea what they are talking about when they said this:

“Maybe they can find a way to count the product as “single” for the Square Sync (since this is technically counted as a single product, not a variable product, inventory-wise).”

Hi @the_tim,

I think what they’re trying to say is that even if you could sync this product to Square, the Square system itself doesn’t actually support items with variations where stock is set at the product-level instead of on each variation. Even though this is possible in WooCommerce (even without our plugin), each variation in Square MUST have its own separate stock level.

The problem here is that even if we could add in a compatibility layer that tricks Square into thinking these are normal variations that each have their own stock levels, if for example all the 2oz stock gets used up in Square, it won’t automatically reduce the stock for the other oz options. So you’d have zero 2oz stock but still have stock of 4oz, etc. This poses difficult problem as stock will easily go out of sync.

I’m happy to hear your thoughts on this, and if there’s an acceptable usage you can think of while keeping in mind the constraints of item stock functionality on Square.

I don’t know enough about the underlying way the WooCommerce plugins work, but would there be some way to have an option checkbox at the product level that determines how the inventory is managed, basically fake a “variable product” to look like a “simple product” for inventory purposes?

Yes it’s possible to essentially spoof a product’s type. Of course this means the product in Square would be a simple product without any options/variations. But I suppose that’s a fair compromise.

The other issue is that variable product don’t have a price. Do your products in Square have prices? How would you price this “simple” product in Square?

That’s what I’m trying to say. It already is just a simple product in Square. In-store, on the Square POS we just sell it in whatever quantity people want. We pull up the item and type in the quantity. I am trying to use the variable swatches and multiplier function on the website so that it will sync with the simple product in Square.

Yes I understand. But does the price not get synced between WooCommerce and Square? Does only stock get synced?

Oh yes, sorry. In my ideal world, I could set one price for the base SKU, have it sync between WooCommerce and Square, and also have the price of each “variant” just be the base price times the “stock multiplier” value I set. However, I’d also be OK with it the way it is now, where I just have to set the price of each variant manually.

The important thing to me is that the inventory gets synced.

Ok please reach out to us on our premium support channel so we can work with you to create an addon for this.