Managing inventory (Square)

Hi @ddas

Thanks for reaching out!

I am trying to edit my available stock, but for some reason, the last three things I mentioned above are preventing me from editing inventory numbers. But I think I have all the right options checked to be able to manage inventory in WooCommerce. Can anyone help me figure out why it’s not editable and manageable in WooCommerce?

I understand that you’re unable to edit the inventory settings of your products that are synced to Square, correct?

When WooCommerce is set as the?Sync Setting, inventory changes in WooCommerce overwrite Square inventory. When Square is set as the?Sync Setting, inventory cannot be changed in WooCommerce, and will always be pulled from Square. Regardless of your?Sync Setting, inventory is pulled from Square?every hour?to account for POS sales. Any inventory editing needs to happen at Square.

In such cases, any inventory editing needs to happen at Square. So even with WooCommerce as SOR, any change to the product name/price/image/category will sync into Square, but Square will always have the final say when it comes to stock.

Hope this helps!

Thank you so much for this response.

Your bottom line conclusion makes sense — thanks for clarifying. But I can’t help but feeling like this is designed in a very confusing way. In several places in the UI, there’s settings that imply WooCommerce can be the “master” regarding not only overall sync but also inventory control.

And even in your paragraph above, I think you have a contradiction: you say: “When WooCommerce is set as the?Sync Setting, inventory changes in WooCommerce overwrite Square inventory.” But then you say “Regardless of your?Sync Setting, inventory is pulled from Square?every hour?to account for POS sales.” It seems to me like your first sentence is false — if WooCommerce is set as the sync setting, inventory changes in WooCommerce do NOT overwrite Square inventory. And in my original post, I documented how I was unable to write inventory changes into WooCommerce.

But bottom line: thank you for the help. I’ll make all my inventory changes in Square. (Even though I don’t really understand why it’s hypothetically possible to change them in WooCommerce!)

Hello @ddas,

“When WooCommerce is set as the?Sync Setting, inventory changes in WooCommerce overwrite Square inventory.” But then you say “Regardless of your?Sync Setting, inventory is pulled from Square?every hour?to account for POS sales.” It seems to me like your first sentence is false — if WooCommerce is set as the sync setting, inventory changes in WooCommerce do NOT overwrite Square inventory. And in my original post, I documented how I was unable to write inventory changes into WooCommerce.

Thank you so much for your valuable feedback!

I understand how this might seem a bit confusing. I’ll be reporting this to the team to consider adding some examples in the documentation.

Just to clarify, if an order is made in your online store and WooCommerce is set as your sync settings, the inventory will be updated in Square. For example, if the product in Square was initially 50 in stock it will be decreased to 49 after a WooCommerce purchase (WooCommerce is in control).

Now, after that initial WooCommerce sale, let’s say 6 customers purchased this product in your physical store. Consequently, the stock was reduced to 43. This new stock count of 43 will then be synced back to WooCommerce every hour to account for the POS sales. That’s why we advise any any inventory editing needs to happen at Square.

I really hope I’m not making things more confusing here with my explanation. :?)