Conduct, review, and approve inventory counts
About inventory counts
You have two inventory count options–full and cycle counts.
A full inventory count is a full accounting of your entire stock, where each item’s quantity is physically verified and documented to align actual stock levels with the recorded data.
A cycle count is a periodic auditing process where a subset of your inventory is counted at regular intervals to maintain accurate stock levels and identify discrepancies.
Before you begin
You can conduct inventory counts from your Square Retail POS app and review the inventory counts from your Square Dashboard or Square Retail POS app.
You need to review and approve the count after running a full inventory count. Be sure you have counted every item on hand before submitting a count for review.
Full counts are meant to count every single item in inventory at a location, therefore any uncounted stock is set to zero. In order to avoid having uncounted items set to 0 stock, we recommend using a cycle count.
It is recommended to conduct a cycle count for each item variation at least once every 90 days.
Items not included in a cycle count are unaffected and inventory levels remain the same.
With Square for Retail Plus, you can conduct inventory counts at regular intervals to maintain accurate stock levels.
Conduct a full inventory count
You have multiple options to conduct a full inventory count.
- Open the Retail POS app, then tap Inventory > Stock counts.
- Tap Count stock > Full count.
- Tap the search bar at the top of the screen, and select the appropriate variation, and tap Continue.
- Tap the item variation to input a quantity using the number pad, then tap the check mark.
- Repeat this process across all applicable variations.
- Tap Submit progress > Confirm.
- Open the Retail POS app, then tap Inventory > Stock counts.
- Tap Count stock > Full count.
- Use a compatible barcode scanner or the built-in camera on your iPad or iPhone to scan the item.
- Continue to scan item duplicates individually or tap the item list on the screen to input a quantity using the number pad. Then, tap the check mark.
- Repeat this process across all applicable variations.
- Tap Submit progress > Confirm.
- Open the Retail POS app, then tap Inventory > Stock counts.
- Tap Count stock > Full count or select an existing full count that is in progress.
- Tap the search bar at the top of the screen, then click on the Filter icon next to the search bar.
- Select an item category you would like to count inventory for and tap Show Results.
- From the list of results, you can either select specific items or click on Select All.
- Tap Confirm when done selecting your items.
Once you have finished adding items to your counting session, you can tap any item or variation and enter a quantity for it. After you complete counting all of your items, tap Submit Progress to save your work.
Multiple devices can be used to contribute to a full count. To perform a full count with multiple devices via your Square Retail POS app:
- On your primary iOS device, start a full count by clicking Count Stock in the ‘Stock count’ tab.
- Once a full count has been started on an initial device, navigate to Inventory > Stock counts on your secondary device(s).
- From your list of stock counts, tap on the Full count you created on the primary device listed as In progress. Do not create a new full count on the secondary device, as all devices should contribute to a single in-progress full count at a time.
- On the ‘Full count details’ screen, you can choose to Count items or View count summary. You will also see the options to Delete count or Start review with your secondary device(s) but these may not be relevant when a count is in progress.
Stock counts with multiple devices can only be done with Full counts. All devices contributing to the full count must be logged into the Square Retail POS app and assigned to the same location.
You can save or cancel a full count at any time by tapping the X icon next to Stock count in the corner of your screen. You’ll see a pop-up that says Save Changes, and you can either save and close or discard without saving.
Review and approve full inventory count
You can review and approve a full inventory count from your Square Dashboard or Square POS app.
- Sign in to your Square Dashboard, click Items > Inventory management > Stock counts.
- Select a full count that is in progress. Then, click Start review. Uncounted variations will have their stock set to zero once the reviewed count is approved. To view a summary without submitting for review, click Cancel > View count summary to view this count.
- Verify that all counts are correct from the Review results screen.
- To sort the list, tap Sort and select an option from the list. You can sort the list by Variance (Count), Variance (Cost), or alphabetically using the Alphabetical function.
- To override a line item count, click the line item and click Override count. Then, enter the correct count, and click Done.
- To add missing items to the count, return to the Stock counts view and click the count that has the ‘In review’ status. Tap Retract from review > Confirm and the count will go back to In progress. Once the count goes back to In progress, new items can be counted using the iOS app. When you are finished with the count, you will need to resubmit the count for review.
- Once all line items have been reviewed, click Confirm.
- Open the Retail POS app, then tap Inventory > Stock counts.
- From this list, tap a Full count listed as In Progress. Then, tap Start review.
- Uncounted variations will have their stock set to zero once the reviewed count is approved. To view a summary without submitting for review, tap Cancel > View count summary to view this count.
- Verify that all counts are correct from the ‘Review results’ screen:
- To sort the list, tap Sort and select an option from the list. You can sort the list by Variance (Count), Variance (Cost), or alphabetically using the Alphabetical function.
- To override a line item count, tap the line item and tap Override count. Then, enter the correct count, tap the check mark, and tap Done.
- To add missing items to the count, return to the Stock counts view and tap the count that has the “In review” status. Tap Retract from review > Confirm and the count will go back to In progress. To add missing variations to the count, tap Resume count. When you are finished with the count, you will need to resubmit the count for review.
- Once all line items have been reviewed, tap Confirm.
All line items must be reviewed before tapping Confirm: this action cannot be undone. Once your full inventory count has been approved, the Stock counts status will display as Completed.
Complete a cycle count
You have two options to complete a cycle count from your Retail POS app.
- Open the Retail POS app, then tap Inventory > Stock counts.
- Tap Count stock > Cycle count.
- Tap the search bar at the top of the screen and select the appropriate variation. Then, tap Continue.
- Tap the item variation to input a quantity using the number pad, then tap the check mark.
- Repeat this process across all applicable variations.
- Tap Next > Confirm.
- Open the Retail POS app, then tap Inventory > Stock counts.
- Tap Count stock > Cycle count.
- Use a compatible barcode scanner or the built-in camera on your iPad or iPhone to scan the item.
- Continue to scan item duplicates individually, or tap the item list on the screen to input a quantity using the number pad. Then, tap the check mark.
- Repeat this process across all applicable variations.
- Tap Next > Confirm.