Ensure customers are never disappointed and keep your kitchen and front of house in sync.
There's nothing more awkward than taking an order for a table, only to find out that the item is actually sold out, or there's only one left and it was ordered twice on the table. No longer! Product availability aka product countdown lets you make products available or not available and counts down the amount remaining as you sell out.
With this Lightspeed feature you can have full control of which staff members can make updates (see how to set up the Edit Product Availability permission here). And, the update on availability only needs to happen once, on one register, which will instantly sync to all other registers!
What's In This Guide?
Enabling Product Availability on POS | 2 minutes
Disable products | 2 minutes
Set limited availability | 2 minutes
Before you begin
You'll need:
- the Manage or Extend POS Plan
- to be logged in as a staff member with the Edit Product Availability permission
Enabling Product Availability on POS
- Select Features in Back Office, then choose Product Availability on POS
- Select Enable
Disable products
Sold out? Make the product unavailable.
Disabling a product will make it appear greyed out and it will also prevent your staff from selling it through POS.
- From the sales screen on POS, select the three-bar menu at the top left
- Choose Product Availability
- Select an item to open its Product availability settings
- Switch off the Product available toggle. Hit Save
- When you've finished adjusting product availibility hit Exit to leave editing mode
Set limited availability
When a product is limited, you can set the availability function and watch the automatic countdown, reflecting how many items are still left.
- From the sales screen on POS, select the three-bar menu at the top left
- Choose Product Availability
- Select an item to open its Product availability settings
- Switch on the Limit product amount toggle
- Enter the amount you have of the product
- Select Save
- When you've finished adjusting product availability, hit Exit to leave editing mode
Frequently Asked Questions
After enabling Product Availability on POS, which products will I be able to disable or set a limit for?
All products and variants can be disabled or have a limit applied to them. Even those within an Option Set. Product Availability cannot be applied to modifiers in a category or an option set.
Does Product Availability on POS take into consideration my Stock Counts and Purchases?
Product Availability on POS is manually set by staff; and is a separate number entirely from the back office "inventory" system. The recorded values from Stock Counts and updates from Purchase orders will not impact products availability settings; it's best to consider these numbers unrelated.
Does Product Availability work with orders through a third-party platforms?
It is supported by Bopple, Deliverect, LOKE and me&u. Online Orders will be blocked if an incoming order uses a product that is "out of stock" according to Product Availability, so you are protected from receiving orders for products you won't have.
Please note that this feature does cause issues with our Shopify integration, and we do not recommend enabling PA on any product you also sell through Shopify.
What's next?
Let your staff and team take control of Product Availability and give them the Edit Product Availability permission.
Learn more about managing your products from our relevant guides in our Help Centre.