Clover's native inventory is an item catalog with stock counts — genuinely useful, and narrower than most merchants expect when they go looking for reordering features. What's native: items with quantities, categories, modifiers, variants, and automatic "sold out" handling when stock hits zero. What arrived only in April 2026: native low stock alerts — a per-item threshold that notifies you when the count falls below it (currently North America only). What still doesn't exist natively, on any plan: purchase orders, vendor records, receiving, or any reorder automation — Clover's data model simply has no vendor or PO objects, and Clover's own blog points merchants to App Market apps for ordering.
This guide maps exactly what each Clover plan includes, how to use the new alerts, what the App Market apps add, and where the buying loop actually runs.
What's native, by plan
From Clover's official service-plan documentation:
| Plan | Inventory capability |
|---|---|
| Payments / Payments Plus | None — payments, employees, customers only |
| Essentials | "Simple inventory and order management" — the item catalog with stock counts |
| Register | Adds modifiers, modifier groups, and variants (sizes, colors) |
| Counter / Table Service Restaurant | Register-level inventory plus restaurant features |
Stock is a per-item quantity, managed in the Inventory app and Merchant Dashboard. With auto-manage on, an item marks itself unavailable at zero and comes back when restocked. Practical scale notes from Clover's own community: bulk imports run in the low thousands per file, and merchants are advised to keep catalogs under roughly 15,000 items.