thread Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options in Retail & eCommerce

Visible & Hidden are only online options

DinaLRosenberg — Mon, 11 May 2026 12:08:29 GMT

it seems that the unavailable option has been taken away from square online- leaving only visible and hidden.

The issue seems that everything that was previously marked unavailable has been made visible. I am looking at items I know I made unavailable and now they are all hidden.

This is incredibly frustrating- there are times when items "sell out" but show maybe 1 or 2 items in inventory. Instead of fixing the inventory amount we (especially if we're in the middle of a transaction on the selling floor as we are both online & retail) we mark the item unavailable. Now all those items (there are 100s) are marked live to the website.

WHY??!! Why would this be done without asking the actually users how we use the function and why not inform us this would be happening?

I'm now looking at having to spend the next countless hours going back through 1000s of inventory items and resetting the website. This is so freaken frustrating!!!!

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

DinaLRosenberg — Mon, 11 May 2026 12:09:50 GMT

@tranguyen please see above- would love to know why this happened and what we're to do about it.

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

dokidoki — Mon, 11 May 2026 20:46:27 GMT

This also completely broke Event type items. Any events that were unavailable are now set to hidden BUT the toggle "Discoverable via direct link only" does not exist for Event type items, only physical items. It also doesn't explain where to find the direct link. This is a crazy change to make without announcing anything.

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

MudFire_Dex — Mon, 11 May 2026 20:54:46 GMT

oh man....this has gotten me before when items have suddenly been live on the site so I marked them all hidden and unavailable the last time this happened. But we don't sell online except for a tiny handful of items so this is only a minor frustration for us. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be with thousands of items....this is a crazy change to make and not announce or have an opt-in for. NOT USEFUL @DinaLRosenberg I'm so sorry 😞

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

emilyz123 — Mon, 11 May 2026 21:38:29 GMT

odd! I still have all 3 options even though my item pages look different...you can mass mark them as hidden again by selecting all items, that may help.

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

DinaLRosenberg — Mon, 11 May 2026 22:01:03 GMT

Yes I know we can do that- and I WILL be- but the point is why???

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

shannon10 — Tue, 12 May 2026 13:36:22 GMT

I agree - losing unavailable as an option is extremely frustrating! Especially when it just happens without any warning.

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

dokidoki — Tue, 12 May 2026 13:59:02 GMT

I tried talking to customer service and they didnt know anything. How do we get someone from Square to talk to us about this change?

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

Twiggy — Wed, 13 May 2026 01:57:26 GMT

Thanks for flagging ! I

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

Twiggy — Wed, 13 May 2026 01:55:56 GMT

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

DinaLRosenberg — Tue, 12 May 2026 20:22:55 GMT

I am so sorry this has happened to you @Twiggy it's so frustrating for us as well; often times we cycle though different inventory to keeps things fresh and we don't want to delete the item to have to re-input it a couple months down the line- so we mark it unavailable.

The SMART thing to do would have been for them to transfer unavailable to hidden... obviously this makes sense. Someone somewhere made an executive decision for some unknown reason- and now we're all dealing with it. It's frustrating that we haven't gotten any insight yet from the Mods.

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

katie — Tue, 12 May 2026 20:24:17 GMT

Hi folks, chiming in quickly to say that @LeahK is checking with our engineering team to ensure they're aware/investigating. We will certainly share updates here as the Eng team has info to share with us. I'm SO sorry to see this is happening and the real life stress & impact this has created. I know sentences like that don't make it better or fix it, but I am empathizing HARD at the chaos this kind of thing can create. 😣

Stay tuned and thank you so much for starting this thread @DinaLRosenberg !

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

DinaLRosenberg — Tue, 12 May 2026 20:25:33 GMT

Thank you so much!!!

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

DinaLRosenberg — Tue, 12 May 2026 20:30:30 GMT

Question- is there any way we can get a refund on fees if we have to refund customers?

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

katie — Tue, 12 May 2026 20:47:49 GMT

Thank you for asking, as its helping me/our team understand the impact of what's happening.

If I'm following correctly:
- Items have now appeared online for purchase that were previously not available for various reasons. (Old items that are no longer sold, old pricing, out of stock items, etc - essentially things that are NOT able to be sold or sold at that price)
- In the cases that customers do purchase those items that wrongly appeared, Square Sellers are understandably refunding.
- When you're refunding, the Square Seller incurs a fee.

Did I summarize the super-simple version of it? Is there anything I missed impact-wise? (This helps me go to the team to ask for what Square Sellers need to make this right beyond reverting it back to working correctly)

Thanks for all your help in escalating this and hanging in there 💙

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

kjc2 — Tue, 12 May 2026 21:11:08 GMT

Jumping in to add an additional impact ... we use 'unavailable' to filter for items not listed on the website. It is an easy way for my staff to identify what needs to be added to our online store. The filter menu has been a great addition but removing the available/unavailable filter will cause much more work.

Also adding we have merchandise our vendors do not allow us to add to our online store. Any background changes that automatically adds items to our website puts us in violoation of those agreements.

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

Twiggy — Wed, 13 May 2026 01:54:56 GMT

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

katie — Tue, 12 May 2026 21:35:53 GMT

Hey @Twiggy - I kindly ask to keep it constructive here in the lounge. We're still investigating what happened, and please keep in mind that many times our Eng teams review threads in the community to gain an understanding of how an issue is impacting Sellers. We do not want to display that our Champions name call, especially when 99.9% that doesn't happen. I deeply empathize that this has got to be wildly frustrating and we'll get to the bottom of these. You're heard, I promise.. Thank you!

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

dokidoki — Tue, 12 May 2026 21:37:42 GMT

There’s no way to undo the hidden online setting for Event items types it the item detail page. I can’t make them visible, they are just permanently hidden. It also says there’s a direct URL for customers to buy the hidden item but gives zero instructions on where to find that URL.

Re: Visible & Hidden are only online options

DinaLRosenberg — Tue, 12 May 2026 23:09:42 GMT

Ooofff- that's tough...