thread Re: When bulk editing with excel, units got turned into variations in Orders, Menu Items, Catalog & Fulfilment

When bulk editing with excel, units got turned into variations

ndixon — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 10:58:43 GMT

I just tried bulk editing my inventory in Microsoft Excel 2019. I have multiple units for items and different variations for the size of items. We are a liquor/wine/beer store. I'll have 750ml, 375ml, etc. as my variations and then have units so I can track my stock by the case but sell them by the single. I just tried to bulk delete some items and when I went to import it back in, all of my units got turned into discreet variations. I'm wondering why this happened and how to use bulk editing without having that happen.

Re: When bulk editing with excel, units got turned into variations

Candlestore — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 14:29:32 GMT

@ndixon ;

Square uses Variations as the Stock Unit I have found out. So if you are keeping track of 1 inventory by Cases, but sell by Units you would need these as 2 variations under the 1 item. Case count and Single item. When you deleted the Items How did you delete them? Through your Square Dashboard or just deleted them from the CSV?

If you deleted them in a csv, Square does not delete them. You need to delete the items from the Dashboard. Each item variation etc has a unique Token. This is how Square knows which item to edit from the csv. By deleting an Item and its Token in a CSV Square will not update that item. If you leave a Token Blank then Square thinks its a new Item and enters it as how you have the item Name etc, same Item name will give a different variation with the different other entries of the headers. If that makes sense.

the other question is how did you import your Modified CSV or Excel file? Update (modify) or Replace? Modify will only modify the items that change as long as the Token matches. No Token it will add a new Item (variation). Replace - I avoid at all costs with having over 6000 rows in my excel file, never know if i bumped something and made an accidental change. Did it once with the SKU column, changed the SKU to a Number Field deleting all the leading "0's" in my SKU...... alot of Items were not found when Scanning and took me a while to figure out what happened. Finally just uploaded the last Downloaded Catalog before everything was not working. This type of issue always seems to happen before it gets busy ( the worst possible time).

Re: When bulk editing with excel, units got turned into variations

ndixon — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 19:13:01 GMT

Thanks for the reply. I don't use different variations for my pack sizes because to my understanding each variation has a discreet stock count. That doesn't work for our type of business. We need packs or singles to take out of the same stock count number.

The way I figured out how to do this is to have multiple custom units under one variation. I do the unit conversions for the different units so it takes out the right amount from the unit that the variation is stocked by.

I usually stock things by the case. For beer there are 24 cans or bottles to a case. I use my 24pk Case unit I made as the unit it stocks from. Then I have a 4pk and a Single unit that both have different prices and different mark ups. I do the conversions in the unit so 6 4pk units equal 1 24pk Case unit.

I was trying to bulk delete stuff from my inventory because there are a lot of items from two POS systems ago. I was using Excel and I was just deleting rows and I selected the Replace option. It looks like I can't use the bulk edit to set things up the way I have been. I'm stuck to just using the dashboard item by item. Kinda makes me consider looking at different POS systems.

Re: When bulk editing with excel, units got turned into variations

Candlestore — Sat, 15 Apr 2023 15:12:50 GMT

@ndixon ;

I think I understand what you are saying but it is hard to say what Square is doing here.

I created my Items in Square with the Sell by units to take out of one inventory like you want to do.

Here is what it looks like in Square.

But when I open it in Excel CSV the Pack and case and single are listed as variants of the actual Item.

So bulk editing is an issue for creating or as you say adding it back in.

Because you need to enter the Conversions back in in the spreadsheet which can not be done in a csv file, but can be don in the xlsx type files if you know what the conversions are and which columns and sheet to add this into. This is why I recommend making the Sell By units in Square.

7237-stock-conversion-sell-by