thread Does replacing your entire inventory affect previous sales reports? in Payments Troubleshooting

My item import created duplicates even though i chose the 'modify' option

evehorton — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 14:43:45 GMT

Can anyone help me understand why my recent item import create duplicates within the variations of some of my items? It seems very random, some items with no variation added a sceond item with the same sku, and on some items where there is a variation (S, M , L) it added an extra size (M) with the same sku???

I've searched all the skus in my CSV file and there are no duplicate items so i don't understand why it created new ones instead of updating existing?

Please help!

Thanks,

Eve

Re: My item import created duplicates even though i chose the 'modify' option

Helen — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 17:23:17 GMT

Sorry for all the frustration this has caused @evenhorton! It sounds like you might have deleted some of the item tokens from your CSV before importing it back - blank token fields interpreted as a new item. This thread has import troubleshooting steps and a link to contact CS if you'd like to speak to someone on the phone!

Re: My item import created duplicates even though i chose the 'modify' option

evehorton — Tue, 09 Apr 2019 22:56:34 GMT

Hi @Helen

Ah I didn't realise the token was created by Square, I've done an export and added a token to each of my items in my own stock sheet. But when I did another upload the duplicates haven't been removed and I can't see which token applies to which duplicate product...is there a way to do this? I think the easiest thing to do is delete everything and do a new import with the tokens...but will that mean i need to add all the imagery again?

Thanks!

Re: My item import created duplicates even though i chose the 'modify' option

Chad — Wed, 10 Apr 2019 17:23:12 GMT

Hello @evehorton!

I'm sorry to hear about the trouble you're having with the item import. Did you remove the duplicates from your CSV file? Or did you add tokens to the duplicates? The later will result in having duplicates still.

You're correct about deleting the entire Item Library. You will have to reload the images on your Square Dashboard.

Re: My item import created duplicates even though i chose the 'modify' option

HC_Charlie — Thu, 16 May 2019 23:43:17 GMT

Ive had the same issues. I get a confirmation about matching categories, dealing with price mainly...whether an item is "location specific". I thought I chose the correct match, but I got duplicate items. It's interesting about the tokens...I saw the square export excel file has a token column. Does that mean that when I add new items to the spreadsheet, I should be adding in a token for the new items? I thought I should just ignore this column, but if I need to add a token..what should a token be?

Re: My item import created duplicates even though i chose the 'modify' option

HC_Charlie — Thu, 16 May 2019 23:44:26 GMT

I also didn't know if it was better to just REPLACE the whole inventory rather and UPDATE...but the notion of that really scared me. I didnt want to mess anything up.

Re: My item import created duplicates even though i chose the 'modify' option

evehorton — Thu, 16 May 2019 23:49:55 GMT

Hey Charlie,

I did an export from Square to get all the tokens for my items and added these into a collumn in my sheets. To correct the duplicates in the end I added an '!' at the end of all my skus and did a new upload. That way i could identify which sku had the wrong token and painstakingly manually deleted each one...still better than erasing, uploading and having to add all the imagery again. But it's your preference really!

Now each time I add a new item i remember to export from square and add the token to my sheets.

Hope that helps 🙂

Does replacing your entire inventory affect previous sales reports?

oblivioncomics — Fri, 08 May 2020 16:16:51 GMT

I tried updating our inventory with a spreadsheet for the first time yesterday and I definitely didn't do it right, as it didn't show the stock qty. So I tried uploading it again but it created duplicates/variations instead and then realized I had put qty in the wrong column. I uploaded it again in the correct column and it's all there now but now shows 3 variations of all the new items. This is an issue not just because we're seeing so many variations, but our online store won't show the items until I've deleted the variations that show 0 qty. I've already gone through and deleted a bunch of them and they do show up on our store once deleted.

So if I were to replace the items library with the correct spreadsheet, would it affect any history associated with previously sold items? We need to make sure our sales history is intact and will continue to add to those numbers moving forward. Thanks!

Re: Does replacing your entire inventory affect previous sales reports?

Kassi_ — Sun, 10 May 2020 15:50:47 GMT

Hey there, @oblivioncomics -

Welcome to the Community!

I moved your post to a thread with some helpful tips on the duplication issue you're seeing. Take a look at the helpful answer @Helen was able to give.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Re: My item import created duplicates even though i chose the 'modify' option

GFHB — Fri, 15 Sep 2023 18:33:01 GMT

And what is I did not delete the tokens from the excel sheet? Because I am having the same problem and I didn't delete the tokens. It happens randomly, not on every item.

Re: My item import created duplicates even though i chose the 'modify' option

_Violet — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 14:22:33 GMT

Hi @GFHB - Violet here, following up for Helen. It looks like you still need help with this, so I kept the ball rolling on your inquiry.

This does sound off, but it's difficult to pinpoint what may be happening without looking at your account and inventory with you, which we aren't able to do via the Seller Community. For this type of issue, I suggest that you get in touch with our Support Team. If you haven't already, please reach out to Support directly by logging into your Square account and heading here.