Bookstore Inventory Headers

[thebrainlair]

 I have a small bookstore and want to upload my inventory into Square so that I can sell books at events. How do I upload the file I receive when I order books - maintaining Title, Author, Format, Pub Date, Publisher, Price, ISBN, etc 

[VanKalkerFarms · Accepted solution]

there isn't a way to upload a file directly to import it but you can download your item spreadsheet and then combine it with that format and then re-import it into Square.  Here is an article explaining it.

https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5153-import-items-online

[VanKalkerFarms · Accepted solution]

there isn't a way to upload a file directly to import it but you can download your item spreadsheet and then combine it with that format and then re-import it into Square.  Here is an article explaining it.

https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5153-import-items-online

[thebrainlair]

I tried this. My import works but none of the columns that I added appear. How do I make sure the additional information I added is shown in the store?

[HomeOnTheRange · Accepted solution]

I don't think that Square currently allows for custom fields / columns in the item list.  This is a feature that would be extremely helpful!  

[thebrainlair]

GAH! Thank you!

[HomeOnTheRange]

It's frustrating.  I know I've been asking for this feature for a long time (years).  On the bright side, at least the items are now being exported to Excel rather than a .csv which caused havoc with item descriptions and SKUS with leading zeros.

[booklight]

I really need custom fields for inventory items -- not customers. I'll be starting up a bookstore and really want to use Square for it, but you need custom fields for author, publisher, date published, genre, etc., for each book. Is this possible??

[ScatteredBooks]

Put the ISBN under SKU and author name in the notes in the bottom box. It’s not geared towards bookstores but it can work! I use it for all my outside events. 

[thebrainlair]

Thanks! This question is from 2018, already figured that. Just would rather have them tweak it so I can directly put the info I need. I use a bookstore POS now.

[booklight]

Man, if we could create custom fields for items, Square Retail would be perfect for our new bookstore. For example, we need a few book industry-specific fields so we can track items properly: Author, Genre, Publisher, Format (paperback or hardcover). Then if we could see reports for bestselling items and filter by those fields -- even better!

Can you guys consider adding this functionality? I'm guessing it would greatly benefit all types of businesses, not just bookstores.

Thanks for considering!

Best regards,

Frank

[EJ_]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts around this @booklight

I've moved your post over to this existing thread that has a few workarounds shared by your fellow sellers. 

Our Inventory and Item team is currently tracking interest for this feature. I don't have anything new to report on this, but I can see how it would be helpful and I'll continue to advocate for an update around this. 

We'll post an update if anything changes. 

[booklight]

Thanks EJ, really appreciate the response!

Fingers crossed for an update ... I'd be willing to bet there'd be a huge surge of bookstores (and many other types of retail stores) to switch right on over to Square for Retail with the addition of custom item fields and a few other small features.

Thanks again!

[UserinCLE]

Can you please post the link to that thread? Looks like it didn't make it through. I would love to have this feature! In the meantime, I'm curious to see other users' workarounds. Thanks

[HomeOnTheRange]

Can you advise on what the technical difficulties are with adding a few custom fields?  Where are the challenges on the backend?

[EJ_]

@booklight You're welcome, and my fingers are crossed as well!

@UserinCLE I'm not sure which link you're referring to, but this thread is the best thread to ask for workarounds and solutions from fellow sellers. 

@HomeOnTheRange While I can't speak to the difficulties on implementing and building custom fields, what I can speak toward is the prioritization of feature requests themselves. 

We gather and review all of the feedback that we receive, and we use all of this feedback to help us prioritize what we work on soon, and what we unfortunately have to delay until later. We use the Seller Community to point out business needs and workflow improvements for sellers, so the more details you can provide around why this would help your business specifically, the more it helps our Product teams prioritize and develop new features and update existing ones. 

[chaz]

EJ, thanks. I also am inerested in using Square to allow clients to pay for books on my website (I already have the website, but am changing processors). I'd like to be able to set it up myself, but can't do it - not savvy enough. Is there somewhere to get help for setting up the payment process? I'd load all the items to Square if i could, but the lack of custom fields is a problem with that.

[EJ_]

@chaz We have a few different integrations with eCommerce partners like Weebly that might work for you, but if you're looking for a full on API Build you could try asking around in the Developers & API group of the Seller Community. 

There's quite a few experts in there that might be able to guide you through this. 

[eugeneNBW]

EJ_ :

I am also interested in this.

[Sultry-HSV]

Is it possible to add additional fields to inventory items? I’d like to add an alternate lookup number for some of our inventory items. 

[ashc]

Hi @Sultry-HSV! Welcome to the Community. 

I moved your post to this thread because it appears this is still a feature request as of right now. There's some workarounds in here you can try if you'd like to take a look how other sellers go around this.

I'll update this thread if this is implemented in the future and it'll be helpful to have your post here so our Product team knows you're looking for this too. 

[MaryImmaculate]

+1  If Square needs to prioritize based on customer needs... WE NEED THIS!  There are lots of really crappy Bookstore POS systems out there.  Square is a better solution in many ways.  But it falls short in one, very important area - being able to use it as a bookstore POS.  You could make a special version for bookstores, but honestly, if you added 10 extra fields we could customize, much like Options, you would open up a lot of power to your entire customer base.  And open up more markets.