Why do I see duplicate categories?

We've just discovered a few duplicate categories in our Square items list. I don't understand how this can happen. What possible reason would there be for allowing, for example, two "grocery" categories? And How do I make sure it doesn't happen again?

 

We are a consignment store, and we use categories to group items by seller. The category is how I determine how much I owe my sellers each month.

 

Question for Square directly: Is this a bug, or is it by design? Please clarify. Thanks

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Hi @mikesclub. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Are you seeing the second "grocery" category on both your POS and the Dashboard? If it's showing twice on just the POS, you may want to make sure that your Square app is up to date. 

 

However if you're seeing this happen on both, you'll want to reach out to our Customer Success team so they can do some troubleshooting if necessary.

nika
Community Program Manager, Square
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The duplicate categories are showing on both.

 

We've figured out what happened. One employee created a category, and added items to it, then a second employee created the same category, without realizing the category already existed.

 

We can fix that, but the system shouldn't allow it to happen in the first place. This is just like the duplicate customer problem, which we've experienced and which other Square users have mentioned on this forum. 

 

When I try to add an SKU that's already in the system, a yellow banner pops up telling me that SKU already exists. So I know your programmers already know how to do this.

 

Please consider this a priority. When a category already exists, Square should warn me about it.

 

And when a customer already exists, Square should not allow a duplicate to be created. 

 

Square is a good product, but there are several problems like this that prevent you from being a great product. Some of those issues were reported years ago, and continue to receive only a "we'll let you know when we've fixed this" response. 

 

Please, please, address these issues. I'm not using Square because its fun. I'm using it to manage my business. My livelihood.

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