Include all categories in item catalog export

[RobGuiher]

Square now allows for an item to be assigned to multiple categories, but it appears only the reporting category can be exported / imported.  This limits the usefulness of the import feature, since we have to go touch all of the items anyway, and limits the ability to audit the alternate category setup - you literally have to go item by item to check them rather than being able to download and work in Excel to verify they're correct and none are missing.

Please include an additional field in the export/import file which contains all categories assigned to an item, perhaps delimited by a semicolon.

[regalia]

i posted a similar request. it seems incredible that they would update the template, adding an "Additional Categories" (plural) in column H, but totally ignore that column upon importing or exporting.

i spent hours populating that column thinking it will assign multiple categories to every item i choose, but nope, total waste of time. not to mention the instruction (or lack thereof) on how to format data in that column is ridiculously confusing. I was hoping it was ignoring that attribute because i was not filling up that column properly, but it seems more and more obvious after multiple attempts that it's just another oversight by Square's team of incompetent engineers.

[ndixon]

Ya this needs to be ironed out. I have been having issues with the categories when export/importing them. I really want to be able to use the replace function in excel so I can change a lot of things quickly.

[zuckercreme]

Commenting to say I'm also super frustrated by this!!! I had such big plans to get my inventory all organized and ready for the website and now I can't. 🙄

[missmercedes]

This help article appears to indicted this feature is active, but it does not function when I tried it

https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/5153-import-items-online#:~:text=Edit%20multiple%20categorie....

[RobGuiher]

@missmercedes - I haven't tried importing multiple categories, but if we can't get the data out through an export then it doesn't help my issue much.  I'm very frustrated with the fact that Square lets us put lots of great info into their system, but then limits the amount of data which can be exported.  It looks like a lot of this is available via API, but without some pretty serious coding skills it remains inaccessible to most of us.  If I could get it into a spreadsheet I could do so much better analysis of my business.

[MayaP]

Hey @RobGuiher,

Thank you for your feedback on including all assigned categories in the item catalog export/import file. We understand how this would improve workflows, especially for auditing and management.

We’ve shared your suggestion with our product team for consideration in future updates. We appreciate your input and are here if you have any further questions or suggestions. 

[Barry2]

We have the same problem with not being able see all the categories assigned to an item.  Quite a lot of our items are broken now after the reporting category requirement is mandatory. So many of them either lost all their other categories or had random ones added.  Why in the world would they make assigning multiple categories to an item then not provide a way to export it for review or updating? Somebody really dropped the ball on this one.  

Please fix this already!!!!!

[zuckercreme]

WE ARE STILL HERE AND MAD SQUARE!

[rustyravenng]

this is needed please.

[RobGuiher]

UPDATE:  I'm not sure when it was changed as I never spotted it in release notes, but Square now allows for both import and export of multiple categories.  There's a CSV field which shows them all, and it will now import them - creating a new category if you have a value in that field that doesn't match an existing one.  You can even do subcategories - for example:

MainCategoryName > SubCatLvl1 > SubCatLvl2, MainCategoryName2  SubCat2Lvl1

@kristen please mark this issue as resolved.