Merging Items

[londontea]

I'd like to see a feature to merge items. I could see one iteration of this – possibly the most simple one – is just to merge two or more items together into one item with no variations (technically there's one variation, but you know what I mean). You'd have to select which item you'll keep the price, SKU, unit cost, etc., and then the stock gets added together. If Item A has 2 stock and Item B has 3 stock, you merge Item B into Item A then the total stock becomes 5 while keeping all the other information from Item A intact. 

A more complex version of merging could have each of the old items become a variation under a new item, with each variation keeping the stock count, unit cost, etc. of the old item. 

Here's my use case: 

The business owner often creates duplicates of items when she makes purchase orders. It's a bit maddening, but don't tell her that I said that!

I usually notice this when I receive a purchase order and see that there are items without SKUs; that indicates that she didn't use the existing item which would have an SKU. In most cases I mark the item as not received and then go into the existing item and receive the stock there. I then have to delete the accidental item. 

It would be much easier for me to just receive the entire purchase order and then merge the new item into the existing item. 

[Ellie_]

Hi there @londontea!

We appreciate you posting this. We are reaching out to our team regarding this, and will follow up once we have an update.

[countryroads1]

Absolutely! I enter items and when I sync with Faire I have 2 of the same item.

[Adamscottsmith]

Second third and fourth this request 

[Adamscottsmith]

@londontea @Ellie_ @@I would love this as well. I just recently learned of a way we could possibly change the way we enter items and it would be amazing to merge the items together. Also we have a database that has a lot of errors due to a import that was old and outdated. So having the ability to merge those items together that are older but might have sales history with the current one to clean up the database would be nice. 

also when you change the name of an item it would be nice if they were automatically merged to keep it from splitting into what looks like two different products on the sales report. 

[beefolks3]

I am adding my voice to this.  There has been times where a well-meaning employee has created additional 'products', when in reality he was just trying to rename a product.  Would love the ability to merge these products, along with their sales history, and clean up the database.

As an example:

We have a handcream variation that was originally labeled 'Lavender'

It was renamed to 'LAV - Lavender' (to make it easier for people on the register to find it quickly).  Now we have to do maths to accurately compare sales reports.

Second example:

We have a category, "Honey".  

For unknown reasons (probably related to lack of sleep), the guy who normally updates the database created a second duplicate category named 'Honey' with the exact same info.  (He has since admitted it was a bad idea, for the same reasons as above.)  Would love to combine these two categories, including their sales history, and clean up the database.

[KeepitSimpleSam]

I think this feature of merging items would be helpful in order to save historical data or save steps, but to take this one step further, I think it would be a common sense feature Square would flag you when there would be duplicate item names, SKUS, or GTIN etc that you could address and merge. 

I find it frustrating that I could actually have 2 of the same exact item with all the same info and Square won't catch or flag it before I import that item again.  

[Studio1883]

agreed, I have had 2 employees accidentally add the same product in twice because the name that was input wasnt exactly what the other thought, it made for a confusing time retagging all items when the mistake was found. Would be nice to be able to merge these. 

[TheBurrow]

@Ellie_ 

Coming in to voice my need for a "feature" like this as well! It really should be common sense something standard available here...

[ALBH]

Please add this feature! I would love to be able to clean up my database without losing transaction history. I currently have lots of items entered individually that I would much rather have as variations of a main 'parent' item.

Does anyone know of a work-around in the meantime without having to re-create items (and thus losing the purchase/sales history)?

[xocomalena]

I'm watching this thread. I want to merge duplicate items without sacrificing historic sales data. It's tedious and annoying to have the same item spread out over multiple entries on item sales reports. I want a quick snapshot of bestsellers. Duplicate items slow the process way down.