Try the upcoming Simplified Item Creation flow — feedback wanted!

[alexws]

Hi Square sellers!

My name is Alex, and I'm on the product team for Items. As you may have seen in the Spring Releases announcement in May, we've been working on a Simplified Item Creation Flow in Dashboard that makes it easier to get your items ready to sell in-store, online, and via third party channels. We've built an early access experience that you can test out to get a preview of the new item creation flow and leave us feedback before we start rolling this update out soon. We'd love to get your input!

Get Started

To get started, log into Square Dashboard and click on or paste this URL into your browser: https://app.squareup.com/dashboard/items/library/react/new/v2

How the early access experience works: 

• Clicking the URL will open up the early access experience. Any items you create with this early access experience will get saved to your Item Library.
• There are no limits on how many times you can try the early access experience, so please create as many items as you like! You'll just need to click the link each time, as there are no in-product entry points to this early access experience at this time.
• Some features are not ready yet, such as: Upgrading to paid features, Event and Donation type items, the ability to Auto Create items by scanning a barcode or searching by name, and Bundles. 

Please feel free to provide feedback directly within the early access experience, or leave a comment in this thread! We would love to hear from you and get your honest feedback on what works well and what you think needs attention. 

Thank you!

Alex

[indianathomas]

We will be rolling out a few items in the fall and will use this feature.  Thank you for sharing.

[rtfulk]

@alexws I like the new layout how compact it is. I really like how the categories and where it's sold has been moved to the side. I have about 25 items to put up tomorrow and will try it out. One question I have templates made  for our clothing so I can put items up faster, is there any way I could port them over to try it out with them? or If you want to switch me over now, I'm ok with that. Also I was hoping we could add short video clips in with the photos, will that ever happen?

I do have a small wish list for the new creation flow. 🙂

1. The Variations tab, we sell children's clothing and we have close to 100 sizes. I have noticed when I open that and select the sizes all are list, which is fine. The problem I've noticed is if I put up a romper which has 4 sizes, I have to manually delete all the other which is close to 96 items, that's time consuming. 

Could there be something like a check box by each item that we could check, or better yet something like a search feature window and you can just start typing the size and select it. Sorta like how the barcode printing window is?

2. The channel listing attributes. Is there a way we can go in and fill this section out where it will be  permanent for all items and variations? Mine rarely change.

3. The Update Columns section. Is there anyway we could have at least 3 maybe 4 items? I could get by with 3 items for me it would be Price, Cost and SKU. 

4. Stock update. The new way seems slower if we have to click on each item to update stock, is there any way that the old way with the popup window be streamlined like that? I like it because you can change all the prices in one window.

 

I'm not trying to be nitpicky, I just have a system down where I can put an item up in under 2 minutes. I just don't want to go backwards. I use a lot of templates , that what speeds up my process.

One last thing and I ask this to everyone that will listen. Since you are updating the creation flor the website. Is there any way you can go into the POS/terminal/handheld and give us the ability to bulk change prices, instead of having to tap on each item and change the price?

[alexws]

Thanks so much @rtfulk for the detailed feedback! Can you please share a bit more what you mean by templates? 

1. Variations tab: Just making sure I understand, it sounds like you have a reusable option set defined that lists many sizes (100 different sizes) but some items like Romper which only has 4 of those sizes. It may be faster to create the variations manually for the Romper, or if you expect to sell many Rompers that will only have 4 sizes each then you might consider making a separate "Romper sizes" option set that you can reuse for all future Romper items. We'll consider the checkbox idea to see if that can help here too.

2. Great idea on default values for these channel attributes that hardly ever change. Will share this with the team.

3. Thank you for the feedback on the width of the variations table and the need to accommodate more columns, I can see how that could be restricting. One idea to consider is using the Item Library bulk edit interface to edit many attributes for up to 250 variations at a time — you'll be able to edit many attributes for each variation at once there.

4. We definitely don't want the new stock entry experience to feel slower. Will take this back to the team.

Also hear you on the need for product videos and bulk editing on the POS — we'll consider these as future enhancements! 

[DugstadS]

I would absolutely LOVE to be able to filter items based on Purchase Order number! I want to be able to bulk edit items that I add to a Purchase Order (price, category, etc). Especially when these items sync over from Faire (which is an awesome feature however…) things that auto sync over from Faire I want to be able to bulk edit. If we could filter all items by PO, that would be an AMAZING time saver!!

[rtfulk]

@alexws  Below is a screenshot of my items page. All the hashtags are my templates. I have them premade for sizes and the channel attributes.

I got to thinking last night after I made the post about the variations/columns. I could get by with the 2 columns. With the update tab I can bulk edit the retail price and cost price. If you could the Manage Stock button at the bottom, like it is currently, I could input mystock from there. I could them keep my price and SKU live in the column. 

We make short 5 second AI videos of our products, it would be nice to just drag them into the Image box as I add photos.

Something I just noticed the Update button is go in the variations to bulk update the price, cost and photos.

I hope this all makes sense, I'm trying to type and wait on customers at the fair. 🙂

[alexws]

Ah I see @rtfulk — so when you create a new item, you duplicate one of those templates and edit any fields that need to be changed? I can see how that would save time.

[rtfulk]

@alexws Correct, when I'm putting up 25-30 items at a time, it would be really time-consuming adding the channel attributes every time. That was why I was asking if we could have a section that we fill in all the info and it stays. I was thinking of new people that would not make templates like us, that have been with Square for a while.

[SCA_Fashion]

"Could there be something like a check box by each item that we could check, or better yet something like a search feature window and you can just start typing the size and select it. Sorta like how the barcode printing window is" HARD AGREE HERE... deleting the ones you dont want is onerous!

[shirleydawgs]

COMPLETELY AGREE about the columns section only allowing two options. When we put new inventory in, we put price, SKU, Unit Price, and Inventory in all at once. Makes no sense that you can only choose two now.

[SCA_Fashion]

one thing i just noticed. when adding categories... my items have 4 categories at least and in the old way at the end it asked which reporting category you wanted it placed in. this new way doesnt... how do we add reporting cat easily? thanks

[alexws]

Hi @SCA_Fashion, in the new experience the reporting category has a "reporting" tag next to the category name to identify the category that will be used for attributing sales of this item in the category sales report. To change which category is used as the item's reporting category, you can click the three dots button next to the name of the category you want to use for reporting, and then click on "set as the reporting category." Hope this helps!

[SVLFever]

Hey @alexws !

I held off on participating in the Alpha due to some missing functionality.  I just looped back to this to check on a status update and I think you have added the unit tracking, which means I should be able to use this now.  I watched the video and it seems like most everything is now available.

I'm just wondering when you think we will see it for beta as the default.  Any update you can share on that expected timeline?

BTW, I think the new flow looks WONDERFUL!

[rtfulk]

@alexws I've ran into two issues.

1. I can't find where to put in the SEO information.  The color, gender...etc.

2. The variation photos are all blank. you can still upload a photo and it's there, but on the item page it shows as blank.