Editing products and channels

[ClaytonKing]

I am increasingly frustrated with Square's lack of ability on the back end in terms of data entry of products and managing channels. My workflow is such that I have a local database with a mirror copy of each field in the spreadsheet available for download a template. However, that template (and thus my database) doesn't have Color, Gender, Brand, Age, or Condition.

Also, routinely, when uploading my products and adding photographs to each product, I go further down on the screen to "Where it's sold" to discover that there is an error which reads: "Online channels didn’t load successfully. Try refreshing this page or come back again.." My experience has been that this means nothing is showing in my store online, on google shopping or on Meta. I have catalogs on each of these.

After working with tech support, I'm able to get the channels to display but, because the channel fields mentioned above are not included in my upload, I have to wait to get the "some of your products were refused by _______" message, download a spreadsheet that DOES include those fields, upload it and then the products appear.

Am I truly the only person having this issue. I'm not even talking about the lack of ability to sort my item list by sku (or show the sku for that matter), or sort by those products which are missing photos. These like basic things to me. Sorry for the rant - I've been trying to get 33 items uploaded for 3 hours now and I frustrated... 

I appreciate feedback from other users.
So my first issue is that 

[Sammie_C]

Hi @ClaytonKing, thank you for reaching out over the Square Community. I understand your frustration and we will do what we can to try to get this resolved for you.

I am going to go ahead and tag a few of our Square Champion experts on this one. 

@TheRealChipA @BofBArtStudio @Doran, do you all have any knowledge on a situation as such?

In the meantime, @ClaytonKing, you may have already gone through this process with Support, but have you done all of these basic troubleshooting measures?

• Check for a strong internet connection
• Clear browser cache and cookies
• Try a different Browser, such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari
• Ensure that your web browser is up-to-date
• Log out and log back in
• Restart your device

 Let me know and we can start from there!

[ClaytonKing]

Thanks, Sammie. Yes. I do all of those things before I post. I realize these kinds of forums easily turn into places where people just complain. But also, having been in high tech for years, I also understand that user communities often help drive product development.

The interface on Square sites regarding item entry, and management and functionality are really, really lacking. It's one of the reason I created a database from which to export my items - entry is significantly faster and can be double-checked before uploading. But the inability to address every field in the web interface with columns from an upload is maddening.

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

@ClaytonKing Unfortunately, there is no real work-around here.  And custom attributes like you mention are just the beginning of item upload fields that are needed.  At this time, the only thing we can do is wait and hope.  I know that there are numerous requests over the years to give us more flexibility here, but so far nothing has changed.  If you are so inclined you can head over to the Ideate Board and submit yet another feature request to give us more fields in the item upload CSV.  I will definitely upvote it and add my comments, and I’m betting others will, too.  Eventually the engineers will get the message, one would have to think.

If you do submit yet another request, please come back here and post a link to it so others can find it.

[Sammie_C]

We genuinely thank you for your feedback on this and I appreciate your quick response on this, @ClaytonKingI sent your feedback over to the corresponding teams, so they are aware too. When you spoke with Support, did they give you any additional information on your situation or a timeline on when this may change?

From a bit of research, and as @TheRealChipA mentions, it does not appear there are any workarounds at this point. Ideate is always a great idea though. Are you familiar with Ideate? It is a great place for Sellers to submit their new ideas and improvements to Square products in a public forum. If you do end up posting over there, please feel free to drop a link here as well so we can get traffic to that post as well.

Thank you for chipping in on this, @TheRealChipA

[ClaytonKing]

Thanks, @Sammie_C . I was not familiar with it, but will begin using it. Year ago, I used Volusion for an online shopping cart and they had it right. I think perhaps this is where some of my bias comes from.

Clayton

[Sammie_C]

That makes sense and I totally understand, @ClaytonKing. Well, if you end up having any other questions about this or anything Square, please let me know!