Taxable vs non-taxable

[tbierly]

Hi, I have a set of maybe a few hundred products that need to be marked as non-taxable.  I exported my item library, assuming there must be a Y/N indicator that I could update in Excel and then reupload back to Square; however, a taxable/non-taxable column doesn't show in Excel.  I hope I'm missing something simple.  Can anyone help me figure out how to make this mass update?  Thanks!

[DinaLRosenberg]

@TheRealChipA any ideas on this? I know you're a wizard when it comes to automating retail.

[TheRealChipA]

@tbierly @DinaLRosenberg I breathed a sigh of relief when @tbierly said they needed to mark items as "non-taxable."  That's because there is actually a bulk-edit option in the item catalog to do this.

First, go to your item catalog.  Since it sounds like you have lots of items, I'd recommend scrolling to the bottom of the first page and changing it to show as many items as you can at one time (200?).  Then select/check all items that need to be non-taxable on the first page.  Click the Actions button at the bottom and select "set as non-taxable," then follow the prompts.

You'll need to repeat this for each page of items in your catalog.

One word of caution.  If you accidentally mark items that SHOULD be taxable and change them, you can only fix this manually.  For some reason that will remain a mystery there is no bulk-edit option for marking items taxable.

[tbierly]

Thanks so much for pointing that out!! We are still in the process of testing certain things before we fully migrate from our old POS, so I plan to do a full reload of inventory when we are ready to go live, and overwrite everything that is currently in Square.  Do you know if that will load everything as taxable by default?  And then I would need to do a bulk change of those specific products over to non-taxable?

My thought is to create a custom attribute for Taxable (make it a toggle Y/N), so that I can apply this filter in the item library, and then bulk update those items as non-taxable.

[TheRealChipA]

@tbierly Now THAT is a very good question.  I was pretty sure I knew the answer but I went ahead and fired up ManagerBot to be sure.  I asked it "when I import new items are they marked as taxable by default?"  It's response was this:

Yes — when you import items, they're taxable by default. Square applies your location's tax settings to any new items unless you specifically mark them as non-taxable during or after import.

When you set up a tax, you can choose to apply it to "All current and future taxable items at selected locations" — that means imported items will automatically pick up the tax. 

Your solution for is actually quite elegant BUT you can't do this during import, as customer attributes are not importable/exportable yet (unless I missed a recent memo).  My recommendation would be to split your catalog import into two -- taxable and non-taxable.  Then import the non-taxable items (with the overwrite library toggle on) and do the bulk edit then to make them non-taxable.  After that you can import the taxable items (with the overwrite library toggle off), and you should be good to go.

[tbierly]

Thanks for the tip on the two imports.  Great idea!

At the same time, you shattered my dreams about the custom attributes!! I have 10 custom attributes that I have applied to our inventory.  Not being able to bulk upload those is insane.  We'll have an item library of 6-7k total items.  It's not feasible to upload those records one at a time 😞

From a technical standpoint, I know it is SO easy for Square to update the Export/Import function to include more fields from the inventory tables.  Do you have any idea who I could talk to about this issue? I'd try to call the main support number, but I'm 99.9% sure they wouldn't be of any help.

[TheRealChipA]

@tbierly So I may have not gotten the memo on customer attributes and import/export files.  On a lark, I fired up ManagerBot and asked it if there was a way to include custom attributes in item imports.  I'm really starting to love this tool because it searches help documents and even code and tells me new things I didn't know after 10+ years with Square! Anyway, it seems there might be a hidden way to do this.  

According to ManagerBot, you first need to create your custom attributes at Dashboard > Items > Custom attributes.  Once you have done this, then the import template you download will contain those new columns, which you can then fill in for your items before uploading.  The import tool will map them correctly.

Of course, I would do this with a very limited test first.  Once you've confirmed that ManagerBot has not hallucinated this (LOL), But based on what I know about modifiers "magically" appearing in the export file this way, this seems very reasonable.

Do this a do a quick test, and then report back, please.

And, again, sorry for the apparent misinformation.  Hopefully MB is right about this!

[tbierly]

I did a full export from my library earlier and the custom attributes were not there, but I will try to download a fresh template, not exporting my current library. I haven’t actually put my Square POS into practice yet, so I have all the opportunity in the world to play around and test anything. I will report back!

[TheRealChipA]

@tbierly And you HAVE created your custom attributes in your Dashboard?

[TheRealChipA]

@tbierly So it seems that ManagerBot was hallucinating this feature.  I tried it on my account, and even tried adding an item with a test attribute that I had created.  Still nothing in the file.  Ugh.  So...... I'm going to flag your post to some folks at Square.  Once I have some more information from them, I (or they) will get back with you.  

[tbierly]

OK, thanks @TheRealChipA .  Yes, I did have 9 custom attributes created and had at least one product with multiple of those attributes assigned.  I also spoke to my sales rep with Square yesterday and she's going to look into options for us.  Appreciate you following up!