Select Site Category when creating a new item in Square Dashboard

[dylrich20]

I have a physical retail store w/ 1000+ SKUs and add new items weekly. I create those new items in my Square Dashboard. 

The Item Categories I have in my Square Dashboard are different than my Square Online Site Categories (because customer search/discovery online is different).

When I create a new item in my Square Dashboard, I have the ability to select whether it should get added to my Online channel, whether it should be visible/hidden/unavailable and a few other things.

I don't have the ability to select which Online Site Category it should be added to.

When I go to my Online Site Items, I have no way to filter for my items that are not included in any Online Site Categories so it's not easy for me to add them to the appropriate one. If they're not part of the appropriate category, my customers will not find them online when browsing and they will not sell. 

If I'm adding a new item to my Online channels, please add the ability for me to select which Online Site Category it should be included in when I'm making it OR give me the ability to filter my Online Site Items by items NOT in any category so I can easily identify and add them.

[#2]

Echoing the sentiment that assigning Site Categories should be quicker and easier. We process a LOT of product at our retail space, and having to circle back on a whole other section of the dashboard to select a Site Category is a huge timewaster. Being able to set details like this upon actual item creation would be tremendous. Being able to filter the Site Items to items without a Site Category seems like an obvious feature that should already have been implemented, so please work on this soon.

And thanks @dylrich20 for the very smart workaround to at least filter down to items without site category assignment, that's a clever idea that I'll use in the meantime!

[dokidoki]

I have the exact same use case for this in my retail shop as well (physical location with an online store).

[lux_pos]

Same here. We add inventory through square dashboard and the categories on our square dashboard are not linked with the categories with square online. We would have to do double the work rather it being synced and having the ability to edit which categories we want to show.

[mistiff]

Same problem. I really can't say it any better than you have. I just spent hours updating categories on the Dashboard unaware that they would not sync Online. Maybe some people have use for categories that customers do not see or use, but I do not.

I tried emailing and chatting with support...really no help.

[LabHardware]

We have the same exact issue at my store... 1400+ skus many new items added on the daily. 

We have to create the item through dashboard then add every single item manually via the Site Categories page from square online. 

They also need to have a filter for items that are not apart of any Site Category. I asked for this years ago and had my feature request denied. 

[LabHardware]

This should be a fairly easy fix for SQ. It would be great to have some more traction on this issue maybe some of the SQ representatives can chime in. Many of the feature requests in the forum are for this same issue. 

**ADD SITE CATEGORY SELECTION TO THE ITEM CREATION DASHBOARD

**ADD A REPORT/FILTER/"whatever you want to call it" to the Site Categories page so we can quickly and easily see which items are not apart of a SITE CATEGORY.

@Square 

[JohnC58]

I also have this problem.  I brought it up with square several years ago, but nothing was ever done.  Hopefully it will gain some traction here.  Often I will import multiple items through an excel database.  As with manual item creation through the dashboard, items created in this way are also created as site items.  However, categories are not carried over to online.  If I import 30 items in this way, I have to manually open each of the corresponding site items to add them to the correct categories.  Very cumbersome and time consuming.  There used to be a link from the item in the dashboard that made it easy to go directly to the corresponding site item, but that recently disappeared...not sure why that was removed.

[dylrich20]

Sounds like this is a pretty common issue. Would be happy to share any details/speak more with anyone from Square if interested. In the meantime, here's the best solution I've found for this. It's not ideal but the best solution I've figured out:

We have the ability to establish some default settings for Online Items when creating new items via the dashboard or POS. The two I use are "Site Visibility" & "Online Fulfillment Methods". 

I have my Online Item settings defaulted so that all new items I create are set to "Unavailable" (I don't use this setting frequently) and to "Self Serve Ordering" (I don't use this setting at all).

After I've created all the new items each week, I then go to my Online Dashboard, go to Items and then instead of filtering for items without any Category selected (because that functionality doesn't exist), I filter items based on Self Serve Ordering -- the only items that come up are the new items I create. I then go 1x1 to assign the relevant Category/ies. After that's done you can select ALL the items from the filtered list and you have the ability to update Visibility for all of them at the same time (you can only bulk change one thing at a time) so after that, I go bulk update fulfillment type for all of them at the same time making them Available.

[dokidoki]

This is REALLY helpful. Can you screenshot or share where we set those default settings? 

[dylrich20]

Of course! So I use Square for Retail 

So if you go to the Online tab, default setting for Visibility is under "Item Sync" and then fulfillment is under "Item Preferences". Screenshots below. 

Then after you've created the items, in the main "Item" tab under "Online", I just use the filters across the top to only show the Unavailable set to "QR code ordering" or "Self Serve Ordering" (depending where you're at, both of these names are used)

[dokidoki]

@dylrich20 this is genius. Thank you for thinking of this workaround. It'll save me so much time and effort. Super appreciate you!