Item Name Change & Reporting

[jennEvolve]

We have changed the names on some of our products (and naming schemes) and realizing that when we pull reports, even though name changes only 'edited' an existing product, it now shows them as two different products in reporting.  This is an absolute nightmare for trying to get any accurate sales data on products. For example, a candle was called PINK and is now PRETTY PINK, it shows sales as if they are two different products instead of the same product.  I can't be the only person who has this problem.  And tech support via phone said there was nothing that could be done.  

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

Hey there @jennEvolve.  Support told you correctly.  Currently Square has a very firm policy of not changing history.  It also applies to service name changes, modifier changes, variation changes, option changes, etc.  As a fellow seller who is very active in testing and support here, I have heard of no plans to change this.

If you want, you can submit a feature request which will be evaluated and a decision made sometime in the future.  But, for now, it is what it is.  Your only workaround would be to download your product sales reports as a CSV, import it into a spreadsheet and then create a report that would group items, etc, that are the same except for your decision to change the description/name.

[Candlestore]

@jennEvolve ;

I agree with @TheRealChipA, this would be a request but it also may help you identify if by changing the name from Pink to Pretty Pink was any more or less beneficial.  Throught the years there were many, many shades of Blue for example in Taper candles.  Now alot of Taper manufactures have gone out of business or discontinued them.  A few I talked to sited their were too many different shades people were looking for and they tried to make everyone happy.  So some reduced their offerings of colors.  

The thing to look at with the way reports are currently setup, you can compare last years Pink sales to this years Pretty Pink Sales.  Did they go up, down, or stay the same?  I am not sure if someone walks in and sees a Pink candle, and will say I want the Pink Candle not the Preety Pink candle.  Now if they are completely different shades of Pink that might be a different story.  

Some people are stuck on a color or in my case a Scents name.  We have a Candle Smoke Eater, gets rid of Smoke odor plus alot of different odors.  In the 80's the name was changed from Smoke Eater to Sent Eliminator.  The candle formula and the color was not changed at all, and people told us to bring back Smoke Eater because it works better.  

This is all my 2 cents.... 

Now if you really want to compare sales of only Item Pink candles to your Pretty Pink Candles, you could export your sales data as a csv or excel file.  Use the Search and rename function and check the sales data against other years or months for example.

So Search for exactly "Pretty Pink" and Replace with just "Pink".  Then all you sales data for Pretty Pink and Just Pink Candles could be combined.  

Just a few Ideas for this issue and maybe this bad thing, is acctually good before you decide to change other names, and see that changing the name was detrimental to sales, or of no improvement to sales.

[jennEvolve]

It's not so much because a name change for better sales, as much as it is because a product was added on the fly at an event or pop up. Or because we changed the naming schemes or something goes from a limited edition to a permanent one in our inventory list "Seasonal - White Birch" to "Standard - White Birch".