Inventory Updating by CSV or XLSX required fields...?

[Candlestore]

I am looking into making an csv / xlsx file to update my quantities for my Square Retail (instore) sales.  

My question is:

If I leave a Field Blank like Price or Description when doing the update will this produce Blanks or just not replace the data there?

I know to match the Item correctly Square uses the Token Field or SKU, So could I just have the token field SKU Field and the New Quantity Fields Filled in, or would all the other fields also go to Blanks?

Has anyone tried this?

TIA

Keith

[TheRealChipA]

Hi Keith,

Just for kicks and giggles, I checked out the Square Help files on item importing.  I found it to be pretty compelling that they didn’t mention your “blank field” question at all.  I think I know why.

Reading the Help Article on item importing, it is very clear that they only recommend one method for updating the item library in bulk.  That consists of three steps:

1. Export the current library to an Excel file
2. Make any changes needed to that Excel file
3. Import the Excel file, which in your case will have the effect of updating every item, changed or not.

FAIR WARNING - I always recommend doing this only when your store is closed, and when your online store is down.  That way you are sure you are the only person with his hand in the cookie jar, as it were.  I’m paranoid that way!  LOL

Following the above steps removes the need to worry about leaving fields blank.  All data will be exported, and all (changed or not) data will be imported.

I hope this answers your question.  If not, let me know!

Regards,

[Candlestore]

@TCSlaguna , @TheRealChipA ;

Thank you both for your ideas and replies.  

My actual situation is I keep my Stock Quantities on QuickBooks Desktop for my items.  At the end of the day I run my reports and have my sales from my online store and from Square imported to quickbooks, which reduces my items stock.  Then I need to update my quantities in both Square and my online store since they do not talk nicely.  lol  

So I was looking at exporting my CSV files, writing a power query to update just the items in square that sold in my online store with their new quantities and have the rest of the fields as blanks instead of having to write queries to match each column that was exported.  

So basically my Quantity field would get replaced by the new Quantity, but I did not want to change my description because the Description is different from the description online or in Square.  The Item Names are also different since QuickBooks uses the SKU for my Item names etc and the Description in QuickBooks is my Item name from Square.  

So basically after both sales were updated in Quickbooks I was going to export my QuickBooks Inventory, pull the new quantity using the SKU as my key since its the same in all three csv files.  And just replace the quantity in the column headed New Quantity in Square for the items that were sold that day. And do basically the same for my online store.

I also just tried uploading the CSV file before but got an error since Square exported an Excel Workbook not just the Items Sheet.  The Error was basically looking for all three sheets from the workbook since i have data in all three sheets.

Oh well guess I will just figure out writing this another way to make it easy.

And yes I play around with my CSV files only after the Store is closed and i am the only one that is messing with it.  I made the mistake of adjusting something that was wrong as my partner was doing a sale once, had her messed up since it was a mistake with a SKU.   I thought I entered the SKU wrong in Square, here my barcode I made had a mistake in it.  So not only was the Barcode wrong but now i messed up the Item she was searching for.  🙂   mistakes happen.  Good thing is we have work arounds just for this situation.  After the customer left she was like now what did you do!!!  I am there like I fixed it.  She was no, you made it worse.   LOL  Oh well we all mess up trying to get things to be right.  

Thanks again for your inputs!

[TheRealChipA]

Do you mind emailing me your csv files and your power query? This might be a case for not using power query. Let me take a look. 

you have my email address. Might be morning before I can get to it though. 

[Candlestore]

@TheRealChipA ;

Ok it will be a little later, closing up and then time to eat and get home etc.  Thank you.

[TCSlaguna]

I agree with @TheRealChipA, I would not play around with fields if not needed. 

What I do know is if you leave Quantity blank, it will be marked as a non-inventory item.