Looking for ways to deal with the lack of Sub Categories and item import problems.

[_Brandon_]

Hello everyone.  For the last year or so I have been helping update the family business from just a local mom and pop store to a more modern business.  The first part was adding Square to take credit cards (again) and then establishing a website.  The website is a basic Word Press/ Woocommerce based affair.  Going in to 2021 my goal is to start using better inventory control.  Through the last year we have been manually updating the website as items sell in store.  This is slow and depends on several people remembering to complete a task which doesn't always happen. 

We were looking to upgrade from the "Terminal" to the "Register" but after talking with a representative at Square it seemed like everything could be done on the computer as a test run prior to investing in the "Register".  Everything was looking good until I started syncing items from Woocommerce to Square.  Our multiple categories on the website became a mess on Square.  The lack of Sub Categories really sucks but has been covered here a number of times so we probably don't need to beat that dead horse again.  The bigger issue for me is there doesn't appear to even by a rhyme or reason to how items end up in a category in Square.  For example on the website if you shop "Parts" you get a sub category of "Belts".  When these came into square 3 of the items ended up in "Belts" the other 30ish ended up in "Parts".  I just tried to manually move them all to belts in the Square but I'm a bit worried as to what repercussions this may have in Woocommerce.  I have several more items (about 650) randomly dispersed through a bunch of out of order categories in Square right now.  Before my impatience kicks in and I start trying things and possibly making it worse I wanted to see if anyone could offer insight to work arounds.

If an item is in multiple categories in Woocommerce, does it matter which one it is in on Square?

Is there a way to point it to the right location on import to Square to avoid manually moving things around? (I have a lot more items to add to both the website and Square)

If I delete the website parent categories from Square once the items are moved to the website sub categories will that screw up anything on the website?  

Descriptions do not seem to import in at all.  Any helpful hints? 

I appreciate any help with this.  After a year of work on getting products listed and organized on the website I don't want to take too many risks with trial and error at this point. 

[Goldneye]

HI, from my experience helping in the Community, Square does have sync issues.  One being that sellers add inventory on the regular Square Dashboard.  By adding inventory to the Online Dashboard and allowing a small window of time for items to sync, then inventory is added and sync accordingly.

I am not familiar with Woocommerce and do realize you have a year's worth of time spent but you can create a free Square Online store and see if it may work.  A free plan charges for payment processing only.  You can upgrade as business needs.

After a quick Google search I did find a Woocommerce Square Support Page, not sure if it may help or not

https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-square/

[_Brandon_]

Hey Terri, 

Thanks for the reply.  We did look at the Square website in the beginning and basically decided against it.  The generic look and lack of organization for a large number of products were the biggest problem.  We are in a strange place for retail.  We do primarily vintage items so even if we have two of the same items they aren't in identical condition, which means we will often list these separately to allow people to choose which one they want.  It creates a LOT of items for us, but it's best for the customer so that's what we do.  Ideally we probably need something far more extravagant that what would be cost effective for a business our size to use. 

I reached out to Woocommerce first since it is technically their "app" that handles the import functions.  To put it nicely they were worthless.  They have been great in pretty much every other aspect, but they blame the shortcomings on Square for this.  The representative's suggestion was to delete all of the items from our website and resync them from Square after organizing them.  This would lose all of the organization the website has, it would also appear to lose all of the item descriptions (since they do not appear in Square), and I don't even want to know about the product images.  The website has multiple images per (most) products, and a single on the Square Terminal. 

From my searching for a solution I know there are a lot of other on here that have a similar complaint about Square's lack of of sub categories. Hopefully someone that has been dealing with it for a while can offer some insights before I have to start experimenting. 

thanks again for the reply

Brandon