How To Hide A Catagory

[droidbaker]

I operate a bakery & as many others have voiced with bakeries we are struggling with not have the options we need to operate in a streamlined and efficient manner so always trying work arounds etc to make an imperfect system work for us during these times.  The update to time based categories do nothing to help us since it cant be ordered in advance.  My question is is there at least a way to turn off an entire catagory as some items are preorder and others I am making avail for imm pick up so I cant turn off the entire store but dont want to have to go in and hide each individual item.  Part of the problem is customers paying attention which never happens.  Please let me know if I am missing this function or another way to make this work.

[AshleyK · Accepted solution]

Hi! You can definitely hide items on your online store to make them available later. To do this, select the item to edit and choose to either hide it or mark it as unavailable. We currently don't have a way to do this for entire categories, but it is possible to do it per item. 

[QBLTD]

I did what you said as I was setting up the shop. The items showed up on the online shop - photo, description, etc. and price - with unavailable on it. Hidden did not hide the item it was still there. I had someone go to the shop and look. They saw the items - they could not buy the items  - but I do not want them seen.  I appreciate your response but it is something I tried. I also had searched my question before posting it to the community and did not get any relevant post come up. I have been using Square for about three years now, Unfortunately with the pandemic we have not been doing craft shows or sales - and thought we would set up an online shop with Square. We have set up online shops on other online selling websites over the years and setting up the Square shop was the worst experience of any of them. We have put the shop on unpublished. And in we are awaiting a response from Square/Weebly about our Weebly webite that had the same log in with Weebly for the past 15 years  as our Square account has set up three years ago - both before Square joined with Weebly!  Trying to delete the online  shop we deleted our regular website - gone. All we get back from our email for help to recover our  website is robot response emails.  What a mess - all because we thought we would try a Square Online shop!

[QBLTD]

I tried setting up a Square Online Store but could not find a way to only show certain specific items in my Square item inventory. There are items that I only sell in person and do not want them in the Square Online Store. I saw check boxes next to items - but whether the box was checked or left open the items still showed up for sale in the online store.  Ideally, if I could show only one category of items from my Square item library that would be ideal and then I would put only the items I want in the online store in that category = and ALL would now show items I do not want to sell online.  Any help appreciated! Thank you!

[ashc]

Hi @QBLTD and welcome to the Community.

I moved your post to a thread where this question has been answered already about making certain items unavailable. This can be done in the Items menu on the Online editor.

Check out the Best Answer above for details. 

In the future, don't hesitate to search your question first here or on the Support Center for your quickest answer too!

[tlukemire]

Hi @droidbaker ! I operate a donut shop and we have the same issue on occasion. (Sidenote: @AshleyK Can Square please add an advanced ordering feature to the time based categories? Advanced ordering works for regular shop hours so why not time based category hours? Would be great!) Back to the issue at hand, when we want to have a category of items not show online we use the lack of advanced ordering on time based categories to our advantage. We go into said category and change the time setting to use it as a time based category. Then just uncheck the box(s) for the day(s) of the week you don't want it to appear. For example, we ran out of gluten free donuts today (Friday) so we went into our Gluten Free category and marked it as timed based and unchecked the box for Friday. Then when customers go to the online store it will only show what's currently available to order with the option to view all items in a drop down menu. You can go back in later and switch the category back to regular business hours if you like and the category will appear all of the time again. Hope that makes sense and helps with your situation. All the best!

[violantescater]

We have categories set up for Holiday or Weekly Specials. Also, we are a catering company with a food truck. We set up menus per event, many of these are very similar items, but maybe do not need pricing due to an organization or company paying for the event and food items. It would be great to make multiple categories and have them be Unavailable so we can just use them on the food truck. I know Items can be done, but doing a complete category would be very beneficial to many besides just us.

[Kassi_]

Hey there, @violantescater - 

Welcome to the Community! 

This is excellent feedback for the Item Library and I can see how much of a time-saver this would be in the long run. 

Would you want all of the items to automatically go unavailable that are under that particular category? 

I can get all of this detail over to our Product Team as a Feature Request to help evolve this feature for the future.

I will keep an eye out for your reply👀.  

[ViolantesMeat]

Hi Kassi_,

  We are hoping to Hide the "Category", but not necessarily the Items. Many of the items can be everyday items, but fit into particular categories for Holidays or On Sale for specials. We also bring in items for Holidays or Specials to place into the category. To be able to just switch off the category from visibility would be a benefit and save time than needing to recreate the Category for the next holiday. Seems like a small issue, but takes time to create and build each category.

Thank You