Square Online: Item variation not displayed in my store

[twowhales]

At our coffee shop we have various items that can have multiple variations e.g. cakes and squares. Each variation has an inventory. Usually there is more than one variation for each of these item e.g cakes: carrot, chocolate etc and squares: date, apricot etc. On the online store this works fine if there is more than one variation—the customer chooses one of the options.

However, if there happens to be only one variation (cakes change often in our shop) then the variation name disappears and all one is left with is the generic item name e.g. cake or square.

If I use a modifier I can easily have just one modifier option and this appears in the item sales popup. E.g only one soup modifier as in the screenshot below

Of course I can not use a modifier in the case of cakes because I need to track the inventory.

It would seem sensible to include the variation selector (dropdown menu) in exactly the same way as the modifier (above) where there is a named variation (i.e. not 'regular')—even if there is only one option. This would also be more consistent with your software design.

A similar issue arises on the dashboard (oh dear, it has timed out again! — please fix this so I at least have an option to set the timeout period to something reasonable—why should it be up to the software engineer how long I want the page to stay open?). The item edit screen does not show the variation name even if it is not 'regular' until you select edit/manage variation or something like that (I'm not going to sign in yet again to check the wording!). Unlike Edit Item | Weebly which does show the variation even if there is only one—which is a much better design. Also Weebly does not shut itself down every 10 minutes or whatever you have the Dashboard set to!

Thanks.

[Alex_]

Hi @twowhales,

I will be sure to escalate the feedback regarding the timeout window when using the site. 

I'm still having trouble understanding the question on utilizing the variations/modifiers on your store. Is the issue that items that use only 1 variation, tend to disappear at checkout? Is this occurring with every item?

Please let me know by replying in this thread. I'll keep an eye out for your response.

[twowhales]

Hi Alex, thanks for your response.

Its the variation name (e.g. carrot cake) that is not displayed for the item when there is only one variation. So the customer does not know what the variation actually is—just the generic item name (e.g. cake). This also occurs in the dashboard editor but not weebly editor and when you order the item online. So I choose the generic item cake and if there is more than one variation, say carrot and chocolate there will be a drop down menu asking the customer to choose carrot or chocolate. Fine. If we take chocolate off (as a variation) there is no drop down and the customer does not know what they are ordering. It would be nice for the drop down to say carrot in this case. As I said before this all works fine if it is a modifier—it will display a drop down even if there is only one choice. This just uses the same logic in cases where the variation is not called 'regular' (by default).

I hope that helps.

I could get round it by having every choice of cake a different item and making them visible or unavailable in Weebly but then I get many more items hanging about and the online store gets more crowded.

[Alex_]

Hi @twowhales,

I appreciate the patience. I've gone ahead and sent you a private message with next steps and follow up information for your site. 

[roriblooms]

I'm having the same issue. On Square Online, is there a way to show the variation name even if it's just one item?

[JJ_]

This sounds like a good question for our Square Online team, @roriblooms 

They can take a look at your account with you to help shine a light here, as they are able to look at your account alongside you in order to pinpoint what's going on here. Please reach out by phone when you have a moment by logging into your Square account and heading here.