New Cart Experience 6-7-2023

[Candlestore]

The new cart experience for adding a variation is Terrible when you have more than 3-5 variations!

Anyone else having an issue or just me since I have items with 20 to 150 variations?  Why do I have so many Variations because I can not have Sub Categories on the POS.

Yes I know I can disable the new Experience but I want to throw this out there before the "New" experience is standard experience.

There are some things I like about it but the Variations is a Pain!!

I like that now when I take a Phone order I can enter the address for the customer without going in and out of the checkout cart. I also like the ability to add a Curbside and pickup details to the cart.  

[Donnie-M]

@Candlestore I know you have been around a long time on here, what level of categories would you like?  Top--Mid---detail---item?

Do you use the categories for reporting or just organization on the point of sale screen?

I think there are some things that may actually address some of the issues but maybe a little unorthodox.

[Candlestore]

@Donnie-M ;

I use Categories as a way to do sales.

So like if I could have 1 item in multiple categories that would be great.  I do not need it for organizing the POS screen since I use barcode Scanners for most of my items.  But every now and then my big fingers either mistype the SKU in Square or when I print my Barcodes. Or the worst was when I realized my Online sales channel was appending my scent to my Item name to make a SKU there.  So for simplicity say my 28oz jar of Lilac ... Item name there was 28oz.... Variation was Lilac..... SKU would end up being 28oz Lilac..... well in Store I had the SKU as Lilac 28oz..... well in QuickBooks it looked as though I was selling 28oz Lilac and Lilac 28oz.   So I changed the SKU in Square to 28oz Lilac..... easy but I missed a jar here or there.  So then we would need to find them on the POS because the barcode was no longer there.  Or other times the Barcode is damaged on items we resell and then we need to find them quickly for the customer.

So with the Categories or Sub Categories being able to have 1 Item in multiple locations :

    1- it would make it easier to find.

    2 - I could put candles in categories (sub Categories) like Color  - Red, orange, Yellow.... Holiday Sents.... 

then I could select Categories RED, Green  White for sale in December.  

I have Variations by Size.... if I could select the Variation 28oz size and put that in a Category (sub Category) of 28oz sizes then I could select all those for a sale.   Square suggested I use Option Sets ---- Option sets create Variations but I can not select a variation to be on an sale without choosing the main Item.

Below is a field for my Online store:

This is for the Item 28oz Lilac.   It is in both Jar Candles which you can choose by Scent and also in 28oz jars by image.  Some people like to see the color of the candle others are just going by scent.

 

So by having the ability to have 1 Item in a sub category I can fine tune Sales and Discounts without changing them every week or whatever it is. Or miss putting a candle in the Sale Group.  if I could have the item in a Sub category of Halloween candles I could have Black, Orange, Yellow, Pumpkin...... scent and also Witch candle holders in that sub category or category when I create the item.  Then in the fall I say Halloween candles category or subcategory is on Sale with an automatic discount.

So as you can see in the picture above which again is not in Square I can assign multiple Items to a category or an item to multiple categories and sub categories or even create one on the fly.  With this idea I could have 1 candle in multiple Categories or subcategories that I can list said category or Variation on sale.

So lets say I want Christmas candles on sale.....

Categories of Green Red White which could include Tappers, Jars, Pillars etc..... or Christmas scented candles

So then when I want to apply the discount Square lets me choose a Category I can just choose Christmas Candles and they are all in that sale.  

I know this would have to be an Ideate... but i was thinking with Sub Categories it might work.

any ideas?

[Candlestore]

As for the New Experience here are pictures of my issue with the Variation selection.... scrolling to the right on the little screen compared to the Old version with all choices on one larger screen.

Here I can see 2 sizes Price points for the Fudge ( New Experience)

New Experince

Here I see all choices (Old Experience)

Old Experience

the Fudge we do not have a Scale connected to the POS for the Price and we have these price Points so the more you buy the lower the per lb price is.   So we do not just have the fixed $14.99 per lb.

Now just imagine people using square without a scanner having to scroll through 2-3 variations at a time if they have up to 100 variations.  Which is close to what Square says is the amount you can have for Online Variations.  The Old Experience with More Variations at one time would be better in that case.   That is my biggest draw back with the new experience.

[Donnie-M]

@Candlestore I 100% agree with you now and see exactly the problem.  This is the retail version of the app and I found it was great on a few things, but not great on others.  I see now exactly why it is a problem and I think Square should leave the ability in to swap back and forth.  My answer was to use the point of sale app without the fancy checkout.

[KellySo]

I'm having the same issue and same concern of this becoming "standard". I own a yarn shop, so we have a LOT of variations for yarn colors of the same yarn, of needle sizes and lengths, etc. It gets very involved with the variations. Now the with new "experience" its HORRIBLE! I can only see 2 variations at a time and it slows things down tremendously, I have customers just waiting around while I'm spending way too much time trying to find things and scroll sideways through multiple variations. I don't have a scanner set up yet. I bought one from square and it hasn't been working, nor have I had the time to really sit down and figure that out, as I'm a one person show and do absolutely everything for my shop. Regardless, I shouldn't need to have a scanner for my equipment to be effective and efficient. I reverted back to the standard experience but I'm so worried that this new version will become the new standard. I don't get why they put everything to the left and much much smaller. It's harder to see and harder to use. I personally don't need the delivery, pick up options on my register and to add all that customer info and I wish there was a way to make that an option to see it or not at that point of adding items to the cart. I'm not sure what to do, as this has been my first wth moment with square.

[UglyBaby]

It's all screaming into the void with Square. They have such a large user base I can't imagine anyone's feedback means anything. And as a small business, I feel trapped with Square. So much of what you all do it great. But you CONSTANTLY make baffling choices like this. My heart sinks every time I see there's a new interface. 

I've collapse and expanded items to be variations and to be individuals entries MULTIPLE times to follow the apparent whims of the chaotic interface team. Looks like this season we're back to individual items again. 😕

And the community support people will be nice and say "We'll tell the developers!" but of course nothing will change. And I'll keep paying for it every month. 

Anyway, sorry to rant. I also don't like this change lol

[MountainHouse]

I agree with you for the most part, why they CONSTANTLY mess with the interface instead of focusing that effort on fixing the many many bugs Square suffers from I will never comprehend! However, don't be discouraged, the developers do listen!!! I have worked with them before and had some of the most minor things corrected, down to font sizes and image quality on the Dashboard. They will fix things if they can, sometimes the problem is so deeply intertwined with other things that they seem to be unable to though. At the end of the day Square is a practically miraculous piece of software, with abilities far above and beyond what most of us will ever use, but to your point, they need to stop changing the interfaces constantly.

[MountainHouse]

Agreed! The new carts design for variations is HORRIBLE! It must be improved upon!