Uncategorized Sales

[mdfcpoa]

There have been a number of posts about being able to correct a transaction after it has occurred from "uncategorized sale" to a preset category.  It seems as though many of us are becoming increasingly frustrated with this glitch.

I understand the importance of not being able to alter a transaction after it has occurred, but until you resolve the issue of "uncategorized sales" that we currently can't correct, can you at least put in the option for us to put notes or comments on a transaction and allow us to flag it in some way.   It would not alter the transaction but it would give us the possibility of exporting the comment so we don't have to keep reinvestigating certain transactions.  

Having to resift through multiple uncategorized transactions due to glitches with woo or a mistake by an employee is proving to be very frustrating.  Still love Square; I'm just hoping you can throw us a bone here to relieve the stress. 

Thank you, in advance, for your time and help!

[Tom]

Hey @mdfcpoa,

Welcome to the seller community and thank you for taking the time to share your experience with this issue. As of a few months ago, WooCommerce was looking into building out support for itemized transactions. I went to check for any updates that would help with this, though there aren't any developments that I can access right now.

For the time being, you may need to touch base with WooCommerce for more insight. In addition, I'll surface your post with our Point of Sale team and point out that the ability to add a note to a closed sale would be helpful for record keeping.

Appreciate your patience on this. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

[EarthSoothers]

We've been waiting for over a year for WooCommerce and Square to get this figured out. As we understand it, Square did not originally have functionality to receive itemized sales from WooCommerce, however that apparently changed in early 2018.

Unfortunately, it seems that WooCommerce has not done their part to enable this, stating that a complete re-write of the Woo/Square plug-in is required. We use to like WooCommerce, but this one is becoming a dealbreaker.

We're not planning to move away from Square (yet) as our payment gateway / inventory control, but we are actively looking for better integration with our online shop than WooCommerce is apparently willing to provide. Before it is suggested, Square's online storefront/marketplace is painfully inadequate for our needs, particularly from a design and functionality perspective.

Would someone from Square please advise as to whether or not there are ANY online storefront solutions out there that have the ability to pass itemized/categorized sales to Square? As numerous others have reported, Square had become our defacto sales reporting mechanism but the lack of this functionality makes the item/category level sales reporting in Square impossible to use without having to manually cross-reference back to the WooCommerce store reporting.

The sad part is that we WANT to keep using Square and WooCommerce together, but the lack of this functionality is steering us away from both vendors.

The confusing part is that we cannot believe that more store owners are not banging down the doors about this. How can one wisely manage marketing efforts (or use Square's built-in marketing tools) when we can't see what is being sold online?

Vexing.

[Tom]

Hey @EarthSoothers,

You're correct—when the original integration was built out, Square did not have the functionality to receive itemized sales as you stated. I went to look for developments since my last post a few weeks ago, and I'm unable to access and share out any updates at this time.

If you haven't already, I would suggest reaching out to WooCommerce directly as they may be able to provide additional options. In addition, is there any chance that you may have any updates or workarounds for the issues that EarthSoothers described, @Woo_Phil?

I will continue to check for any other details and circle back as soon as I have more insight.

[Woo_Phil]

There aren't any work arounds for this.

As mentioned above the WooCommerce Square plugin will need to be rewritten in order to use your new API to allow this type of information to be sent.

While it is something that we plan on doing, I do not currently have any timeline for when that may happen.

[Helen]

Thank for this update @Woo_Phil!

@EarthSoothers I just wanted to let you know that at this time GoCentral, GoDaddy's online store does support itemized sales.

When this is also available with WooCommerce or any other eCommerce integrations we'll update this thread to let you know!

[EarthSoothers]

Hi Helen,

At your suggestion, we checked out the GoDaddy Central Online Store builder and found it pretty easy to setup and integrate with Square, though we didn't get the initial import/sync right and had to restructure our Square product catalog to preserve existing SKUs. We figured it would be helpful for others to post a bit about our online store search and where we may end up. We would also like to say that we're committed to Square as our primary payment method, inventory control, and general back-office functions.

Our Current Environment

WordPress backed WooCommerce with Square & PayPal payment integrations, ShipStation for order fulfillment (shipping labels), MailChimp for email list mgt

What we like:

• WordPress is familiar and relatively solid.
• WooCommerce is very customizable, including email notification templates.
• WooCommerce integrates seamlessly with PayPal, ShipStation, and MailChimp.
• WooCommerce integrates with Square for payment, kinda.
• WooCommerce and ShipStation have mobile apps for iOS that make managing a store while on the go, a snap.

What we don't like or can't figure out:

• WooCommerce does not pass itemized sales to Square, making it quite difficult to do basic sales reporting and analysis. Everything from WooCommerce comes over as an "Uncategorized Amount", without the SKU-level detail required.
• Occasionally, a 3rd party WordPress plugin can take the whole site down or make it load very slowly. It is a PIA to track down the misbehaving plug-in while trying to run a live online store.

Summary:

WooCommerce supports detailed customizations and robust integrations with ShipStation and MailChimp, however it's fatal flaw is that it currently lacks the ability to communicate itemized/categorized sales to Square. Dealbreaker?

GoDaddy Central Online Store

What we like:

• Easy to build a good looking online store in 2hrs. We were pleasantly surprised.
• Claims support for passing itemized sales to Square (*update* what appears to be the case is that the Item Name comes over, but not the SKU or category or sales channel, argh)
• Support for PayPal as alternate payment method.

What we don't like or couldn't figure out:

• No ShipStation integration
• No MailChimp integration
• No apparent ability to customize the content of notification emails to customers.
• No apparent way to TEST the order process to see what a customer experience is like.

Summary:

We found GoDaddys' store features are lacking a bit in terms of being able to customize common settings like notification email content/design and integrations with fulfillment partners and email list managers. For example, it does not appear to support ShipStation for fulfillment, but it does claim to support Shippo. No support for MailChimp integrations, either. For the most part it seems to work well for what it is, but it doesn't completely solve our issue and there also doesn't appear to be a way to TEST the order process without making a live order.

Square Online Store

What we like:

• Assuming support for itemized sales to aid in sales reporting and analysis.
• Real-time inventory updates across all sales channels (we also use Square for POS)
• Integrates with ShipStation (have not tested yet)

What we don't like or couldn't figure out:

• Literally only 4 BASIC themes to choose from and none of them work well for us.
• No apparent MailChimp integration, but wondering if built-in Square marketing could replace that?
• No idea how to customize the content of notification emails to customers, or even if that is possible.
• No idea how to TEST the order process to see what a customer experience is like without placing a live order.

Summary:

The low level of customization and barren landscape of themes leaves us wondering if the Square online store product has been (or will be) phased out. There also doesn't appear to be a way to TEST the order process, which again is surprising. We're confident that it functions to collect online orders, but aesthetically and feature-wise, it leaves a lot to be desired.

So what do we really want?

Ideally, a reasonably customizable online storefront that seamlessly integrates with Square and a ShipStation/Shippo/etc. To be frank, we could do without MailChimp, it's a great tool, but one more system to be managing. We like the idea of having email list management part of an integrated solution like GoDaddy's Central Online Store. ShipStation has been a huge timesaver for us, though it hasn't really lived up to its claims about saving big money on postage. ShipStation supports our Rollo label printers, which is something that Shippo also claims to be able to do.

And where does that leave us?

Not in a great spot!

If we want to customize things like email notification content and integration with ShipStation, we should stick with WooCommerce, except that the lack of itemized/categorized sales being passed to Square is why we came here in the first place.

If we took a big leap, we could move the site/store to GoDaddy Central Online Store, start doing order fulfillment through Shippo, and migrate our email list management away from MailChimp. Possible. Significant change and effort, though. It also would not completely solve the itemized sales in Square issue, because we still wouldn't be getting Category, SKU, etc. And...it bothers us that we cannot edit the content of email notifications.

Square's native online store offering lacks the ability to customize email notifications and the aesthetic options for the online store itself are sub-par, at least when compared to any other online store platform.

Heck, we are now even exploring Square's Checkout and Orders APIs to see if we can get it working that way. If that can't happen (and if we decide to stick with Square), we'll likely look at doing exports from Square and whatever online storefront we're using at that time and then writing a tool to match transactions across the platforms. We really hope we don't have to do that. 

So, anyone from Square have any other ideas? Our requirements are above. Would appreciate knowing if there are any other good online storefronts out there that support passing itemized (and categorized) sales to Square and can integrate with an online shipping account like ShipStation or Shippo. Bonus if it also integrates with MailChimp!

[njboosterclub]

I also need a way to categorize past sales.  Not all items sold were assigned a category.  The category is a reporting mechanism, and there is no reason to lock it down.  I think this is a Square issue.  Identifying and correcting sales originally made without a category is crucial for reporting and tracking.  

Please allow for the assignment of uncategorized sales. 

Thanks,

A. Sellers

[HairbyAngel1]

Hi,

    The response did not address the issue with services coming in as  uncategorized.  Items report correctly . Thanks.

Angel