Square inventory not syncing with WooCommerce

[JayGodbold]

Having an absolube nightmare with trying to upload my inventory from Square to WooCommerce. It has previsouly added products which we will have to delete as it has double up on some but the issue that I've got at the moment is that I have added stock levels into Square and then tried to force a manual upload within Wordpress but stock levels are not being uploaded. 😞 

Please please please help! 

[snowgurl]

So I've been trying for a day to get the INITIAL manual sync to work between Square >>WC. Every time I do it it just hangs/freezes and the progress bar never moves. I've done it 20+ times so far. I've hunted for help everywhere and checked a bunch of things but nothing has worked.

It IS creating categories, so there is communication. But no products.  So I went into the logs and saw a bunch of messages. At first it said "receiving products" but then a quick cURL error with a "timed out."

02-02-2018 @ 16:43:33 - ====Start Log February 2, 2018 4:43pm====
Retrieving Square Categories
====End Log February 2, 2018 4:43pm (0.02)====


02-02-2018 @ 16:43:34 - ====Start Log February 2, 2018 4:43pm====
Getting All Square Inventory
====End Log February 2, 2018 4:43pm (0.02)====


02-02-2018 @ 16:43:35 - ====Start Log February 2, 2018 4:43pm====
Retrieving Products
====End Log February 2, 2018 4:43pm (0.02)====


02-02-2018 @ 16:43:35 - ====Start Log February 2, 2018 4:43pm====
(Retrieving Products) Try #1 - cURL error 28: Operation timed out after 1000 milliseconds with 0 bytes received
====End Log February 2, 2018 4:43pm (0.02)====

Just row after row of this.

So then I disabled the plugin and deleted it. I cleared out the categories that were set up. I logged out of WP and back in, reinstalled and setup the Square WC plugin, and now I'm trying to sync again. After about 2 hours the bar hasn't moved. I checked the log and it's line after line of "timed out" messages again.

And, yes, I have SKUs on all of my items in Square. Is there a special format they must be written in? I have letters, numbers and dashes. No spaces.

My next step is to create some dummy items in Square to see if I can make ones that will sync. Try changing variations, length of titles, etc. WC doesn't like SOMETHING that is in Square.

I'm not sure why this is so difficult. I follow the directions to the letter. Please help!!

[Woo_Phil]

@snowgurl

Thanks for posting those logs, that helps a lot!

cURL error 28: Operation timed out after 1000 milliseconds with 0 bytes received

That error is not caused by the plugin itself. It means that when the plugin is trying to get information from Square's servers it isn't getting any reply. More specifically it is only waiting 1 second for a reply then timing out. While 1 second would likely be fine in most cases, it's possible it's not for your hosting environment and you may need your host to help change that setting.

Other things that can cause this error:

- Something blocking the responses from Square. This can be your hosting companies firewall/security setup, or a plugin/theme on your site. 

- DNS issues with you domain

- Issues with your sites SSL certificate

- Improper caching through either plugins on your site, or from your hosting company

As a first step, I would recommend the following. Try temporarily changing to the default "Twenty Seventeen" theme, or the Storefront theme. Then disable ALL plugins except for WooCommerce and WooCommerce Square. Once you've done that try a sync. If that helps, you'll know either your theme or a plugin on your site is causing a conflict with the communication.

If that doesn't help check to make sure there are no issues with your SSL certificate or DNS settings for your domain. Then ask your host to check if they are blocking any communication between your site and Square. If they take a look at the logs for your site, they should clearly see the outgoing requests from your site and be able to tell if they are blocking the response from Square's servers.

If none of this helps and you are using the official WooCommerce Square plugin, please open a ticket with our team by logging in at WooCommerce.com. If you are using a similar plugin from another third-party developer, you'll want to contact them directly.

[snowgurl]

Hi! Thanks for the reply!

So I did everything you said and I'm getting the same errors in the log. So it's not a plugin, it seems. 

I did just hear back from WC on the ticket I submitted. He told me exactly what you told me, minus the SSL/DNS stuff, so I guess I'll move on to that. What do you mean by "make sure there are no issues with your SSL certificate or DNS settings for your domain?" What would I look at to make sure they're working correctly? I'm using the SSL that Siteground offers, Let's Encrypt, and their DNS settings.

My WP site is hosted on Siteground. I've only had this site a few days so I have no idea how easy they are to deal with and contact. I will give it a try, though. Wish me luck. 😉

[Woo_Phil]

Hey @snowgurl, Sitegrounds team is usually pretty responsive and helpful.

As for what to look for, you'll likely want to use some testing tools as you likely won't know all of the DNS and SSL settings for your domain.

For your domain try running:

https://mxtoolbox.com/dnscheck.aspx

Then use the "Find Problems" button to see what comes up.

For your SSL certificate:

https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/

Can you please let me know your ticket number with our team? That way I can help dig into this with you, more in-depth. 

[snowgurl]

Okay, LOTS to report. 

You're right. Siteground was SUPER helpful and very quick to respond! Chatted with a guy for an hour. He checked the DNS and SLL and it is all working correctly. So then we tried to reproduce the errors, and we did. So we both thought that upping the timeout setting would help -- but it didn't. 

I did notice that earlier today when it was trying to autosync I was getting messages like, "product #sldjfskdjfd syncing" and then the next line would be "variation for product #sjldfjsldkfj -- not syncing. Skipping" -- or something like that. And that repeated over and over. I wonder if WC is having trouble handling the variations in Square. I'd like to remove my variations and test it but I'd hate to do that and have it NOT work, and then have to reenter them all again! Can I make a separate location in Square and add a few items, and try to sync only that location? I could add products WITHOUT variations, and see if that works. Is that doable?

In the meantime, I also uninstalled WC and WC Square completely and reinstalled, tried to sync again, and got the same timeout errors. Thought starting over with a clean DB would help. Nope. 😉

[snowgurl]

Yet another update ...

Still nothing happening from S > WC. This the response.

02-05-2018 @ 16:43:59 - ====Start Log====
[Square -> WC] Syncing WC product inventory for Square Item ID ea7ea36e-86f1-4f13-8573-186d165fcf05.
====End Log====


02-05-2018 @ 16:43:59 - ====Start Log====
[Square -> WC] Syncing WC product inventory for Square Item ID ea7ea36e-86f1-4f13-8573-186d165fcf05 - WC product/variation not found skipping.
====End Log====

It's looking for products that aren't there because the intital sync never worked. 

So I tried something else. I made a dummy item in Square, and made the identical item in WC. Then I waited for the hourly sync. The S > WC sync just showed errors, but the WC > S sync worked! Kind of. It added a new DUPLICATE item to my Square inventory. So it CAN do it -- just can't match them up, even though I made them identical.

So I'm wondering ... should I just recreate my entire inventory in WC, let it sync back to Square, making duplicate entries, and then delete all of the old items in Square? I just don't think this is going to work any other way, and I'm so tired of trying. I've wasted another entire day on this. Ugh.

[Woo_Phil]

Hey @snowgurl

Thanks for the extra info. As I mentioned before, it's best if I help you through the ticket you created with our team previously. There is too much 'behind the scenes' for me to really know what's happening here on the forums.

Can you please send me the ticket number for the ticket you opened with my team. Once I have that, I'll respond to you through the ticket and we can dig into this further. 

Thanks!

[snowgurl]

Ohhh. I didn't realize you needed that. Sorry. I'll try to find it and get it to you. 🙂

[snowgurl]

I just now emailed Square Support. I remember now that I couldn't find anywhere to actually OPEN a support TICKET so I haven't done it yet. So I just emailed the contact people and asked the how to do that. Sorry abou that. It's not really very clear on the website. 😉

When I get a response and get a ticket I will let you know. In the meantime the Woo people wrote back and I made an admin user for him to go in and see if he can see what's wrong. So hopefully he'll figure it out. I'll let you know if I have any news on that! Thanks!

[snowgurl]

So I tried to open a ticket with the Square people and this is what I got back finally today.

Although Square integrates with WooCommerce to process payments, all API functions are operated and managed by WooCommerce. For help with WooCommerce-specific questions, you’ll need to submit a ticket with their support team.

So they are no help, it seems. Thanks, Square.

I'm working with the WC people, albeit slowly. Hopefully, they will figure it out. They told me today that they've had multiple people with the same issue.

Thank you for trying, though! 🙂

[smallakin]

I got pretty much the same thing: "It's WooCommerce's problem, not ours".  Even though they claim to have a functioning integration with WooCommerce.  Ours seems to be working a little better lately, but who knows.

[snowgurl]

I can't even get it to do the initial sync. So you're way ahead of me.

Woo has been pretty helpful, just slow. We basically exchange one email a day with one question/answer or thing to try. Then I have to wait 24 hours for the next contact. Frustrating. But at least they haven't blown me off. 🙂

It's only been an entire week. Errr.

[nhu]

I had to disable the plugins and change theme to default woo theme. It seemed to work after I did that. Did some debugging and noticed woocommerce services actually caused some of the inventory problems.

[nhu]

I have an active ticket with woo but it’s unhelpful. Gave me a generic message that it works and it takes this long blah blah blah.

😑 I didn’t pay $80 for this boiler plate explanation 

[snowgurl]

Oh, I tried EVERYTHING. Everything everybody told me to do. Plugins, themes, SSL, cache, timeouts, and on and on. Nothing has helped. If I don't have it solved by later tomorrow I'm just gonna go ahead and manually enter everything. I can't keep waiting on this. Ridiculous. 

[nhu]

Are you exporting and planning to import .csv? It’s faster that way so you don’t have to create a lot of single products 

[snowgurl]

Right now I'm trying to do the "initial sync" using the button on the WC page -- Square > WC -- like they said to do before you do anything else. But, yeah, if I could just import a .csv file I'd rather do that. There are a lot of old items in Square that I'll just end up deleting anyway. Do you have instructions somewhere on how to do that? Can I just do a basic export in Square and import without having to tweak any of the columns, or do I need to fix it up before importing?

[nhu]

Download the sample csv here https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/product-csv-import-suite-importing-products/

You'll have to configure the variations differently, but there's instructions on that documentation page link ^

[snowgurl]

Excellent! I did manually enter one item so I thought I could just export that and use it as a template. And it sounds like I can. So that's what I'll do. Wondering ... is there an easy way to take the Square csv export and get it into the WC template format? Or will I have to do a lot of cutting and pasting? Either way it won't be too terribly difficult. It looks like I can map the fields at some point during import so if I have that all figured out it should be pretty easy.

Thank you so much! I wish I would've just done this a week ago instead of messing with the sync tool.  🙂

[nhu]

This is how to do it

1. Download the csv woocommerce template so you have your column headings 
2. Export your square inventory 
   1. screenshot: https://gmkr.io/s/5a7e4f4189b6e457e0e4d707/0
3. Make sure you select 'csv'
   
   1. screenshot: https://gmkr.io/s/5a7e4f87ba136a52c53a9e42/0
4. THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP: ONLY open files on google sheets, the reason why is because microsoft excel likes to add additional markup to the file and when you try and import it to woo you'll get a huge error
5. Edit the googlesheet and just change the column names to match woo's column names
6. Extra tip: drag and pull down the grey bar so your heading stays put and that'll make it easier to sort the data (A-Z or Z-A) if you need to 
   1. screenshot: https://gmkr.io/s/5a7e500905bd13530716825f/0

hope that helps 😉

[snowgurl]

Perfect! And, yeah, I've learned NEVER to try to cut/paste or import anything out of MS products. So much junk! 😉

I just did a trial run of it and have it open in Sheets. So now I can go through and clean it out, rename the columns, and should be good to go. Yay! I'm so excited!! I just hope the WC people don't mess up my stuff after I get all of this set up. I need to write them back and tell them to stop what they're doing -- if they've done anything -- and delete the temp user I gave them. 🙂

Good news is I am able to syn item automatically once there is a corresponding item in each place. So hopefully that continues to work as it should. I will report back and let you know how it goes. Thanks again!

Oh, quick question ... there was a note on that page you sent about getting the photos to link up correctly. Any tips on that, or is just better to do them separately and get them into the WC database, and not rely on an old link?