Can Square automatically generate an SKU?

[LD31]

I've just transferred from using Vend to square. Vend automatically generates barcodes for products that don't have them for example jewellery and then I can just print a label using that code. 

Square doesn't seem to do this and leaves the SKU blank when adding items. is there a way that the SKU's can be generated in square without me have to make up random numbers? 

This is something that is square will be implementing in the future? 

[tranguyen]

Hi @LD31, welcome to the Seller Community! 

The ability to auto-generated SKU number from Square is currently a feature request. While I don't have an exact date or timeline when this will be rolled out to all sellers, we'll keep you update on this thread as we receive more information from our team.

I would also encourage you to check out our Beta Community to join and potentially get access to new features first when we test them out.

[SWGifts]

Hello there,

I would really appreciate some help if anybody has an answer to my problem.

I will try to explain best I can.....

My products on my website are different designs (lets say I have 10 products for example). When one is sold that design will then be printed by me onto a product (blank mug for example). Now, lets pretend that I have 100 mugs available to be printed on, because they are printed according to demand. To be clearer...I can't give different SKU numbers to each design (product) as one design might sell lots whilst others are not popular. The problem is with assigning stock levels to each SKU as if I input that there are 10 of each design (SKU) available then when 10 of one sell it will then advise that it is out of stock (even if there are actually 90 mugs left to print as the other 9 designs haven't sold)

I hope this is making sense as is quite tricky to explain. Basically I need to be able to have multiple products with the same SKU so that mugs all have one and then mousemats all have one etc, etc. Otherwise, I need to be able to have different SKU for each product (design) but then a counter which adjusts all of the designs not just the one. (so that each design will show there are 100 available and when one sells all of them would then adjust to 99)

Its very confusing and I cant find an answer to it!

I cannot list my designs on one product as variables because my whole shop is designs for products so each one has a product listing.

Any help please 🙂

[SWGifts]

Ideally the same SKU for multiple products so that if I have 50 designs for mugs and 50 designs for mousemats and 50 designs for clocks for example then only the 3 SKUs would exist (one for mugs, one for mousemats and one for clocks) so that I could accurately see how much blank stock I have available for selling.

[SWGifts]

Just to point out that I am using Woocommerce and have Square plugin

[tranguyen]

Hey @SWGifts, welcome to the Seller Community! I'll do my best to help with this.

Before we start, I just want to make sure that I got the setup right. So the different products or overall items are the design you offer. Within each product/item, the customers will be able to select what they would like the design to be printed on (mugs, mouse mats, etc.) so the mugs and mouse mats are setup almost like variation within the design, is that correct?

If that is the set up, I'm not sure if there is a clean way to set this all up. The reason being that: while you can set the same SKU for variations and products (it'll show a warning message when you do this, but you can save it within Square still), SKU does not control stock within Square. Additionally, stocks are track at an item and variation level, so there isn't a way to apply it to all. I'm going to try my best to explain this so bear with me!

For example, you have 100 mugs in total and 10 different designs.

• If you show each design as having 100 mugs available, the system will actually calculate it as 100 mugs * 10 designs = 1000 mugs in stock total.
• So in order to accurately track the stock, you'd need to divide the mugs across 10 different designs, making it so 10 mugs * 10 designs = 100 mugs in total.

And because stocks are tracked individually like this, if the customer buy one mug from design 1, it'll only deduct the stock for that particular mug + design combo, while the other 9 designs will still have 10 mugs in stock.

This type of tracking you required is what we call component level tracking and it's currently a feature request being worked on by our team. I don't have a timeline on when this will be available but I would encourage you to check out our Beta Community to join and potentially get access to new features first when we test them out.

[SWGifts]

Hi,

Thanks so much for your reply.

So, the set up that you have understood is almost correct, although the customer will not choose what they have their designs printed on as the product image itself shows the design printed on a particular item. So for example there are 10 product items showing on product page. All of them are different designs which will all be printed on mugs. There are no variations in any of the 10 products. They are each just simple products. Lets say I have 10 blank mugs ready to print and someone orders a design. If I allocate individual SKUs to each of my products then I will have only 1 product in stock for each ( even though there are 10 mugs waiting to be printed). I need there to be one SKU for all mugs so that I know what my stock levels are. 

[SWGifts]

Just to add to this quickly......I don't even know if I am actually supposed to be looking for a fix in Woocommerce as opposed to here? I am using Woocommerce to manage my store and then just want to sync data to Square.

I only signed up for Square yesterday as I would like to take card payments. It is a new online store that isn't up and running yet so I am trying to figure this all out. Is the problem here or there? 

[tranguyen]

Thanks for clarifying @SWGifts! 

As you're looking to sync between Square and WooCommerce, I had a quick look at the WooCommerce guide and in order to sync products between Square and WooCommerce, the SKU must match. To import items, it looks like the SKU will need to be unique to each product. You can also find the guide here. 

The stock tracking is a different issue. There isn't a way to group all the 10 mug designs into one stock source so you can accurately tell the available stock level with Square. Because each mug design will count as an individual item, the stock will be track on an item level instead. I will share this with our Product team as an use case for the development of the component level tracking feature I mention above as I think the information in this thread outlined how important this feature can be for businesses. 

[SWGifts]

Okay, Thanks for your help.

In the meantime can I use Square for payments without syncing?

[tranguyen]

From checking the WooCommerce guide, you should be able to control your sync settings and choose whether to enable inventory sync. It's definitely something worth clarifying with the WooCommerce Support team directly as they'd have more insights into how the system function as WooCommerce manage the integration themselves. 

[amjessey · Accepted solution]

I see this functionality is now out of beta and available.

https://squareup.com/help/gb/en/article/7632-auto-generate-skus-with-square-for-retail 

Hi @tranguyen  As I would like to see the format of an automatically generated SKU before I commit, could you provide an example of one?

Can the user edit this format so it includes some basic information the user is familiar with, e.g. we may wish to include the the first four letters of the category, e.g. "COAT" in the SKU as a way to identify the category the product belongs to just by looking at the swing ticket. We may also want each item (not each item variation) to have it's own number, e.g. "COAT0001". The item's variations' SKU codes might be "COAT0001-RED-SMAL", "COAT0001-RED-MEDI" etc, for example.

Thank you.

[amjessey]

Ok, I see how it works now: it is a completely random seven alphanumeric string, e.g. "Y795037", "D436224", "7188423" etc. I think a non-random structure (as per above) would have been better but the fact that an automatic SKU code generator exists is a big plus because without it takes a lot to time to create them manually!

[tranguyen]

Hey @amjessey, thanks for testing this one out! I check on my account as well and it does look like the SKU is generated at random at the moment. It's still a relatively new feature so I'll be sure to surface your feedback with the team so they can look into developing this further.