Customer Directory: What is the Reference ID and how can I access informaiton added to this field?

[spinlaundry]

The title of this thread has been edited from the original: Reference ID

Hello, I'm trying to find out some information in regards to the Reference ID field under the "Customer" field to see how to best utilize it and what function it provides, but I haven't been able to find out much information on the topic. Is this a searchable text field? Can you type a customer's Reference ID to pull up that customer? Is it solely to be used as a Reference # for internal tracking purposes only? Is this for a puprose completely separate? Any insight or information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[Tom]

Hey @spinlaundry, great question—to be sure we're on the same page, are you referring to the Reference ID that you can enable from the Customer Profiles tab? I don't have specifics on all of the questions you asked this on hand, but let me touch base with someone on our Customer Engagement team. We'll be back with more clarity on how it functions ASAP.

[spinlaundry]

Hi Tom,

thanks for your reply. Yes, I’m referring to the Reference ID field in the Customer’s profile.

Let me know what you find out. Thanks!

[Tom · Accepted solution]

Appreciate your patience, @spinlaundry—I was able to get some more details from our Customer Engagement team.

The Reference ID was created to help sellers keep an external CRM sync with Square. In this case, the Reference ID will will show up on the customer's profile, CSV reports, and in our API.

The field is not searchable and can't be used to look up the customer—though they are tracking this request.

Hope this helps clear things up a bit more. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

[stacilane]

How do I access important information that I type into the REFERENCE ID field of CREATE CUSTOMER tab?

[Helen]

Hey @stacilane! If you add information to the Reference ID field, when you add that customer to a sale that ID will be included in the Customer Reference ID column in the Transaction CSV and Item Detail CSV reports.

You can also view your customer directory and the information associated with each customer by exporting your directory:

1. Navigate to the Customers section of your online Square Dashboard.
2. Click Import/Export > click Export Customers.
3. Select All customers or choose a group to export.
4. When you open the CSV file the Reference ID column is the first one.

[EWH3MM]

Hi @Tom & @Helen ,

Has there been any progress made towards making this a searchable term or creating a customizable field that is search able If necessary "A middle name field" that has similar behaviors as First/ Last Name and can be searched for on the App and attatched to each indivdual customer?

[Helen]

@EWH3MM No updates yet I'm afraid! 

Can you reply here with a bit more information about how you use the Reference ID field and how a (searchable) middle name field would help you at your business or manage your sales/reporting? We can share your insights with the Customer Directory team! 

[Alexlaawson]

Has there been any information regarding rederence IDs? Would be great to be able to search a customer by an ID number!!

[ashc]

Hi @Alexlaawson,

No updates to give at this time- but if there ever is one we'll be sure to update the thread!

[Alexlaawson]

I'm sure this wouldn't be too hard. Please, please consider making this a thing in the near future! 

[Snow88]

We use the name feilfs for the owners name, an the reference feilfs for the pet name. Most of us are more familiar with the pet then the person so if gives us the choice to search by either but it won't let us pull it up by reference on the app which really sucks. So much so we're considering switching pos to find one that will let us

[AlecF]

How to Search Customers by ReferenceID?

When I create customers there is a field for ReferenceID. I have been entering our CustomerID into this field as I enter new customers. However when I use the search bar on the Directory dashboard (it says Search Directory) it does not recognize IDs. Instead I must enter all or part of a name, email or company. We have several companies that go my almost identical names, thus the need to use ReferenceID. 

Please clarify what fields does the search include?

Can you please add Reference ID to the search?!

Thank you

[ashc]

Hey @AlecF and welcome to the Community!

I moved your post to an existing thread where there was some discussion between us and @spinlaundry on the reference ID for the Directory and how it can be used.

Based off @Tom's Best Answer and the requests for it/discussion here, it looks like being able to search by the reference ID is a feature request that's being tracked by the Product Team but not something you'd be able to do at this time.

You can search customers by name at this time. 

[AlecF]

Thanks. When I searched for ReferenceID nothing came up. Thanks for moving the inquiry. 

[ashc]

No worries @AlecF! The searchbar on here can be very finnicky. 

We usually can locate the threads easier just from seeing them before. 

[TuckDynasty]

Would love to make reference ID a searchable field. We use it to put customers’ kids’ names in the reference id. It would help so much to be able to find the parent by searching the kid’s name. 

[JJ_]

Thanks for joining other Sellers interested in this feature @TuckDynasty. 

There are no new updates at this time. 

[Ruby4]

We’d also really appreciate the reference ID being searchable, it’s searchable in nearly every other POS or diary management programme out there. It’d really help being able to identify a customer by a certain number or a nickname. 

[clocksclocks]

It's definitely frustrating that it's not a searchable field. Not much use otherwise. 

I want to look customers up by their customer number. Right now, the only way to do that is to put the customer number in the name field, which is ugly

[amjessey]

Hello everyone,

We have been utilising the Reference ID field lately. For us, we need a unique reference number to identify each customer and the Reference ID field seems to be the best place to do this. (A practical example of how and why we need a unique reference is for our Referral Cards which we print and hand out to our customers. On each card, we print the Reference ID. This is because the existence of non-unique names, e.g. John Smith, means names alone cannot be relied on to identify the customer on this printed collateral.

For us, an auto-generated sequential numerical reference, e.g. 00001, 00002, 00003 etc. is best. To have some customisation, e.g. an alpha prefix, would be welcome.  

Regarding other uses, we use HubSpot so having this unique customer reference ID reflected in both Square and HubSpot would help identify accounts across these platforms. 

Thank you.