Can you assign an item to multiple categories?

[ineedhelp]

I wanted to assign an item to 2 different categories.....is it possible?

[#2]

An item can only be assigned to one category at a time. Would you mind sharing more about why you would want an item in two categories? What type of items do you have? I'd love to better understand your request! Thanks!

[JustinC]

@SBG700 - Thanks for adding to this thread and sharing why this feature works for your bar! Keep it up - the Product Team constantly make improvements based on your thoughts and ideas. I'll loop back here when I hear any updates! 

[fordhamr]

@SBG700 for whatever it's worth, I was poking around yesterday in Items and noticed this field called "Locations." Perhaps if you only have the one physical location, but the upstairs and downstairs, you could leverage the "locations" to control your availability.

I'd encourage maybe poking around, or perhaps Square staff can provide some definitive information, but it almost looked like you could offer a SINGLE ITEM and it would appear/not appear based on the selected "locations."

....just a little food-for-thought on this fine Tuesday! 🙂

Cheers!
Ryan

[SBG700]

I'll take a look at that and see if it will work for us. Thanks for the idea.

[Jeremywest]

Hi everyone, this clearly isn't a priority for square as this thread appears to be going on for over 3 years. I also require sub categories. I want to manage all my inventory in square, but I am forced to manage inventory in woocommerce which stinks.

[Joe]

Thanks for chiming in here, @Jeremywest. Every request from our Sellers is considered a priority on our side, but I can definitely understand your frustration in regards to lack of movement here.

Our engineering teams are constantly working on new updates and features for thousands of requests, and sometimes we miss the mark on release times. We really appreciate you hanging with us on this one. We will be sure to update everyone here when we have more info to share.

[DonnaCB]

I was told in my discussion today with Square Support, that it is possible to add items to multiple categories. Is this incorrect? I need multiple categories because I am a multi-vendor boutique and need to have their item in their own category for sales payouts and inventory reports and then have my website categories (Home Decor, Clothing, Toys, Etc) for easy customer shopping. Is this not available yet?

[FEAMinistries]

I also would like to assign items to more than one category. We sell coffee we branded "GC Coffee", and we also sell a GC Coffee mug. However, our organization name is FEA Ministries so we also have FEA Ministries mugs, water bottles, etc. I have a GC Coffee category and a FEA Merchandise category. I would like the mug to appear in both the GC Coffee category and the FEA Merchandise category as most of our mugs are found in the FEA Merch category.

[ICONYC]

It would also be useful for reporting. I'd love to run reports on different kinds of categorization. We sell beer. I'd love to categorize it by what it actually is - BEER. I'd also like to categorize and track by style - IPA. And I'm also interested to see the sales counted toward the serving style - GROWLER. There are so many more ways to use this. High or low ABV, dark, barrel aged, etc.

Maybe there could be a 'tag' feature that works independently of category. Then we could create and assign multiple tags for this kind of reporting?

[krumholz]

I am working with a large client that would like to place inventory items under multiple 'categories' but the option doesn't exist in a way that would allow them to manage everything accurately for their business. The proposed feature should allow the same reporting functionality as categories but would also allow an item to be in more than one at the same time.

It really does more accurately reflect the nature of business, hopefully it's something that would be considered.

[EJ_]

@krumholz Thanks for sharing your interest in this feature. 

I've moved your post over to an existing thread that we're using to track seller interest. 

If anything changes with this we'll be sure to update everyone. 

[BeefNachos]

Would you be able to share the thread you are referring to? Categories having sub categories would be great for retailers. As of now, I am creating the Brand as an item and design/size/color as the variant.

(i.e. - Category: Shirts > Item: Spitfire Shirts > Variant: Logo Black Small      instead of     Category: Shirts, Sub-cat: Spitfire Shirts > Item: Logo > Variant: Black Small)

Having an excess of blanketing categories seems like a nightmare as we prepare to get our webstore going. I don't want to sell "Shirts" online, just "Spitfire Shirts", or even just "Logo Shirts".

[Russell]

Hey @BeefNachos - Thanks for making your first post to the community. 🎉

It looks like the thread @EJ_ was referring to is this thread and that he had moved another seller's post here. Sorry for the confusion on that. 

I'm glad you posted how you organize your categories - sharing tips like this definitely help other sellers and it is much appreciated! I will be sure to let our Product Team know that you are looking for additional ways to organize your Item Library. 

[bgallaher]

I'd also like this feature for a little different reason. We're a bar and mixed drinks with all the various options create a very deep structure. The way the bartender likes it setup with liquor type as the category, which also works well for how we need things structured to make pricing for variants and modifications work. However, the average person we have that might wait on customers doesn't always know that a Rob Roy is made with scotch. So they are forced into the search box to find it.

Ideally, I would like to cross-category any drink with multiple options for my end-user be it a bartender, server or cashier. Something like 'Cocktails' would also have most of the 'Vodka' mixed drink options. So no need to know a Cosmo is made with vodka to find it from the main tab. I've toyed with making tabs work as that next level up, but it quickly clutters up the UI.

Another thing that happens with stacking things so deeply is variants become repetitive. For example:

• Vodka (Cat)
  • Martini (Item)
    • Variants 
      • Smirnoff
      • Stolichnaya
      • Titos
      • Grey Goose
    • Martini Mods
      • Dry
      • Olive
      • Stuffed Olives
      • Lemon Twist
      • Perfect

So every kind of vodka drink ends up having the same variant names, but not necessarily the same price because of the amount used for any given drink. It's pretty hard to build the type of vodka as a modification because I need it to work like the variants do, but it'd be nice to have a way to reuse variant names and perhaps even have a default price that one can override per Item. Something that helps build things out faster and make adding a new variant to the mix not take a change for every single type of drink one can make with Vodka. 

[EJ_]

Thank you so much for sharing your specific business need @bgallaher

This will be a good read for our Items team, as I'm sure they'll be interested in this. 

One workaround that might work for you is creating a separate item set for your servers? Maybe creating a specific category that lists out the actual item drinks that only your servers use.

I know that's not ideal, so hopefully we can get something implemented that helps with this in the near future. 

[bgallaher]

Yes, for now I have a page/tab for cocktails as items set up on the POSs. That works for the servers but doesn't help the bookkeeping side. It's quite a process right now when we add or subtract a brand of any liquor. 

[misterstiltskin]

I would also like to have the ability to display items in multiple categories.
I sell hand spun and hand dyed items.
Each item has its own SKU
I want to make it easy for clients to navigate my website.
I have a category yarns, which all the yarns fit.
They are made from different fibres so I have a category - cotton yarns, also a category - Naturally dyed yarns, some of the naturallly dyed yarns are also cotton, some are wool.
If I use variants in a category, the details of the items get lost, If I list in only one category, the client misses the items.
The ability to sub categorise or list in multiple categories would be a fabulous solution.

[Helen]

Thank you for sharing this insight to how you've organized your yarn @misterstiltskin (what great username!) 

We'll post in this thread to let you know if this feature is available in future. 

[TillysHomemade]

Hi,

I want to put an item into multiple categories. e.g. I have bath bombs in different scents, I want the calming scented bath bomb to show up in both calming scented products and bath bomb products.

So far I havent figured out how to do this, and it's very frustrating!

Any help would be appreicated.

TIA

[VanKalkerFarms]

Items can only be in one category at a time.

[TillysHomemade]

Well that's annoying. Do you know if this will change any time soon?

[Chad]

Hello @TillysHomemade! 

Being able to put an item into multiple categories is a feature request that we're already tracking. I went ahead and merged your thread with this one, so we can track all the feedback in one place!