Sub Categories

[Jpatla]

I know this has been mentioned in the past.  I know you can use variations and modifiers and that you can have site subcategories online.  But I am a Pizza/Deli along with a Retail store.  

I know you are looking for reasons why subcategories would be helpful so here I go.  For instance in my store I track cost in QuickBooks under major categories such as Grocery, Meat Dept, Lotto, Pizza/Deli etc. I use these as my major Roll up categories- See example of Grocery 

Grocery-

   Produce

        Weighed

            items

        Non Weighed

             items

   Candy

       Candy Bars

            items

        Novelty

            items

        Truffles

             items

   Local Items

       Maple Syrup

           items

       Private label Spices

          items

   Pet products

      Food/Treats

         items

      Toys

         items

    Dairy

      Cheese

          items

      Milk

        items

You get the idea, when I break them down into individual categories then I have to export to Excell, rearrange my rows and add roll them up manually.  

We are also Using Square for Restaurants to integrate our online Menu.  But I have to have all the menu categories in seperatly so they show on the Menu correctly and I can have correct tickets print to the kitchen but when it comes to reporting it would be nice to be able to roll up all the menu categories so I can see what the Restaurant did.  I know that is possible with Restaurants Plus but since we have both we need the retail tracking of Retail Plus.  So far I have been able to get everything to work together; with some workarounds, we have only had it a week.  But I do see reporting as an issue moving forward.  

Thanks

Jodie Patla

Joe's Jerky Pizza Deli & Corner Market

[#2]

If you have at least one other category, you can create a subcategory within your Square Online website.

Head to your Square Online overview page > Items > Site Categories > click the + button next to a category.

After saving your changes, the new category will appear nested underneath the category you just selected on the Items > Site Categories page. Learn more about categories here.

I hope this helps, @hishersbling - and welcome to the Seller Community! ✨ 

[#3]

Hi @coppermug84 👋 Thanks for reaching out! Happy to have you join us here on the Seller Community. Welcome!

We do not have any current plans to implement a sub-category system. We feel that the implementation of Variations and Modifiers offers these same features of potential sub-categories, and allow for trackable iterations of existing items.

We would love to hear more about what you would use sub-categories for! How specifically would sub-categories be beneficial to your business? - what kind of items do you sell?

I will keep an eye out for your response!

[Candlestore]

@_Violet ;

 Thank you!!!  

[joshcurtiss]

We have all been requesting this feature for quite some time now. There are countless ways that this would be useful.

[WWS]

@Donnie-M  

I would prefer not to have to subscribe to a whole different system just to get a feature. We use Square for retail because that's what made the most sense for us as  retail store. If it's a feature available in one system, it shouldn't be too much to ask to add it to another!

@_Violet thank you for your response. we have been requesting this feature since 2020 when we signed up for Square. Hopefully my other requests have been found and merged as well-

[WWS]

@_Violet  This request for sub-categories is from 3/22/22

https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Read-only-archive-Square-Point/POS-Retail-features-needed-Sub-Cat...

And this one is from 12-8-2020

https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/Read-only-archive-Square-Point/POS-Retail-features-needed-Sub-Cat... 

And we also still don't have a way to block multiple discounts/coupons from being used on a sale!!

[alec_evp]

Came here to see how to add subcategories... and you can't. Is this a joke? I'm trying to manage about 500+ products at events. I don't want 40-50+ categories. Considering how big Square is, this is pretty ridiculous. 

[Candlestore]

Another Reason for Sub Categories-  I just had a Lady call me to place an order over the phone and having 6000 items and only having Main Categories makes it hard to find an Item on a Square Stand as the person is rattling off different items in different main categories to give her a price.  Even though they would be in the same Sub Category.

To save time when making a New Scent Square I suggest I use Options Sets to make all my different sizes of candles Quickly.... Works Great until I need to find a Scent especially on the New Screen where we need to scroll right to find the Variation of the Scent.  A person wanted 3 different Scents in our 8oz jars, If I could make a Sub Category for my Variations they would have all been in that Sub Category.    Well she could have ordered online would be Squares Response, but this customer does not trust online orders with all the identity theft, and Spam to cell numbers and emails and Text advertising.   I think people are tired of opening their Texts and emails just to see ads from all these businesses and mailing lists people get put on, and then miss important emails.

[jbculpep]

I'm new to this since my friends decided to move to Square Retail. Their choice of a new POS and the need to keep inventory and pricing sync'd with their website is causing me to have to push a very complex web structure into Square online.

The single category per item is an issue. We have really complex categories since we are a craft store.  An overly simplified example of my dilemma follows:

Craft Accessories

  - Needles

    - - Beading Needles

    - - Glovers Needles

  - Thread

     - - Nymo Thread

     - - Cotton Thread

Our categories often run 4 levels deep.

By only allowing for one category I'm faced with a decision.  Right now the store has everything at the topmost level. This means that on the web side, the presentation mixes the entire category on the web page.  This causes havoc in complex product lines.

If I create a category/sub-category structure in the Navigation I have to figure out how to get only certain things to display on each page.

While I'm just coming to grips with my reality and possible solutions, here is my current thinking about things that would help.

1. add the ability to include  a non-page nav link that would allow the nav level to exist in the hierarchy but not lead to a page. It would naturally have to have sub-levels to be of any use.  This allows users to hover over a level in the nav tree and see the sub-categories but not have the level itself go anywhere.
2. Create a page type for only custom content and use that page to insert specific category blocks or even custom HTML

Right now I'm going to try and create a page that lets me identify only the category I want on the page and use that design to mask other content down the tree.   To make this work, I'm going to have to move our categories from the most general to most specific (e.g. Craft Accessories to Glovers Needles). Then the top levels of the tree shown above (Craft Accessories and Needles) will have Category Links as visual blocks, not products.  The needles page can only show categories of needles, not ALL Craft Accessories.

This simple example is just that - simple. Some of our stuff is downright nasty in structure.

If anyone has any experience is this type of complex category modeling, I'd appreciate your input.

[Andy6]

i am the same - have a cafe and a retail store. allowing sub categories on the POS would be helpful - so as not scrolling through the terminal all day depending on what items people purchase - because we have to create numerous categories.

[Donnie-M]

@Andy6 There is currently one work around/other way to do it here.  The restaurants point of sale app is very different from the pos app or retail for that matter but all three accomplish the same task.

The restaurant app you can set up the buttons any way you want with a top level button for say sandwiches...then you can have all the sandwiches or you could have the next level be sandwiches-subs-flatbreads etc...then you could have sandwiches ----> subs ----> hot subs & cold subs...whatever tree you would like.

But the interface on the square for restaurants does not have any pictures only text buttons and it does name a few things differently and have a couple different behaviors...but you can still sell items even if you weren't a restaurant.

[sritter]

Subcategories seem like a no-brainer here. So many Square clients are asking for this, so why not give your customers what they want? That just makes complete business sense.

I'm converting to Square for my three retail locations and online website with thousands of SKUs. Not having subcategories is a major issue as I will not be able to sync my inventory to my WordPress site through the recommended woo-commerce plugin.