Custom Reports

[StitchingSupply]

I have a lot of items with custom attributes for items defined, for example: I sell yarn and I have a custom attribute defined for yarn weight, color family, fiber content, etc. I want to run a detailed report from my inventory and sales that includes those custom attributes so I can see which ones sell the best, that I am running low on, or what I'm missing. All of the custom reports and their exports only give me summary information and the "add columns" doesn't include any of the custom attributes. 

I've submitted a support ticket for this, but they gave me the instructions for the basic custom reports. I want a massive export of sales with all of the data around them, to include all custom attributes, that I can make tables and charts with. The summary tables are not helpful.

[TheRealChipA]

Hi there @StitchingSupply.  I’ve spent some time researching custom attributes.  Unfortunately, all I was able to confirm is that there are currently no reports or export files that will report on custom attributes in any way.  They seem function only as ways to help us manage our item catalogs and don’t have a reporting/tracking component at all.  That’s the bad news.  This means that in order to get what you want from using custom attributes, a feature request is going to have to be submitted on the Ideate Board.  And it probably goes without saying that this only starts a process for Square to determine if it is something they want to add to the future product roadmap.

That being said, I’m curious why you chose to use custom attributes.  Did you consider using Options (and/or variations), instead?  If so, what was the roadblock to using that?  Options/Variations would and do allow you to track sales, repot on them, manage inventory, etc.  Customer attributes were not designed with sales and inventory in mind, though I will admit it would be a powerful addition to the Square ecosystem for them to do so.

Don’t give up hope.  If you can answer my question above, I might be able to give you a different way to set up your item catalogs.

FYI, I will be leaving Monday for a trip and will only be here in the Community off and on for a week.  I’ll do my best to reply when I’m notified of messages from you on this thread.  But please bear with me if I’m delayed in replying.  

[StitchingSupply]

The reason I use custom options is because when I'm entering a line of yarn, each of them has a different color. I enter the yarn line as an item and the colors as a variation. I like to be able to track color family (browns, greens, multicolor, etc.) and things like fiber content (wool, cotton, blends, etc.) as well as yarn weight (light, medium, etc.) where any yarn will have a different set of those attributes. I want to see which of those attributes are trending.

Custom Attributes seemed to be the only option. 

I may have to search for a more robust POS.

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

@StitchingSupply Don’t be so quick to give up yet.  I think that Options will do what you want.  Like I said, custom attributes was not built with this sort of thing in mind, which means you are trying to make that feature do something it was not designed to do.  That’s not Square’s issue, nor does it mean Square isn’t robust enough to do what you want.  Thinking outside the custom attributes box for a second…….

You can create Option sets for all of the things you mentioned — color, fiber content, weight and more.  After you do that, you can have Square automatically create all of the possible variations combining the items in each of those options sets.

Say for example you have the following option sets:

• Color - Red, blue, green
• Fiber - Wool, cotton, blend
• Weight - Light, Medium, Heavy

When you attach these to an item and tell Square to create the variations, you would get all of these:

Red Wool Light

Red Wool Medium

Red Wool Heavy

Red Cotton Light

Red Cotton Medium

Red Cotton Heavy

Red Blend Light

Red Blend Medium

Red Blend Heavy

Etc for the other colors….

When customers order, they would pick the variation they want from a list.  

Square WAS built to track and report on sales and inventory for these variations — for the standard reports, the custom reports and the export CSVs.

Unless I’m missing something, I think this is actually what would work best for you.

Thoughts?

[Candlestore]

@StitchingSupply ;

I agree With @TheRealChipA most recent reply, there are ways to do this and Options might be better for this instead of Custom Attributes.  The other thing is depending how you have your Items setup, Squares reports only Show the Reporting Category.  So if you have all your reporting Categories as your top Category of Yarns this will not work for you.  

Have your Categories as Yarn

Then a Sub categories as the Blend (wool, cotton, Blended) for example  You could even make this as the Reporting Category

Then when you create a New Yarn Item create it as Weight of Yarn 1oz Cotton 

then Variations could be the colors (which if you create a Colors Option Set) these variations would be shown at once.

Your reports could look like:

Category     Cotton (if you chose sub category Cotton for a Reporting category)

Variation     Red

Item was 1oz Cotton

These are just examples of what you could do.

Here is a Link about Options :

6689-item-options