How do I use Nested Categories in Square for Retail?

[ndixon]

I was just playing around with categories because the spot where they are on a particular item moved. I noticed you can make nested categories but it just doesn't do anything functional. It would be great if I could make sub categories and have them actually do something.

I tried nesting a category like Beer Domestic and Beer Imported into the parent top level category Beer. When I tried searching the Beer category in the inventory search nothing popped up.

It also still just popped up as Beer Domestic in the transaction report. I would be great if I could have everything point to the parent category in the reports so instead of having to add Beer Domestic and Beer Imported together to find out my total Beer sales. We have a lot of categories that could be simplified to parent categories in our inventory like wine, beer, whiskey, and liquor in general.

I could see this being especially useful for online business to make searching as granular or general as the consumer needs it. I haven't quite dipped my toes into the online portion square yet. Maybe it already works like that but it would be great to click on a category and have it break out into sub categories like Wine->France->White->Chardonnay

Another bit I would like to see return is the search when assigning categories. I used to be able to type in the category instead of scroll down and click on it. If you have a lot of categories like we do this new way is more tedious and time consuming. Every second counts when you are inputing dozens of new items every week.

[Candlestore · Accepted solution]

@ndixon ;

If you were in your Items and Filtered by Beer, You do not see the child categories of Domestic or Imported.  This is because Square sees that you have No items in Beer, your items are in Domestic and Imported.  I do agree and did bring this up during the beta test, it would be Nice under the Beer Category to at least see your two nested categories.  Since my feedback there, I did notice that on my Square Stand, that when I pressed the All Items Tab, scrolled down to my Parent Category of Cedar Lanterns, my child categories of Halloween and Christmas did appear there.  Just on the Square Dashboard they do not appear I guess, you must filter by the Child (sub category) which you can choose in the filter tab in Items on you dashboard.

Now as for Pointing all sales to the Parent category of Beer, you can select which category an Item will report to if you like.  You have to do this per ITEM, I am not sure if you could do this as a Group Edit or through the CSV files yet.  See picture below:

Also if you notice in my categories I have this item in Multiple categories.... Length of 12 inches, Hand Dipped, and Tapers.  Do not ask me how I did that but was able to messing around like you.

Along with you I think this will be great once we figure it out as I would like:

Tapers

    length

       6

        8

       10

        12

        15

       etc

    Color

       Red

        Green

       White

        Orange

        Black

       Purple

       etc.

    Hand Dipped

    Machine Made

[ndixon]

Thanks for the response. It looks like the Reporting Category option in Categorization hasn't been rolled out for normal people yet. All I see there is is the Categories option.

It also appears that they added a search to the categories menu. Seems weird to roll out the different way to do Categories in such an unfinished state. Glad to see something tangible happening though.

Edit: Just found it. It only shows up if you have something in multiple categories. 

[BreakawayRecs]

I also don't see the point of these nested categories at all...

We're a record shop, and I thought nesting our genre categories under an "LPs" parent category would allow me to narrow our inventory search results down to only LPs (excluding cassettes etc that also fit the searchbar input). But no, it shows that there are "No Items" in "LPs", since no specific items are assigned to that category, only sub-categories. 

What on earth is the purpose of this function.

Also it won't even let me nest catogories that have a substantial number of items in them.

[ndixon]

It should work like that but the only way to have it functional at all is to add the item into every category that applies to it. The items will only show up if that item is specifically added to that category regardless of the parent category. Pretty big oversight on Square's end. I think they have too many cooks in the kitchen and they're just patching things up without thinking about how or why the features should work.

[Candlestore]

@BreakawayRecs ;

You would need the Different Subcategories listed or assigned to a Parrent Category.

Below is my Christmas Laterns Sub Category Showing Cedar Lanterns as its Parent Category.

By having the Sub category assigned like this, when you select in my case Cedar Lanterns, Christmas Lanterns, Halloween Lanterns ..... Pop up.   Then I choose the sub category which shows the Items there. You may need to have LPs as Parent with Sub categories of Rock, Country, etc.   To show or filter the music by these types.

[Candlestore]

Here is a Link to another feed about this.  In this feed I have images from my Square Stand showing the Nested (sub Categories) refereed to in my previous reply.

Square-for-Retail/Display-sub-categories-as-an-item-in-POS-library/td-p/699620