Items Not Updating With Square Import

[OwenAndGraham]

Website: https://owen-graham.square.site/

I am standardizing the Option Name 1 and Option Value 1 for my products through the Import (.xlsx) option.  Many of my products successful updated, however, there are hundreds that are not actually applying the changes even though the import says it is successful.  I have tried importing individual products as well to isolate if the issue is due to the volume of items being updated, but that does not seem to be a cause.

After a lot of trial-and-error, I found that the issue seems to be resolved by clicking on the product and initiating a manual save of the product, even without actually changing anything.  Then I can go through the import process again and the product will successfully update.  Although sometimes I have to import twice for the changes to take effect.  I have close to 500 products to update though, so this isn't ideal. 

Is there something I'm missing with the import process that not flagging these to actually update until the product is saved?

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The following is an image of one of the items that I opened from Item Library.  It immediately gives me the option to Save although I haven't modified anything.  Upon hitting Save, I can import my changes for this product and it will work. 

[BernadetteA]

Welcome to the Seller Community, @OwenAndGraham

Can you please clarify, you are uploading the csv file, then opening the item and "saving", then re-uploading the same file? 

Is the item updating on the Square Online dashboard? 

[OwenAndGraham · Accepted solution]

I was trying to update the options with the Square Dashboard, not the online dashboard.  If I imported the .xlsx with the new options, the import process said it was successful, but the update was not actually applied to the products.   The only way I got it to work was to manually initiate a change to product so that a new version was changed.  Then I could import the exact same product .xlsx with the new options and the changes would successfully apply.

I ultimately found a workaround by creating a browser automation plugin to automate initiating the version update across my products so they had a new saved version.  This was tedious but it allowed me to then successfully use the import process with the .xlsx to modify the options.

I'm not sure what the issue was, but it seemed like there was something out of sync between the product version and the import process, causing a failure behind the scenes but that wasn't reported back to the user.  Once I had a new saved version of my products everything was working as expected.

[Candlestore]

@OwenAndGraham ;

Since I see your doing a Screen Shot from a computer, my guess is the Import was successful, and is still filling in the data in the catalog.  Meaning all Items are in your catalog but when you search for the changes within X minutes those updates are not reflected right away.  When you find the Item it shows the Items Newly Updated info, and by you pressing save it does nothing but forces the system to see the update and get it saved a little quicker.  After updating your catalog, look at a few reports, go get a coffee, or a snack.  come back in 15 minutes then check an Item you created or changed by the Upload.  The save thing I have been noticing appears as soon as I look at an Item in my catalog on a computer, I am not sure why it is there now.

Now on a POS

What I have noticed is if I upload my Item Library by csv or xlsx, and then check the item changes for a few items nothing is updated on my POS.  I log out of my Point of Sale device, Log back in and then everything is fine.  What I believe is happening is the Library is updated but not all devices check for an update to the catalog at the sametime or when a change happens.  By logging out then in, this forces the POS to get the most updated catalog.  The other way to do this for popular items is to from the POS press or tap More in the bottom right, Items, then scan the updated items or type their Item name in.  By doing this it forces the udate for that Item on that POS.  I even noticed this when I scan an item NOT in Square, I get the Do you want to add this to catalog now, say yes add the item and fill all required fields in then press save.   The newly created Item is available on that POS but not on another POS right away.  

My steps after making a major update to my Square catalog has me, Close out of the Square App then Log back in and then this seems to update everything.  I use device codes for logging in  on my POS stations.

I use Square for Retail Plus, on 2 Square Stands for my primary Points of Sale.

My Square catalog is well over 6500 items and I just Doubled a bunch of my Items to get Square to create SKU's and use my Old SKU's for the products I make.   Did this for 2 reasons, 1 smaller Barcodes and 2 to reorganize my Catalog and get it in easier to find categories and subcategories.