What is the "ADDITIONAL CATEGORIES" COLUMN FROM IMPORT TEMPLATE?

[regalia]

[The title of this thread has been edited from the original: IMPORT "ADDITIONAL CATEGORIES" COLUMN FROM TEMPLATE]

Hello everyone,

In the XLSX TEMPLATE (provided by Square themselves!) that facilitates bulk-importing large item libraries, there is a column called "ADDITIONAL CATEGORIES" (column H).

This column seems to be completely ignored by the dashboard upon import. Only the main Category (column G of the template) is being matched to a Square Attribute when syncing data.

Fact is, it seems to be that whoever created this template was either ahead of time, or didn't know what they were doing.

For starters, Instructions (or lack thereof) for that particular column are ridiculously confusing. They come as an "example" right above the column heading. The whole template comes with an example, which in itself was a nice gesture to inform us how to format data properly in each column.

Needless to say, for column H this "example" is extremely confusing. It goes like that: "Accessories, Shoes > Accessories". What the hell are we supposed to make of that information? Are we supposed to list all additional categories separated by a coma? Should there be a space between them? And what about that "Shoes > Accessories" data? Are we supposed to structure the additional categories with a tree-structure type of hierarchy defining sub-categories and their respective parent category?

I can't just make sense of it, really. Can you?

If that wasn't enough, it seems that this column is ignored anyway through the import process. I've tested it multiple times, even with only 1 additional category, it just won't show up upon import.

And guess what, it's the same when you export. Let's say you have an item you created that is assigned to 2 or 3 categories. Well, when you'll export your library, the XLSX file will not feature any of those additional categories, that column remains empty.

If you have hundreds of products like we do, this seems like a terrible oversight from SQUARE to offer the option on the dashboard to assign multiple categories to an item, but completely forget to integrate that attribute in their import/export feature.

If anyone found a workaround this issue, please let me know. Most of our products belong to 2 or 3 categories and I can't imagine spending a week check-marking those **bleep** categories for each individual product.

So much so, that I'm seriously considering migrating our system to Lightspeed.

The amount of headache, between this and not being able to upload images in bulk makes it extremely difficult to like Square for a larger retail store like us.

It seems to me that Square is only focused on smaller shops with just a few dozen items, but if they were smart, they would not neglect larger retailers with hundreds if not thousands of SKUs —which can't realistically be input/updated manually one by one— as these types of stores tend also to generate more revenue and transactions for Square...

[TheRealChipA · Accepted solution]

Hey @regalia It seems that your post boils down to one question — what (if anything) is the new “Additional Categories” used for in the Items Export/Import file?  Here’s my guess.

First this is a new field in the file.  Square engineers are in the process of revamping categories, as your probably already know, to make this more flexible and to give us functionality that until recently hasn’t existed.  My guess is that this field is one of those “future use” fields that hasn’t been connected to anything yet.  Like you, to confirm this, I exported my current library.  From what I see in that export, the ONLY category that is being exported is the reporting category, or main category for the item.  That tracks with my suspicions.  Eventually, this should be remedied so that “sellers with hundreds if not thousands of SKUs” can more easily manage categorization in bulk rather than using the dashboard tools currently available.  You’ve just caught them in a messy transition period — something I’ve seen before.

However, in order to confirm this, I’m going to tag a few Square moderators who can talk to the product team/engineers and confirm or deny my suspicions.

@_Violet @MayaP @RobynR @JJ_ 

[regalia]

Thank you Chip, i too believe that's what's going on. A transition though does not need to be messy. That's what software engineers are for, to make sure oversights like this don't happen. What's the point of confusing users with new columns in their template if they're being ignored. Does not look very professional to me, and whoever did this, should be reprimanded by their team supervisor. Sorry, but Square is a business and I'm paying premium price for it, as such we should expect at least the bare minimum of professional service. Even my account manager had no clue what i was talking about. Says a lot about communication within Square.

[Candlestore]

@regalia ;

I understand what your saying and the old way Square did it was in the Exports or import of a csv file was you had to only import a Reporting Category.  So my suggestion for you for now would be use your Lowest Branch for your Item as the Category.   

So your tree may look like :

Footwear

       Sneakers

              Basketball

              Track / Running

              Soccer

              football

       Foral

             With Laces

              No Laces

ETC

So when your items are loaded into Square, you can go into Items and create more categories if needed.

Then Select Soccer for example and set it to have Sneakers as a Parent, Then Select Sneakers to have Footwear as a Parent.   You would also need to select a Reporting category how ever you would like this to show on reports.  Not sure in my example if you would want Soccer or Sneakers or Footware to show as a reported category on your Square reports.   You do not have to change each of your 3500 items this way but would need to organize your categories as mentioned above in categories, with checking boxes.

I downloaded a CSV or Excel file and thought I saw a Header as Reporting category but now when I download my catalog I do not see this field just Category in column H.  So I am in agreement that Square engineers are working on this and may have made the Instructions visable as they are still working on the csv import export formats.   

I am just trying to help you get your items in the best way possible right now.

[regalia]

I appreciate the help, truly. There's however no problem with organizing our tree of categories. The problem is that most of our items would be assigned 2 or 3 separate categories within that tree. For example "Footwear" and "Gifts for him". Possible to do only manually at the moment.

[Candlestore]

@regalia ;

Having an Item in 2 different categories is not currently possible the way you are stating.  This is the Square for Retail and ususally you would need that many categories for looking up the item, just scan it then it would show on the reporting category as a sale.  You could create the same item in a second category with a different sku or barcode but then you would see the same item sold in 2 reporting categories.   I thought of this too for on the POS checkout Screens but the issue was my categories would start to get confusing when I made the same item 2 times in the POS Favorites Screen.  I was trying to have size of candle and also by color, but now when I sell an item in store through the POS, I just scan it for instore sales.   Now when I have a phone order, and a person wants a certain size I go through my Favorites tabs and get to the size they are looking for to tap the Scent they would like.  I have 165 scents and ???? colors.    The way your trying to set things up sounds more for an online store with a category or web page for Gifts for Him / Her etc.    You may want to ask more on the Online tab to see if that is possible from other users using Square for their online sales channel.