Hi @StuartC. I’ll begin by saying I understand your frustration, based upon the facts as you relate them. Having said that, I’m posting to assure you that there is hope, and that you won’t need to keep entering items twice. It seems that whoever you spoke with at Customer Support either did not give you all the information, or did not understand your question, or needs to be retrained. It’s not broken, exactly. It’s just different. They only gave you a very small part of the picture, which is still cause for worry.
Now, it is true that when you add a new item using a POS app, in your case the Retail app, that the item does not show up on your Online Items list immediately. That is by design, and it does make some sense. Here’s one reason why that would be the case. Some sellers (like me) use different categorization in my online store than I use for reports. So there are some updates that need to happen before I actually start selling online. Anyway…
First, go to Dashboard -> Online -> Shared Settings -> Item Sync. Change the “Item visibility settings” to Visible. This will set it up so that all new items added to your catalog will be visible when added to your store later.
From that same Shared Settings menus, choose Item Preferences. Scroll all the way to the bottom, and be sure that your “Default item type” and “Default item fulfillment” are set correctly.
Then, after you have andd any new items in the Retail POS app, go to your Dashboard -> Online -> Items -> Site Items. From there, you are going to choose new items in your catalog which should be “added” to your online store. You don’t need to re-enter them here, just select them from a list and have them start syncing. The steps are:
- Click the “Add from Item Library” button at the top. This will show you a list of all items in your catalog that are not in your online store.
- Select each new item you want to add to your store.
- Click the “Add items” button at the top. This will set those items to Visible, set new items to the default item type, and will also set their fulfillment to your default fulfillment method(s).
- Wait a few minutes then go to your online store. The new items should be there.
There may be one other step, but only if your online categories are different from your main item catalog categories. If they are, you might have to edit some of your categories in the online store for items that are using different online categories. You might also have some new items that are, say, pickup only or shipping only. You’ll have to change those things on an individual item basis, if so.
Hopefully there will come a time in the near future that this whole syncing madness goes away. I long for the day when Square gives us “one item catalog to rule them all,” where we can define everything about an item and where it is sold in one place rather than two (or three or four….). Hopefully that day is soon.
I know this is a lot of information. Try it out, maybe with a few test items. That should give you what you need to understand what you’ll need to do in the future to add new items more quickly than you have been. And don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything else. I’ll be here!
