How to create and assign UPC code stickers to my invoices printed from another system?

[dpartn]

I use a Square Terminal. Is it possible for me to use the terminal hub and scanning wand with the Terminal? And can I create UPC code stickers that I can place on customer's invoices when they come to pick up their orders? As it stands now I must manually enter the amounts into terminal and choose if it is a cash/card/check transaction. Which granted is not too involved a task. But we own an auction company and so we get our customers doing pickup for all the goods they bought through the online auction on one designated pick up day that lasts about 5 hours. So customers are steady throughout that time frame. If we can manage to move the line alone faster it would be of some benefit.  Note that we do not create invoices in Square. They are created in our auction software system. We simply want to create and enter an invoice and amount due into square and be able to assign this to a UPC that we can put on a sticker.  The problem is, I do not currently have knowledge on how to do this. I assume it can be done and can use the Terminal to check out? I am not opposed to buying a Square Register, but if its not necessary I'd prefer not to. I would appreciate any advice. thank you

[Candlestore · Accepted solution]

@dpartn ;

The only way to do this is to use the Invoice number as a SKU in Square and print out a Barcode for that Invoice then print out a label with the Barcode from Square and place it on the invoice.

So here is what would be required:

1. Get invoices with a total and invoice Number
2. If your Auction Software can export your current invoices and totals as a csv. This step would make your life easy.
3. Open your Square Catalog CSV file and Your Invoice CSV from your auction site.    Then you can copy your invoice # from the auction csv into Item and Sku Columns and the Total Price from Auction To the Square Price Field.  Then to keep things organized in Square for Category you can put the date and copy it down in Square.   Then Upload the Square Catalog back to Square as UPDATE the Square Catalog.
4. Now after this is all uploaded back to Square if your using Square for Retail Paid you can print out Price Tags /Labels with a Barcode.  Then when you have the Invoice with the Printed out Label and Barcode you can scan it.  This printing of labels is done through your Square Dashboard on a computer.  

If you are good with Excel, you can actually use Power Query to do step 3 except for uploading the new file up to Square.

If you do not have Square for Retail you can still use a Label Printer that can print Barcode fonts to print your barcodes to place on your invoice.  I do this all the time with my Zebra label printers all the time.

Before doing Step 3 I would make an Item ## test ## and fill it in with everything Square needs when Creating an Item from the Square Dashboard.  Then after downloading your Square Catalog, delete all Items Except the ## Test ## item.  Also delete data under Token and Reference Handle.  When uploading New Items these are to be Blank and Square Assigns them to a new item.  These 2 columns are used when Uploading from csv to UPDATE the item these two columns reference.

These reason you need to do this is when You scan the barcode for the terminal, it will look in the SKU and GTIN fields of Square for the information being scanned and will not look in other software.

If your scanner is 2d you could print 2D barcodes to scan or 1D barcodes.    

Once you try this and get sick of copy and pasting the data look at Power Query Videos on YouTube on how to automate this step to speed it up and reduce errors.  

Sorry I do not know of a way to do this between your software and Square automatically.

I have downloaded all my Square Transaction-Details, Item Sales and Balance Transfers and have used Power Query from watching YouTube videos to get data and useful csv files.  What you would do is basically Keep the Headers of all rows of the Square Catalog file and just merge the Auction Data to the Square Header Columns as needed then Remove the Auction headers to Load your completed Power Query file to a CSV file to upload to square.... This all sounds complicated but after you have the Power Query setup correctly and pulling the data from your Auction.csv file, you could just delete the old Auction file load the new auction file to the same location, choose refresh all data wait a minute or two then save as CSV file and upload to Square catalog.

[dpartn]

Thank you for that info! I am grateful for it and can hopefully have one of my employees help me implement it. I appreciate your time!

[Candlestore]

@dpartn ;

You are welcome and if they are good with spreadsheets this is easy to do since I have done it just from Youtube videos, and knew nothing about spreadsheets before last year or the year before.  lol

[dpartn]

My auction invoices do not support CSV but I guess it won't be terrible. I only have 100-150 invoices per auction. But it would be quite nice to just scan a UPC sticker on the invoice when my cashier constantly has 10+ people waiting in the heat to pay for their purchases.  But for the hardware end, all this is possible with just a Terminal, hub and a scan wand?  I do not need to purchase the square register? It would be nice to have that bigger screen, but not sure I want to pay $800 for it.

[Candlestore]

@dpartn ;

I use the Square Stand and it is enough to handle that with the Larger Ipad screen.

$ Stand from Square I think is $150 plus an Ipad, I bought refurbished I pads to fit the stand and have been using them daily since 2019. 

The only benefit of the Terminal over the Stand is the all in one feature.... POS, Card reader and Printer where as the stands have the POS and the card reader built in but you would also need a Receipt printer or you could use the Terminals Printer with the Stand as a Display and signature screen.

https://squareup.com/help/us/en/article/7428-connect-your-square-terminal-to-spos 

As for getting a CSV file from your invoices I have ways to do that too if you use excel.  From your Auction software "print" your invoices as PDF files instead of physically printing them and drop them into 1 folder.  Then in excel Get Data from Folder select the Folder where your pdf invoices are and this will open Power Query to read the data you choose what is displayed in Excel.   For you the only data you would need from the invoices are the Invoice number and Total Due to transfer to Square since the Invoice already shows everything else.

Here is a video explaining how to convert multiple PDF files to csv in Excel that:

Bulk Combine PDF files to Excel 

I have used similar steps to combine my sales data from a folder for months sales from csv.  The concepts are the same just different sources CSV or PDF.  I just tried this with a PDF invoice from a supplier and it worked just fine. 

[dpartn]

Very helpful. Thanks again!