Importing inventory from Google Sheets to Square

[C-A-G-of-HLN]

I’m on the board for a non-profit organization. This year, I volunteered to be on the committee that plans and runs a seasonal pottery fundraiser sale. My partners and I created an inventory system for each person’s items, and I created “items” in square for each person. 

I discovered that items can be imported to Square from a CSV template. I have been importing items using the template below: each person is the “item” and then each of their pottery pieces is its own separate SKU and price. (The SKU here would be Test001 and Test002) The main problem I have discovered is that artists are continuing to create new work, and I can’t keep up with the volume of pieces that they want to add and adjust each day. 

I want to create a workflow/program to connect the two programs. A Google search led me to Zapier, but I have no loyalty there if anyone has better resources. Ideally, my artists could add pieces to their inventory and the program would trigger Square to create new variations with individual SKUs for a single artist/item. As well as the artist being able to edit their prices, descriptions, and mark an item as sold or removed, and the program triggering Square to edit the stock on hand, mark as sold out, and/or change the price. So far, I can’t find a way to do any of the above. Am I asking too much? Over-complicating things? Any help is greatly appreciated as I have 55 artists breathing down my neck and the board looking over my shoulder.

For any overachievers/Square experts: 

A separate frustration that I have with square is that there’s no way to sort the item variations (SKUs) in alphabetical order. If a person has 50 items and I import 50 more, it will for some reason upload them in between the previous items rather than at the end of the list. (So the order would be 001, 051, 002, 052, etc). I have other, lesser frustrations with Square, including that if I add variations to an item, they can’t have separate descriptions. I want the piece’s SKU and description to appear when adding it to checkout, but can’t find a way to display/add both.

[Candlestore · Accepted solution]

@C-A-G-of-HLN ;

I just saw this today, I have an Idea.

You have 55 Artists ( Call them Vendors).  Then you can sort your Sales by Vendors and Items by Vendor.

Export your Catalog 56 times 1 Time per Vendor (artist into Google Sheets) That will give you 55 Artists, and 1 more time as your Master Sheet of All Vendors or artists.  For the 55 artist sheets, give the Artist access to add their Own items or edit the sheet.  This way they add their own Items to their Sheet.  Color Code their sheets for Which Fields not to edit and which Columns they need to edit.  Then in your Master sheet Append Each Artists sheet to the Master.  Upload the Master Only to Square.  Then Use Square for Retail to generate SKUs.  The SKU is generated for all Items that have no SKU.  Then Repeat the Export Process of all 55 artists and the one Master.  The artist csv files will now show all their art, Quantities at time of export and also have their SKU filled in and Token Fileds filled in which is assigned by Square.

You can actually use Google Sheets to automatically Append the artists sheets to the Master sheet.  Tell your artists that they have to have all Art updated in their sheet by a certain Day and time.  

Not sure why you would want or need to sort SKUs, Sort by vendor and Item.  

by having each Vendor add their own Item and Description for the Item, you can eliminate Variations and just have Items per Vendor unless they also have variations of the same Item.  Rose Paintings ( Red, White etc for Variatious Rose painting for example)

The other thing you could do is Export your Catalog by vendor as described above and send it to the artist (vendor).  Then they just say I added Items, and there is a New sheet to upload.  You get it and Upload their sheet.  Square will see the csv and make adjustments to their items based on their Refrence Handle or Token Columns for the Items and if these 2 columns are Blank Squre treats the item as a New Item.  This leaves out the headache of you Apending their files to your Master Csv file.  

This also helps with Reporting the end of Month sales per Artist (Vendor).  So instead of you seeing what Items XYZ vendor was sold that You Purchased To resell, You would see a List of what each Artist Sold and can have this sorted By Vendor (artist) and even get reports based on Artist.

Problems you may not have encountered yet with Each Artist being an Item you can only have so many Variations (250 I believe) of an Item.

Calling the Artist a Vendor would not give you that Limitation.

Anything else that you may have questions on ask away.

[Candlestore · Accepted solution]

@C-A-G-of-HLN ;

I just saw this today, I have an Idea.

You have 55 Artists ( Call them Vendors).  Then you can sort your Sales by Vendors and Items by Vendor.

Export your Catalog 56 times 1 Time per Vendor (artist into Google Sheets) That will give you 55 Artists, and 1 more time as your Master Sheet of All Vendors or artists.  For the 55 artist sheets, give the Artist access to add their Own items or edit the sheet.  This way they add their own Items to their Sheet.  Color Code their sheets for Which Fields not to edit and which Columns they need to edit.  Then in your Master sheet Append Each Artists sheet to the Master.  Upload the Master Only to Square.  Then Use Square for Retail to generate SKUs.  The SKU is generated for all Items that have no SKU.  Then Repeat the Export Process of all 55 artists and the one Master.  The artist csv files will now show all their art, Quantities at time of export and also have their SKU filled in and Token Fileds filled in which is assigned by Square.

You can actually use Google Sheets to automatically Append the artists sheets to the Master sheet.  Tell your artists that they have to have all Art updated in their sheet by a certain Day and time.  

Not sure why you would want or need to sort SKUs, Sort by vendor and Item.  

by having each Vendor add their own Item and Description for the Item, you can eliminate Variations and just have Items per Vendor unless they also have variations of the same Item.  Rose Paintings ( Red, White etc for Variatious Rose painting for example)

The other thing you could do is Export your Catalog by vendor as described above and send it to the artist (vendor).  Then they just say I added Items, and there is a New sheet to upload.  You get it and Upload their sheet.  Square will see the csv and make adjustments to their items based on their Refrence Handle or Token Columns for the Items and if these 2 columns are Blank Squre treats the item as a New Item.  This leaves out the headache of you Apending their files to your Master Csv file.  

This also helps with Reporting the end of Month sales per Artist (Vendor).  So instead of you seeing what Items XYZ vendor was sold that You Purchased To resell, You would see a List of what each Artist Sold and can have this sorted By Vendor (artist) and even get reports based on Artist.

Problems you may not have encountered yet with Each Artist being an Item you can only have so many Variations (250 I believe) of an Item.

Calling the Artist a Vendor would not give you that Limitation.

Anything else that you may have questions on ask away.

[Candlestore · Accepted solution]

@C-A-G-of-HLN ;

How to generate SKUs in Square:

7632-auto-generate-skus-with-square-for-retail