Issue formatting SKUS

[LWoods]

I am about to head to a craft fair w/a new iPad, the Square Contactless Chip Reader & dock.  I've been trying to enter my inventory into Square Dashboard but having difficulty because Square is not accepting my SKUs that were created to help define each item best for my company.  Square is seeing BBb1001 as a duplicate sku for BBb1000.  DO THEY HAVE TO BE 12 characters long is my first ?

I was hoping using a SKU would makes searching for specific inventory easier when selling at fairs.  At the last fair we had to scroll through all 250 items to find the one we wanted.  Is there a way to have the SKU's help us in our search when selling or is the only method for defining a piece the category?  

Using BRASS, COPPER, GOLD & SILVER, I make & sell jewelry. Here's a few examples of categories & skus used to itemized each piece within a category:

BBb,c,g,s

Bracelets: Bangles brass, copper, gold or silver so a SKU for a Bracelet Bangle made from brass would be BBb1000, BBb1001 and so on.  A Bracelet Bangle made from copper would be BBc1000, BBc1001 and so on.

BCb,c,g,s

Bracelet: Cuffs brass, copper, gold or silver

IF THESE SKUS WILL NOT WORK - which it seems they won't, any suggestions would be helpful. I also have categories for ED, EH, ES, ET (EARRINGS: DANGLES, EARRINGS: HOOPS, EARRINGS: STUDS, EARRINGS: THREADERS) and several others.

Thanks in advance for any help!

[LWoods]

The sku #'s I painstakingly created for my business are not working in the sku field on my square dashboard. For some reason Square thinks that BBb1001 is a duplicate sku for BBb1000

Without any luck, I've been researching any available square documents, blogs, YouTube videos, etc. That I can find to figure this out on my own and have been doing so for 2 long 14 hour days.  It is so frustrating to not be able to find ANY info specific to the sku #.  I can't even find out if a certain amount of characters should be used when setting my square sku #'s.  And this is just one problem. I'm guessing if something this basic is impossible.to find out then the rest of it will be just as UN-intuitive!

The only thing I've finally learned by reading some of the other comments thru this forum is that the sku (which I had hoped would prevent me from scrolling thru 350 items while a customer stands waiting to purchase a particular item) doesn't show up in an area that is searchable in the item library to make the selection process easier anyhow!!!!!

How do sellers find a specific item quickly within a long list of inventory while their customer is waiting? Being a one person seller, I can't spend too long doing this. It not only keeps my current customer waiting, but also keeps me occupied when I need to be watching my table or assisting other customers.

I do not find square to be user friendly or intuitIve at all.  The documentation I've found thru square leaves out a lot of important info and does not offer enough actual examples of 'pretend' Dashboard item entries.

Perhaps once it's running smoothly I'll change my opinion, but the set up for the average person is absolutely horribly to follow.

[Sean]

@LWoods - Welcome to the Seller Community, and kudos on your first post. To make things easier, I went ahead and combined your comments in a single post. 

For your first question, there are no character requirements for SKUs. We just recommend that you avoid using leading zeros, which it looks like you have.  For your second question, searching by SKU with out a barcode scanner is a very popular feature request. This is also something that is on our product team's roadmap. I'd suggest subscribing to this thread for future updates about this functionality. 

As for the issue you're describing, I don't see any issues with the SKUs you created. I'll need to test some things out, and then follow up with you. Stay tuned! 

[Sean]

@LWoods - Apologies for the delay. As a follow up, when you say that Square is seeing BBb1001 as a duplicate sku for BBb1000 - would you mind explaining what you mean a bit more? Are you searching for the item on the Dashboard? Are you scanning the barcode in the Square Register app? Thanks!