“Send Product Data to Square” Check Box within WooCommerce Product Page

Hello there,

Can someone please explain exactly what the checkbox titled “Send product data to Square” does or how it functions?

You can share products and inventory between Square and WooCommerce, which helps keep each system up-to-date whether you process a transaction via Square or WooCommerce.

The Product system of record configuration will determine how product data is shared between the two and which one has the last word if there are differences between the two.

I’ve added hundreds of items to our WooCommerce site (no sales yet since the site isn’t launched), and transacted over 1,000 purchases in the last few months in our brick and mortar store…but still have no idea why I would (or should) select this box since I already have WooCommerce set-up as the master inventory source on WordPress, and I have our Square account synced up……

Shouldn’t WooCommerce & Square communicate with each other automatically to update product inventory whether something sold online or in the store, by default / automatically?

Yes. If you sell via multiple channels (e.g. in-person with Square POS and online), we recommend setting Square as your system of record. Using Square as the system of record is especially helpful if inventory is shared between Square locations. In this case, WooCommerce Products will be overwritten with data from the Square product catalog.

You can read learn more about product syncing on the WooCommerce Square documentation:
Product system of record

Hi @rawdreeg thanks for your reply.

We’ll definitely never opt for Square to be our system of record, there are too many limitations and shortcomings going that route.

I just assumed since both are synced, it should be simply stuff for Square and WooCommerce to talk with each other regarding item sales, to keep an updated inventory so we don’t double-sale something online and in-store.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case which really shocks me since Square and Woo are basically the trailblazers in the e-commerce and POS world in the 21st century, it’s hard for me to believe I have to click a checkbox on every item I upload?

Maybe I’m doing something wrong, there must be a way for these 2 systems to simply communicate updated sales, whether that means having that check-box checked by default or another solution, why would anyone ever choose to sync Square and WooCommerce if they’re not truly synced because I’ve verified store sales are NOT showing up properly within the WooCommerce inventory.

Hi there @wurdpressuzer,

If you have WooCommerce as your System of Record, then inventory sync is automatic for any products for which you have it enabled.

The syncing is disabled for a product by default because many merchants will have Square for selling a limited subset of products, and only wish to sync those that are sold in both systems.

Once you have the products selected and enabled as desired, the process of inventory syncing is very much the simple automatic style you’re hoping for.

If your syncing is not working as expected, I recommend trying the recommended solutions here: https://woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-square/#section-41

Let us know if you are still unable to get proper syncing using those methods.

Thanks!

Hi @thracefulton thanks for your reply, I didn’t receive a notification so I’m glad I checked here.

When you say:

If you have WooCommerce as your System of Record, then inventory sync is automatic for any products for which you have it enabled.

How would, or could, I have our entire WooCommerce store default set to always communicate 2-way between Square POS and WooCommerce so that inventory is always 100% accurate and up-to-date no matter if something is sold online, or in-store?

Do I have to go back through our ~600 products and check that box for every item, or is there a batch way to do this (if needed), and how can I set up permanent settings so absolutely every inventory item is 100% synced to update accordingly for any sale, on our website, or in our store?

Hi there @wurdpressuzer,

Do I have to go back through our ~600 products and check that box for every item, or is there a batch way to do this

To share product information & inventory between Square and WooCommerce automatically, you must enable syncing for the products by checking this option on the “Edit Product” page: https://d.pr/i/9OQcOt

If you haven’t done that for your products – You can enable syncing for multiple products at the same time by following the steps given here: https://woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-square/#section-9

Let us know how it goes!

Thanks!

Hi @sandipmondal thanks for your help…

I have to say, respectfully, that this check-box makes no sense and should be turned on by default. A business owner doesn’t want to have to check a box, when they’ve already connected WooCommerce + Square POS to sync, that’s the entire reason they connected the platforms in the first place — so they’ll sync together based on sold item inventory updates.

I’m really shocked that properly using the sync functionality of the 2 leading e-commerce and POS solutions in the world comes down to a small checkbox that’s easily missed, and honestly shouldn’t even be a necessary step. Our online inventory and our in-store inventory are identical, we launched a website so we could expand our reach and profitability by selling products to consumers outside of our local brick-and-mortar limitations.

I greatly appreciate your help and confirming what I feared about that inconspicuous check-box, and am only expressing my disappointment overall, obviously you’re being helping and I know you didn’t design this flaw into the WooCommerce system. Thanks again!

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by wurdpressuzer.

Hi @wurdpressuzer,

I have to say, respectfully, that this check-box makes no sense and should be turned on by default. A business owner doesn’t want to have to check a box, when they’ve already connected WooCommerce + Square POS to sync, that’s the entire reason they connected the platforms in the first place — so they’ll sync together based on sold item inventory updates.

I would like to clarify that quite a lot of customers have products they sell only online(Virtual gift cards and such) and don’t want them to sync to Square as they aren’t able to sell them in person at all. This is why there is a check box at the product level to exclude/include them from syncing.

Do I have to go back through our ~600 products and check that box for every item, or is there a batch way to do this (if needed), and how can I set up permanent settings so absolutely every inventory item is 100% synced to update accordingly for any sale, on our website, or in our store?

You are able to bulk edit the products and enable “Sync to Square” from the product’s dashboard as shown in this screenshot.

Hope that clarifies any confusion with product syncing.

I have 30 pages of products, the bulk product update only allows me to choose the checkboxes beside each item per page, is there a way I can select all approx. 600 inventory items at once to sync/reconcile with Square POS inventory data?

EDIT: I figured it out by using screen options and item display change to 999.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by wurdpressuzer.

Hey @wurdpressuzer

I figured it out by using screen options and item display change to 999

Glad you got this sorted out.

We will mark this issue resolved for now. Feel free to unmark it if you have any further questions/issues related to this topic.

Anytime I try to do an update or sync between square and woocommerce I get a ton of duplicate items… It happened again over the past couple days doing the sync with square bulk update.

Also even after giving the website a couple days to reconcile between woocommerce and square none of the inventory is accurate on the woocommerce side.

Hi @wurdpressuzer,

>Anytime I try to do an update or sync between square and woocommerce I get a ton of duplicate items… It happened again over the past couple days doing the sync with square bulk update.

This can indicate the problem is related to site/product configuration or to server-caching systems. Can you please let us know if:

1. You’re using any kind of object-caching system in your server.

2. Are there any similarities between your duplicated orders (the same products, variations, attributes, etc)

Thanks!

@seanomattic those are great questions.

1) Yes, there’s something on the WordPress dashboard called “WP Fastest Cache”

2) I can’t make any sense of the duplicated items — the SKUs seems to be accurate, although I will say it appears only items with variations (sizes or colors) are being duplicated.

Since this has been severely impacting our website and keeping us from launching for a few weeks now, is there any way to escalate this somehow to allow someone to login to our WP Dashboard and diagnose the issues?

Hi @wurdpressuzer,

Thanks for letting us know, can you please try the following:

1. Disable the caching plugin as often times they can interfere with the sync process, once disabled then please check if the behaviour persists, if it does persist then goto step 2.
2.Can you please create a ticket from https://woocommerce.com/my-account/create-a-ticket/?form=ticket along with the credentials so that we can have a look at the site and get back to you?

Cheers!

Hi @spraveenitpro @seanomattic @simplysaru @sandipmondal @thracefulton @rawdreeg

I created a screen-record video that shows the error in real-time, PLEASE WATCH IT HERE for much better context and insight into our severe issue.

**I have deactivated and removed WP Fastetest Cache Premium and re-synced with no improvement

—

My only thought, which seems so obvious surely one of the many engineers at Square & WooCommerce would’ve explained it, would be to continue entering all our products into WooCommerce as we’ve done since Day-1, but NOT choose WooCommerce as the “master record for inventory” so sales on Square (which accounts for 100% of our sales right now since we can’t launch the website with errors) will override inventory on WooCommerce…….? Seems counter-intuitive and needless, but I’ll take ANYTHING at this point so we can just launch our website!

• This reply was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by wurdpressuzer.

Bump