Square best practice?

Hi there @beogeek,

I’m sorry to hear that you’re having issues with our Square extension. Let sort them out!

The first question to the above is why, why is it recommended? Why should you not use Woo as the system of record?

I talked to our product team and it turned out that this is a recommendation coming from Square tech team directly.

However, this is just a recommendation. You can choose your System of Record based on what you’d like to be “a source of truth” for your product data.

In your case, it does make sense to have WooCommerse as SOR. Note that whatever SOR you set up, your inventory will be synced between WC and Square anyways.

Please let us know if that works for you or you have any further concerns, I’ll be happy to address them. Cheers!

Thank you for your answer! The issue is that when Square is the SOR it overwrites some details in woo, especially by removing categories as only one category can be selected in square as that is the limit.

Will there be any issues with switching to woo as SOR or is it as simple as going to woo settings and flipping the switch to Woo SOR? Also, inventory counts will be kept in woo not in square if I make woo the SOR is that right. So in effect square will only be used to process payments and woo will be the SOR for everything else?

For what it’s worth, we use Woocommerce as SOR, even though at this point most of our transactions are with Square, and it works great. We keep it simple though, we only have about 400 products and they only have one “Attribute”. We just found it more reliable and simple to keep our products updated in Woocommerce. But when we take the shop on the road, which happens most weekends, it’s way easier to use Square POS to do the transactions.

Gotta say, it works great. The only weird thing is whenever we add more products in Woocommerce, we then have to go into Square and make sure it’s automatically adding the tax, but at least Square has a “Tax all items” option, so it’s not a big deal.

Todd

Thanks for your reply @mrtoddkennedy appreciate it!

I am going to do a trial very soon as the current setup does not work at all. Have you got any products with multiple variations and if so are they synced to square? We have a number of variations on products and sync does not work when Square is SOR.

I may just make all products simple and change SOR to Woo and just see what happens!

We do a number of variations, but again, I keep it simple. With Woocommerce as the SOR… To give you some background, we sell disc golf discs. So for each disc we have multiple weights, like 164-166g, 167-169g, 170-172g, 173-174g, etc.

I create one “Attribute” for each product and I actually call it “Attribute”. And then I create variations for that Attribute with weights, those variations look like 166-166g | 167-169g | 170-172g

and so on.

I have to create a unique SKU for each variation.

But this syncs perfectly back to Square, tracks inventory, and when we sell through either Square or Woocommerce, it all updates properly.

Now it would be cool to have multiple attributes, like colours and weights, but not only does that not sync correctly, it’s a nightmare to manage the inventory!;)

Hope this makes sense.

Todd

@mrtoddkennedy thanks for your detailed reply, appreciate your feedback!

Just as I figured, you only have one variation per product which is weight, you don’t have weight and color for example. This is why the sync works like a charm.

The site I manage sells sports clothing and the issue is that for example, a shirt will come in various colors and sizes and because there’s more than one attribute in this case color and size it won’t sync from woo to square (square is SOR) and it won’t work even if woo is the SOR according to square documentation as there’s a limitation on the number of attributes per product, that being only one, in your case weight.

The other issue is that square deletes the woo categories (and descriptions) as in square you can only associate any product to only one category which blows.

SO I have to options, one being to make woo SOR and forget keeping track of inventory in square, only need square to process payments and provide POS. The other alternative in my mind is to have two accounts in square. One for online sales and one for offline with POS. That would mean keeping track of two different inventories but at least all sync would work fine.

Any other ideas are most welcome! I would really like to get this working like a well-oiled machine!

Hi there @beogeek,

The site I manage sells sports clothing and the issue is that for example, a shirt will come in various colors and sizes and because there’s more than one attribute in this case color and size it won’t sync from woo to square (square is SOR) and it won’t work even if woo is the SOR according to square documentation as there’s a limitation on the number of attributes per product, that being only one, in your case weight.

Indeed, Square does not support multiple attributes and this is why products with more attributes won’t sync. A workaround is described here: https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-square/#q-why-cant-i-sync-products-with-multiple-attributes

The other issue is that square deletes the woo categories (and descriptions) as in square you can only associate any product to only one category which blows.

Also true, this is another limitation that comes from Square as it supports only one category. If you set Square as SOR, it will overwrite your WC categories. With WC as SOR, only the first (or parent category) will sync to Square.

SO I have to options, one being to make woo SOR and forget keeping track of inventory in Square, only need Square to process payments and provide POS.

If you make WC as your SOR and never choose products to sync, you will be able to use Square just as your payment gateway.

The other alternative in my mind is to have two accounts in square. One for online sales and one for offline with POS. That would mean keeping track of two different inventories but at least all sync would work fine.

If it still won’t allow your inventory/product data to sync properly with two Square accounts, I’d rather recommend you use Square as your payment gateway with one Square account and no product sync.

Also, kudos to @mrtoddkennedy for chiming in!

Cheers!

Hi there @beogeek,

We haven’t heard back from you in a while, so I’m going to mark this as resolved – if you have any further questions, you can start a new thread.