Create and manage items from Square Dashboard

Items can be specified to a few different types, including:

• prepared food and beverage: best for restaurants and other food venues. Includes optional nutritional information for buyers with calorie counts, dietary preferences and allergens.
• Physical: best for retail items such as clothing or jewellery, or nonperishable foods such as bottled wine.
• Event: sell tickets to events, and include an address/online link and times.
• Digital: lets you sell a digital file for download, such as an e-book or song, that you can manually send to the customer.
• Donation: allow anyone to send donations for any cause up to a certain amount.
• Other: best for items you’ll fulfil manually.

Note: keep the following in mind about item types.

• Different item types will add new sections you can update on the item details screen. For example, a Prepared food and beverage item will include a ‘Nutritional information’ section.
• Due to the different fulfilment methods for non-physical items (such as Event, Digital and Donation items), they must be purchased separately from physical items (such as Prepared food and beverage and Physical items).

You can add item images to your library at any time and give them an alt text for SEO. For more information, check out how to upload images to your Square Item Library.

Categories help you arrange and organise your items, report on item sales, route items to specific printers, assign channel visibility and much more. Click Select to assign the item to categories you’ve already created.

To create categories first, learn more about creating and managing item categories.

You can sell items in units other than those you stock or receive. For example, you can receive wine by the case and sell it by the glass. See Stock Conversion:Sell-by.

Item options help you create and organise your custom item variations. These options can be reused across your Item Library, saving time when you add new variations or items. Select Add options to add options to your item to create a unique version of the item.

You can click Edit variation details at any time to make edits to your variation information, or Add to add a new one.

Adding variations manually:

1. in the Edit Item page scroll down to Variations and click Add Variation.
2. Create a Variation name and set a Unit cost, then proceed to edit Sales information.
3. Once complete, click Done at the bottom of the page.
4. Note that Any new variation automatically inherits all the units applied to the item.

Max Variation Limit:
an item can have up to 250 variations. Adding another unit or variation would exceed the limit. Edit your current variations or units in order to add more.

You can manage your inventory with tools that keep a clear count of in-stock items in your Item Library. To start, click Manage stock.
Keep in mind that stock-by units can’t be removed.

Edit stock-by unit:

1. select the unit you want to change > an Edit unit screen will appear.
2. Tick the box at the bottom to change the unit > Save.

If you need customisable options, such as toppings, add-ons or special requests, create item modifiers. Select Add to begin.

Create custom attributes, and link them to items, to help add and track additional details about the items in your catalogue. Select Add to begin.

The Skip item details screen toggle means that, when this item is added to the basket, the first item variation along with any pre-selected modifiers will be applied. You won’t be shown the item details screen.

From Square Item Library, you can adjust several item settings as they relate to your Square Online websites including item site assignment and visibility, prep times for online ordering, SEO, social media links, and more.

These options will be under the following sections of the item details screen:

• where it’s sold
• Ordering
• Fulfilment
• Search and social media

Check out how to manage Square Online item settings for more information.

With Square Subscriptions, you can keep track of your subscription plans and subscribers, create and manage plans, and add new customers to subscriptions. For details, learn more about getting started with Subscriptions in Dashboard.

Toggle this option on if you’d like to create a payment link or buy button for this item that you can use to sell via email, social media, your website, a blog and more. Learn more about getting started with Square Payment Links.

To edit or delete an item:

1. from your Square Item Library, select the item to update.
2. Make your changes and Save to finish, or click Actions > Delete to remove the item from your library.

To duplicate an item:

1. from your Square Item Library, select the item to duplicate.
2. Click Actions > Duplicate to make a copy of the item.
3. Make any changes to the duplicated item.
4. Select Save when finished.

If you’re creating multiple items, you can save time by bulk uploading your items. Check out item importing for more information.

By archiving items, you can remove items from your Item Library and prevent them from being sold, without permanently deleting them and losing their data. While items are archived, you won’t be able to take any actions such as managing stock or editing their variations. Learn more about archiving items for details.

You can mark an item or item variation as sold out in the case that it’s unavailable for sale. To start:

1. from your Square Item Library, select the items or item variations that you’d like to mark as sold out.
2. Under Variations, click Manage stock.
3. Toggle on the Mark as sold out on Point of Sale and Online option and click Done.
4. Select Save when finished.

Note: this will also label the variation as sold out on any partner apps that are connected with Square.

You can edit and manage your item images at any time. Learn more about how to upload images to your Square Item Library for details.

To add a unit type:

1. From your Square Item Library, go to Units.
2. Click Add a Unit.
3. Choose a preset unit.
4. Set the unit precision. This helps keep track of your inventory and item sales price by allowing you to set the item count up to the hundred-thousandths place (0.00000).
5. Click Save.

Unit types will reflect on your customers’ receipts, as well as on your item and sales reports within Square.

Note: Each custom unit type must have a unique name. Names aren’t case sensitive.

1. From your Square Item Library, go to Units.
2. Click an existing unit. If you’re updating a custom unit, you’ll see the option to change the precision.
3. Choose to either Save your changes or click Delete to remove the unit type altogether.

Note: By default, if an item is assigned to a unit type you delete, the new unit type will convert to a per-item quantity.

Note the following limitations when managing units:

• Updating a unit type for an item won’t update your stock amount. For example, if you have 10 centimetres (cm)/inches (in) of Denim in stock, and you update your unit type from cm/in to metres (m)/foot (ft), your inventory levels for the item will be reflected as 10 m/ft in stock. To keep your inventory levels accurate, make sure to manually adjust your stock levels after updating the unit type.
• Your reporting and transaction history will reflect the unit type at the time of sale. Let’s say you sell Coffee with the unit type set to ounces (oz). You later update the unit type to grams (g)/pounds (lbs), and complete another sale. If you review a report for Coffee, you’ll see separate lines for both oz and g/lbs.
• When using unit types for inventory tracking, it’s not possible for items with a smaller unit to be deducted from a larger unit. For example, it’s not possible to set the unit type for Wine as a 250 millilitre (ml) glass, and have a 750 ml bottle of wine be deducted from stock every time three 250 ml glasses are sold.
• It’s not possible to set incremental minimums or maximums for unit types. For example, you won’t be able to set an increment such as 0.5 that the quantity must increase or decrease by when adjusting quantity during checkout.