Create and Manage Items from Square Dashboard
As you add your business details to Square, you can create, edit, and manage items from your Square Item Library in Dashboard. Managing items from here will update most items details across several other Square platforms including Square Point of Sale and Square Online.
Note: In addition to your Dashboard, you can also create and manage items from the Square app.
Create items in Dashboard
To create items from your Item Library in Dashboard:
From your online Square Dashboard, go to Items & Orders > Items to open your Square Item Library.
Click Create an Item.
Click the Item type dropdown menu and choose an item type.
Enter item information such as a name, description, and image.
Set up any of the following item features and click Save when finished.
Item features
These features are located on the item details screen when creating or editing an item.
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 jewelry, or non-perishable foods like bottled wine.
- Event: Sell tickets to events, and include an address/online link and times.
- Digital: Lets you sell a digital file for download, like an ebook or song, that you can manually send to the customer.
- Donation: Allow anyone to send donations for any cause of up to a certain amount.
- Other: Best for items you will fulfill manually.
Note: Keep the following in mind about items types.
- Different item types will add new sections you can update to the item details screen. For example, a Prepared food and beverage item will include a “Nutritional information” section.
- Due to the different fulfillment methods for non-physical items (like Event, Digital, and Donation items), they must be purchased separately from physical items (like Prepared food and beverage and Physical items).
You can add item images to your library at any time and give them alt text for SEO. For more information, check out how to upload images to your Square Item Library.
Categories help you arrange and organize 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.
- Options: Item options help you create and organize 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.
- Variations: You can click Edit variation details at any time to make edits to your variation information, or Add to add a new one.
- Stock: 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.
If you need customizable 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 catalog. Select Add to begin.
The Skip item details screen toggle means that, when this item is added to the cart, the first item variation along with any pre-selected modifiers will be applied. You will not 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
- Fulfillment
- Search and social media
Check out how to manage Square Online item settings from Square Item Library 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 your 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.
Generate an online ordering site
As you add items to your Item Library, you can automatically generate an online ordering page with Square Online to sell from a website as well as your POS. To start:
From your Square Item Library, click Online ordering to see a preview of what your online ordering site can look like.
Click Site setup to generate the online ordering site with Square Online.
Once generated, you can navigate the Square Online Overview page in Dashboard to access the different features within Square Online, or navigate the Square Online site editor to create an ordering page that allows customers to quickly purchase your items.
Set up item unit types
Each business is different — some sellers sell whole item quantities (like articles of clothing), while others sell items by weight or length. Some businesses sell both.
By default, each new item you create will have the unit type per item. When you set your unit type, you can choose from a list of preset units such as meters, ounces, or feet. You'll also be able to select unit types from both the metric and imperial systems. Learn more in our unit type FAQ.
To add a unit type:
- From your Square Item Library, go to Units.
- Click Add a Unit.
- Choose a preset unit.
- 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).
- 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.
- From your Square Item Library, go to Units.
- Click an existing unit. If you’re updating a custom unit, you’ll see the option to change the precision.
- 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 centimeters(cm)/inches(in) of Denim in stock, and you update your unit type from cm/in to meters(m)/feet(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 milliliter(mL) glass, and have a 750 mL bottle of wine deduct 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.
Manage items
You'll likely need to manage your items at one point or another. Here are some ways you can start.
To edit or delete an item:
- From your Square Item Library, select the item to update.
- Make your changes and Save to finish, or click Actions > Delete to remove the item from your library.
To duplicate an item:
- From your Square Item Library, select the item to duplicate.
- Click Actions > Duplicate to make a copy of the item.
- Make any changes to the duplicated item.
- Select Save when finished.
If you’re creating multiple items, you can save time by uploading your items in bulk. 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:
- From your Square Item Library, select the item you’d like to mark as sold out.
- Under Variations, click Manage stock.
- Toggle on the Mark as sold out on Point of Sale and Online option and click Done.
- 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.
Create and manage sales taxes
Sales tax should be enabled for applicable items sold at your business. You can easily create and manage them directly from the online Square Dashboard. Learn more about how to set up taxes.
Create and manage discounts
You can create and edit item discounts from your Dashboard or Square app. Learn more about creating and managing discounts.