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Manage Square Online item settings from Square Item Library

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. Take a look at each one below.

For information on other item settings beyond Square Online, check out creating and managing items from Square Dashboard.

Sale price

To add a sale price to an item displayed on your Square Online site:

  1. From your Square Item Library, select an existing item or create a new one.

  2. Under Variations, go to Price and click Options > Add online sale price.

  3. Enter a sale price for each variation that you want to update.

  4. Select Save when finished.

Note: Sale prices only apply to your Square Online site and do not sync to other Square platforms. If you'd like sale prices to be automatically updated, learn more about scheduling item updates for Square Online items.

Item site assignment

Site assignment refers to which of your websites your item is assigned to. This, in combination with site visibility, controls where items are available for purchase. For example, in order for an item to be purchasable on your site, it must be both assigned and visible or hidden. To manage item site assignment:

  1. From your Square Item Library, select an existing item or create a new one.

  2. Under "Where it's sold", use the toggles to determine which websites the item should be assigned to.

  3. Select Save when finished.

Note: If you're using channel integrations such as Google Business Profile or Meta for Business, you can also assign your item to those channels by clicking +Add channels.

Item site visibility

Site visibility refers to how and where an item will appear on your website.

Note: If you'd like item site visibility to be automatically updated, learn more about scheduling item updates for Square Online items.

Manage site visibility

To manage item site visibility:

  1. From your Square Item Library, select an existing item or create a new one.
  2. Under “Where it’s sold”, choose a site visibility setting from the Site visibility drop-down menu.
  3. Select Save when finished.

The site visibility settings will apply to items on every site they’ve been assigned to. For example, if you mark an item as Visible, it’ll be visible on each of your sites where the item is being sold.

Site visibility settings

The available item site visibility settings include:

  • Visible: Your item is visible on your online ordering page and available for purchase. It will also show up in navigation and site search results.
  • Hidden: Your item is available for purchase online but won’t display on your ordering page. You can still add the item to featured item sections (useful for events and donations), or give buyers a direct link to the item (useful for exclusive items). Learn more about selling hidden items with Square Online.
  • Unavailable: Your item isn’t visible online and can’t be purchased (useful if you aren’t ready to sell the item yet).

Sell items as preorders

Note: Enable pre-ordering for pickup and delivery by upgrading your Square Online subscription.

If you're selling items for pickup and local delivery which are only available on certain dates (holiday specials, for example), your customers can preorder on Square Online and get the items when they become available.

Set up preorders

To set up preordering for items set up for pickup and local delivery:

  1. From your Square Item Library, select the item that you want to edit.
  2. Under ‘Ordering’, toggle on Sell as preorder. Note: Your item must have pickup or delivery enabled.
  3. Select Edit preorder settings to choose the date or date range when the item will be available for pickup or delivery. You can choose any date or time from 24 hours up to 365 days in advance.
  4. Optionally tick Customise fulfilment hours to choose the specific fulfilment hours within the selected date range. For example, if you set the time range as 10 am–2 pm, buyers can choose only these hours for pickup or delivery on the specified pickup or delivery dates. If you leave this option unticked, your location’s standard pickup or delivery hours will apply.
  5. Enter a Preorder cutoff date. This is a date and time after which you’d like to stop taking orders for the item. The item won’t be available to order online after the specified date and time.

You can make changes to your item’s preorder status, edit dates or preorder availability, or turn off preordering at any time.

Buyer experience

When you set up preordering, customers will see a badge on your item page showing that the item is available for preorder, as well as the corresponding fulfilment window. When they add the item to their cart and proceed to checkout, they’ll see and can edit the pickup date, time and location information.

If the customer’s order contains a standard item along with a preorder item, the pickup date will be adjusted to the preorder fulfilment date. They’ll see a notification about this change and can adjust their order, or order separately if they need to pick up the item immediately.

About preordering vs scheduling

Preordering is for items that are not currently available for purchase, and need to be ordered in advance to be picked up or delivered at some point after the items become available. Preorders are often used to create preliminary excitement about an item pending release.

Scheduling is for items that are already available for purchase, but the customer wants to order and pay now, and schedule the pickup or delivery for a specific time in the future (as long as it’s within your pickup and delivery hours). Scheduling is often used by restaurants, and other food and beverage businesses.

The primary differences between these two ordering techniques are the item availability and the length of time the item can be ordered ahead of the fulfilment date.

Per-order quantity limits

You can limit the number of times a customer can add a single item to their cart per Square Online order.

Benefits of per-order quantity limits

This can help prevent you from selling out of highly-demanded items too quickly and make stock easier to manage. For example, if you have a limit of four on a shirt that comes in different variations (think sizes or colours), then the total amount of those variations can’t exceed four in the cart.

Set up per-order quantity limits

To limit the number of times a customer can add a specific item to their cart for a single order:

  1. From your Square Item Library, select an existing item or create a new one.
  2. Under Ordering, toggle on Set quantity limits for online orders and enter a number in the text field.
  3. Select Save when finished.

Note: To limit the total quantity of items allowed per online pickup and delivery order, you can set a large order limit by going to your Account & Settings page > Fulfilment > Pickup & Delivery > Advanced settings.

Fulfilment methods

In order to sell any of your items online, be sure to indicate how you'll be fulfilling them when ordered from your website.

Set up item fulfilment methods

To set up fulfilment methods for your items:

  1. From your Square Item Library, select an existing item or create a new one.
  2. Under Fulfilment, Edit the online fulfilment methods.
  3. Use the tick boxes to indicate the fulfilment methods used for that item and click Done.
  4. Select Save when finished.

Available fulfilment methods

Fulfilment options for items include:

Note: Non-physical items don’t use standard fulfilment methods so you won’t see these options for those item types.

Item prep time

Prep time refers to how long it takes to prepare orders and items for pickup and local delivery. To set up prep times for individual items:

  1. From your Square Item Library, select an existing item or create a new one.

  2. Under Fulfilment, Edit the item prep time.

  3. Toggle off Use location default to choose a custom prep time for your item and click Done.

  4. Select Save when finished.

Note: To set up prep times for all pickup and local delivery orders, go to your Account & Settings page > Fulfilment > Pickup & Delivery.

Item contains alcohol

To start selling alcohol online with Square, you must first indicate which items in your Item Library contain alcohol. This could be a prepared cocktail from a bar that's set up for pickup, local delivery or QR code ordering, or a non-perishable item like bottled wine set up for shipping. Learn more about selling alcohol with Square Online for details.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

You can customise how an item or category page from your Square Online site displays on search engines. This is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Learn more about how to optimise your items and categories for Square Online SEO.

Social media links

You can customise how links to the item and category pages from your Square Online site appear when shared on social media, particularly if you want to use different information from your SEO. Learn more about Square Online social media links for more information.

Troubleshooting

If your items display as "Unavailable" or don't appear at all on your Square Online site, there are a few things to consider that could be the cause. Learn more about troubleshooting items not visible on your Square Online site.

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