Import items into Square from a supplier price list
A price list answers one question: what a case costs this month. A Square catalog answers a different one: what you sell, under what name, at what price, with what barcode. Turning the first into the second is mostly column work, and the order matters.
Start from the Square template
In the Square Dashboard open Items, then Item library, then Actions and Export Library. Choose the blank import library if the catalog is new, or export your current items if you already have some. Square recommends the Excel format. Keep that file: its header row is the layout the import tool expects, and its column order is not optional.
- Download the template or your current export from the Dashboard.
- Map the supplier columns onto the Square fields.
- Check the rows Square would refuse, and fix them.
- Import from Actions, then Import library.
The columns Square will not do without
Item Name, Variation Name, Description and SKU have to be present. A business with more than one location also needs the Enabled column for each location. Everything else can be blank. A blank Item Type imports as a standard item, and a blank Category leaves the item uncategorised rather than removing it from a category it already has.
Map the file once
Drop the price list below. Each supplier column is matched to a Square field with three sample values next to the guess, so you can tell whether a column called Price is your cost or your retail price before anything is written.
Sizes, packs and colours
A price list usually gives every size its own row. Square wants one item with a variation per size. Rows that share a base name are grouped, and each keeps its own SKU, GTIN, price and cost, while the item name, description and category come from the first row of the group. That matters because Square requires an item and its variations to carry the same category and the same description, and it requires item names to be unique across the file.
Before you upload
Remove commas from any text you added, since Square asks for that and gives you them back after the import. Leave the Token column alone, do not reorder columns, and do not delete the empty ones. Then import, and expect Square to offer corrections for anything simple it finds. Every correction you never see offered is an hour you did not spend on a second upload.