Create and edit item categories
About item categories
You can use item categories to organize and group similar products or items within a larger catalog. For example, in a shop, you might have categories like clothes, accessories, and shoes. Categories help you arrange and organize your items, report on item sales, and route items to specific printers.
Before you begin
You can create and edit item categories from Square Dashboard and Square Point of Sale. When you create, edit, or delete a category, the change will reflect in your Square Dashboard, point of sale app, and retail website.
Make sure you’ve created at least one item in your item library before assigning items to a category. Learn how to create and edit items.
Categories are used for reporting, kitchen routing, standard mode organization (not restaurant modes), and retail item management for in-person and online sales. If using restaurant modes on your point of sale, you can use menus for categorization of prepared food and beverage items. Learn how to create and update menus.
To display categorized items on your Square website, be sure to use the Shop All ordering page template. Learn how to create an ordering page for your website.
To help your categories rank in search engine results, learn how to index online items and categories with search engines.
Step 1: Create or edit a category
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Categories.
- Click Create category or select an existing category.
- Complete all category details and click Save.
Step 2: Add items to categories
To add multiple items to a category:
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Categories.
- Select an existing category.
- Under Items, click Add.
- Check the items you want to add to the category and click Done.
- Click Save.
To add a single item to a category:
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Item library.
- Select an existing item.
- Under Categories, search and select the categories the item should be added to.
- Click Save.
To add multiple items to a category:
- Open the Square app and tap ≡ More > Items > Categories.
- Select an existing category and tap Assign items.
- Tap the items you want to add to the category.
- Tap Save.
To add a single item to a category:
- Open the Square app and tap ≡ More > Items > All items.
- Select an existing item.
- Tap Categories to check any categories from the list, then tap Done.
- Tap Save.
Step 3: Assign categories
To finish creating item categories, you'll need to assign them to specific sales channels (like your point of sale, website, or delivery apps). You can assign item categories from Square Dashboard at any time.
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Categories.
- Select an existing category or click Create category.
- Under “Sales channels,” Edit the channels and click Save.
By default, your categories are available across all selected channels, but you can create location overrides so that, through a specific channel, your category isn’t available at a particular location. For example, a category can be available on all of your websites, but websites that show a specific location where the category isn’t available won’t display your category at that location.
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Categories.
- Select an existing category or click Create category.
- Under “Sales channels,” click Edit > Customize channels by location.
- Expand a location to see all of the channels where the location appears.
- Check the specific channel where the item is not available at the location.
- Click Save.
Step 4: Rearrange items and categories for websites
You can rearrange the order that categories, and items within a category, appear on your retail websites using the Shop All ordering page template.
You can rearrange categories and set how they’ll appear on your retail website.
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Categories.
- Click Rearrange.
- Click and hold ⠿. Drag the category to a new position and release to update the order.
- Click Done rearranging.
Manage how items are displayed to customers on your retail websites. Remember that items on your point of sale are organized alphabetically.
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Categories.
- Select a category with the items you would like to rearrange.
- Under Items, click Rearrange.
- Click and hold ⠿. Drag the item to a new position and release to update the order. Click Done.
- Click Save.
Remove items from categories
You can remove an item assigned to a category at any time.
To remove multiple items from a category:
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Categories.
- Select an existing category.
- Under Items, click Edit.
- Uncheck the items you want to remove from the category and click Done.
- Click Save.
To remove a single item from a category:
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Item library.
- Select an existing item.
- Under Categories, go to the existing category and click ••• > Remove category.
- Click Save.
To remove multiple items from a category:
- Open the Square app and tap ≡ More > Items > Categories.
- Select an existing category and tap Assign items.
- Tap the items you want to remove from the category.
- Tap Save.
To remove a single item from a category:
- Open the Square app and tap ≡ More > Items > All items.
- Select an existing item.
- Tap Categories to uncheck any categories from the list, then tap Done.
- Tap Save.