This guide explains how to connect your Square POS account to sync your shop sales to Pulse.
Setting up products
To use the integration, you’ll need to have products setup within Square. These are essential for the integration as they provide the key information which Pulse uses to categorise transactions.
If you don’t use products on your Square account, you’ll be unable to use the integration as Pulse cannot identify shop sales
To setup products, head to your Square account admin (you can also add through the mobile app) and navigate to Items & Services > Items Library. When you choose ‘create an item’, you’ll be shown a screen which looks like this.
The items for you to add are shown, and you can complete these as you like. However there is a key element which you’ll need to complete for your recipe books and shop sales.
Setting the SKU
SKU (otherwise known as a stock keeping unit) is a code which a company uses to identify which product is which within their inventory. Occasionally, products may have a similar name, so a SKU is helpful for variations.
For example, a clothing retailer may have a SKU for a jumper, but then a variation of that code could be for a different colour or size.
As such, the SKU will need to be populated with book_ to allow the integration to proceed.
Without a SKU, Pulse will be unable to identify which items are book sales, membership fees or magazines/hifi sales.
Only book sales need to be calculated as fees and magazines/hifis are pulled from your PFS Documents. If they were included, you’d be double counting your income and reporting incorrect information!
Take care to categorise your products accordingly, depending on the way you use the system.
If you have a generic ‘books’ product
If you have a generic button for ‘Big Book’ and ‘Small Book’ for example, this is absolutely fine too – just ensure both have a SKU with the prefix added. For example, you could use:
- Big book: book_big
- Small book: book_small
If you have each book / product listed
You can simply add the SKU code as book_fakeaways (for example for the fakeaway book) or book_fastfeasts – any combination is fine as long as the book_ section is at the start!
In our example, we’ve used the book / product SKU code as below
And that’s it – you can continue as normal with your shop sales using the mobile app.
Changing existing products
If you already have existing products within Square, you can amend their SKUs to match the book_ code for book sales.
They will then update automatically – including historic transactions, meaning you can back-fill any items or make corrections if the SKU was not entered originally.
Connecting Pulse to Square
Pulse will only connect to view orders (sales) data. No other information is shared between Square and MalgraBooks
Pulse connects directly to Square to pull data from the API – this allows key information to transmit between systems.
To begin, head to your Settings page within Pulse and under Integrations select ‘Square‘.
The below page will show with instructions on how to connect your account.
Square Setup
Head to Square Developer and you’ll be presented with this screen. Click the + icon to start, and call the new ‘application’ malgrabooks.
When asked ‘what will you build’, select the Manage and fulfill orders option. When asked ‘Find your audience’ select Myself.
You’ll then appear on the Credentials page. Next to both the Production Application ID and Production Access token, you’ll have two ‘copy’ icons and these should be copied back into Pulse.
Adding into Pulse
Once the keys have been copied, paste these into the relevant fields within Pulse and click the ‘Connect Square Account’ button.
If all matches, you’ll receive a confirmation message.
To continue, click ‘Import Shop Sales’ to continue.
Importing Book Sales to Pulse
To start importing, head to your Book Sales screen and choose the ‘Import transactions’ button at the top.
Once on the import screen, select the relevant month and click ‘retrieve data’.
Notes:
- The system will pull through all importable records which can be found within Square. These are grouped on a daily basis and will be totalled together.
- Select the transactions you’d like to import by clicking the check box on the left and choosing which group from the drop down they relate to.
- When ready, click ‘import selected records’.
- The records will appear on your book sales page
Other Transactions
Where transactions have been found in the system but cannot be imported, Pulse will provide a list of these underneath.
In this example, Pulse has identified other transactions, such as member fees.
It has also ignored a transaction for a book as the SKU does not start with book_ and therefore the item has been ignored.
Square allows you to update SKUs retrospectively, so you can try and re-import these again. See here for details.