Hi @woodywordpress,
Thanks for the additional details.
I tested this on my end and was able to reproduce the same behaviour. With Square set as the system of record and “Hide synced products when not found in Square” enabled, the synced WooCommerce product is not being hidden as expected after the matching product is removed/deleted from Square.
I can confirm this looks like a bug. There is already an existing GitHub issue tracking a closely related problem, so I’ve added my findings there as well for the developers to review.
For now, the workaround would be to manually set the affected WooCommerce product’s catalog visibility to “Hidden” or move it to draft/private if it should no longer be purchasable.
Thanks again for reporting this and for helping us confirm the issue.
Handle missing products does appear to be working, but only after clicking “sync now” on WooCommerce > Settings > Square > Update.
Its not clear if this a bug or expected. The documentation around syncing is a bit vague.
My expectation was that the 15 minute sync would handle product removal as well as “Import All Products from Square” when “update existing products during” import is checked off.
Hi @woodywordpress,
Thanks for clarifying that. That’s a helpful observation.
I tested this again on my side using the 15-minute sync path specifically. I created a test product in Square, imported it into WooCommerce, then deleted the product from Square with “Hide synced products when not found in Square” enabled and the sync interval set to 15 minutes.
After waiting for the scheduled sync, the product’s visibility was not hidden as expected. I also noticed an error showing under Settings → Square → Update during testing: https://share.zight.com/JruJw4dE
I’ve updated the GitHub report with these additional findings, including your note that the setting appears to work only after clicking Sync Now. This should help the developers review whether the 15-minute sync is expected to handle missing products the same way, or whether this is a bug in the scheduled sync path.
For now, the safest workaround is still to manually hide the affected products or move them to draft/private if they should no longer be visible or purchasable.
Thanks again for testing this further and sharing the extra detail.
For us, manually clicking “Sync Now” is still the quickest path to hide products, as opposed to manually hiding each one. Our case is probably somewhat unique in that products rotate weekly. Unfortunately, it looks like the plugin doesn’t return the product visibility to visible if the product is restored in Square.
Hi @woodywordpress!
Thank you for providing more information about the issue. I checked this on my end and was able to reproduce the same behavior.
It appears this may be the default behavior.
By default, when products are synced from Square to WooCommerce, the following data is updated: the product name, price, description, product image, product category, inventory/stock count, SKU, and whether the product is marked as sold as explain here: https://woocommerce.com/document/woocommerce-square/sync-settings/sync-product-data-from-square-to-woocommerce/sync-products-from-square-to-woocommerce/
Additionally, when the “Hide synced products when not found in Square” option is enabled, products that are no longer found in Square will have their visibility set to Hidden in WooCommerce. However, if the product is later restored in Square and synced again, its visibility will not changed back to Visible automatically.
I’ve escalated this internally to confirm whether this is the intended behavior or a bug. Once I receive an update from our team, I’ll let you know.
Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.
Hi @woodywordpress!
This is a follow-up regarding the product visibility behavior we discussed.
I checked with our team, and I can confirm that this is the current default behavior. When the “Hide synced products when not found in Square” option is enabled, products that are no longer found in Square are set to Hidden in WooCommerce. However, if the product is later restored in Square and synced again, its visibility is not automatically changed back to Visible.
If you’d like this behavior to be changed in a future release, we encourage you to submit a feature request here:
https://woocommerce.com/feature-requests/square/
Our product team regularly reviews feature requests, and requests with more community interest are more likely to be considered for future development.
