Items with ecom_visibility in (HIDDEN, UNINDEXED, UNAVAILABLE), surfaces underused online channel for unified-catalog Square merchants.
At a glance
A real-time count of catalog items that are sellable at the till but are not visible on your Square Online storefront, items whoseecom_visibilityisHIDDEN,UNINDEXED, orUNAVAILABLErather thanVISIBLE. On a unified Square catalog, every in-store item could in principle be online, so a large number here is unrealised online revenue: products customers can buy in your shop but cannot find on your website. Some of this is deliberate (in-store exclusives), but much of it is simply catalog items never published to the web.
| What it counts | COUNT(items WHERE ecom_visibility IN (HIDDEN, UNINDEXED, UNAVAILABLE)) among items that are otherwise sellable at POS. These are catalog items live for in-store sale but withheld from the storefront. |
| The Square visibility enum | ecom_visibility has four values: VISIBLE (shown and sellable online), HIDDEN (in catalog but not shown), UNINDEXED (reachable by direct link but not listed or searchable), and UNAVAILABLE (not purchasable online). This card counts the three non-VISIBLE states. |
| VAT / tax treatment | n/a, this is a catalog-composition count, not order-based. |
| Refunds / orders | n/a. It measures catalog state, not transactions. |
| Channels / sources | This is the in-store-only slice of the catalog. It is the deliberate inverse of Online-Only SKUs. Together they map how your assortment splits across retail and web. |
| Currency / unit | number (count of POS-sellable, not-online-visible items) |
| Time window | RT (real-time, polled from the Square Catalog API every few minutes) |
| Alert trigger | Fires when the count exceeds 10. A handful of in-store exclusives is normal; more than ten suggests catalog items that could be selling online but are not published. |
| Roles | owner, operations, marketing |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Square Online data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US gift and stationery merchant on Square. Two retail stores plus a Square Online storefront. Active catalog of 1,400 items. Snapshot taken on 12 Apr 26 at 14:00 UTC.| Catalog segment | ecom_visibility | Items | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sellable in store and online | VISIBLE | 1,160 | The published core assortment |
| In store, hidden from web | HIDDEN | 31 | Never published online |
| In store, reachable only by link | UNINDEXED | 9 | Listed for staff, not searchable |
| In store, not purchasable online | UNAVAILABLE | 7 | Display-only or local-pickup items |
| POS-sellable, not online-visible (this card) | 47 | HIDDEN + UNINDEXED + UNAVAILABLE |
- The alert fires at 47 against a threshold of 10. That is a meaningful slice of saleable inventory invisible to web customers. Some is intentional, but 31 simply-
HIDDENitems are the prime suspects: products that exist in the catalog, sell fine in store, and were never switched on for the website. Each one is a missed online listing. - The visibility states are not interchangeable. A
HIDDENitem is usually an unpublished product worth reviewing. AnUNAVAILABLEitem may be display-only or local-pickup-only by design. AnUNINDEXEDitem is deliberately reachable by link but kept off search. Reading the breakdown, not just the headline, tells you how much is genuine opportunity versus deliberate choice. - This is unrealised revenue, not a fault. Unlike a drift or oversell alert, nothing is broken here. The card surfaces an opportunity: publishing well-chosen
HIDDENitems to the web can lift online revenue with no new stock. Pair with % Revenue From POS-Only Items to see how much these in-store-only lines are already worth.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Items POS-Sellable but Not Online-Visible |
|---|---|
| Online-Only SKUs | The exact mirror image. This card is store-only; that one is web-only. Together they map how your assortment splits across channels. |
| % Revenue From POS-Only Items | The value behind the count. If in-store-only items already drive real revenue, publishing them online is a stronger opportunity. |
| Total Catalog Items | The denominator. This card as a share of the catalog tells you how much of your assortment is missing from the web. |
| Items Missing SKU | Items you decide to publish online need a SKU for inventory tracking. Check this before switching hidden items live to avoid oversell. |
| POS to Online Inventory Drift | Once an item is published online, its stock must stay in parity. This card is the upstream decision; drift is the downstream risk. |
| POS vs Online Inventory Parity | The broader parity view. Publishing more items online raises the surface area that must stay in sync. |
Reconciling against Square
Where to look in the Square Dashboard: Square Dashboard, Items & Orders, Items, Channel listings. Open the Square Online channel view and filter to items that are not visible or not listed online. The count of in-store items withheld from the storefront should match this card. Each item’s online visibility setting is editable directly from here, which is also where you would publish a hidden item. Other Square Dashboard views that look like the same number but aren’t:- Items, Online site, hidden / unlisted filter: this is the right reconciliation, it isolates the visibility states.
- Items, all items count: the full catalog, includes everything visible online too, far higher than this card.
- Reports, Item sales: aggregates sales per item, not visibility state. An item can sell in store and be hidden online; this report does not show the visibility flag.
- Inventory, low stock: a stock view, unrelated to whether an item is published online.
| Reason | Direction of divergence |
|---|---|
Visibility-state grouping. We count HIDDEN, UNINDEXED, and UNAVAILABLE together. A dashboard filter may treat these separately, so a single filter view can read lower. | Dashboard lower if it shows only one state |
| Archived items. We count active catalog items only. If the dashboard includes archived or deleted items, it can differ. | Differences from archived items |
| POS-sellable definition. An item with no price or no enabled location may not be genuinely POS-sellable. We aim to count items truly sellable in store but hidden online. | Edge-case items near the boundary |
| Sync lag. A visibility change made in Square takes a short cycle to reach our index. | Self-resolves within minutes |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
| Online-Only SKUs | These two should be near-mutually-exclusive | An item cannot be both online-only and in-store-only-not-online. If a SKU appears in both, its flags are inconsistent and worth reviewing. |
google_analytics.product-views | Hidden items generate no web product views | An in-store-only item is invisible to web analytics by definition, so GA4 never records views for it. Publishing it online is what would start generating GA4 traffic. |
ecom_visibility flag controlling its web presence. That makes the gap between in-store-sellable and online-visible a clean, native count. On platforms where the POS catalog and the web catalog are separate products, the same opportunity is far harder to see because there is no single flag that defines it.
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Is every item on this card a mistake? No. Some in-store-only items are deliberate: display-only goods, local-pickup-only lines, or genuine retail exclusives. The card flags the count so you can review it, not because every item is wrong. The opportunity is the subset ofHIDDEN items that were simply never published and would sell online if switched on.
What is the difference between HIDDEN, UNINDEXED, and UNAVAILABLE?
HIDDEN means the item is in the catalog but not shown on the storefront. UNINDEXED means it is reachable by direct link but not listed or searchable, often used for staff or unlisted products. UNAVAILABLE means it is not purchasable online at all. All three are non-VISIBLE, so all three count here, but they imply different intent.
How do I turn an in-store item into an online listing?
In the Square Dashboard, open the item and set its online visibility to VISIBLE for the Square Online channel. Before you do, confirm it has a SKU and inventory tracking so the website does not oversell it, check Items Missing SKU first.
Why is this a hero card?
Because it points at unrealised revenue that is specific to Square’s unified catalog. Every in-store item is one flag away from being online, so a large count here is money sitting on the shelf. That opportunity earns a prominent slot.
Will publishing hidden items create an oversell risk?
It can, if their stock is not tracked. An item that sells fine in store on visual stock checks will oversell online without inventory tracking and a SKU. Set those up first, then watch POS to Online Inventory Drift once the item is live.
Does this count item variations or parent items?
The card counts catalog items at the level Square exposes the visibility flag. An item with several variations is governed by its item-level online visibility, so it counts once. For the variation-level view, see Total Item Variations.
Can I change the threshold of 10?
Yes. A merchant with a large, deliberately retail-heavy assortment may want a higher threshold so genuine in-store exclusives do not alert, while a merchant pushing an omnichannel strategy may want a tighter one. The per-merchant threshold can be set in your Vortex IQ workspace.