topic Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items in Restaurant Operations

Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

flyfish66 — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 13:33:28 GMT

Please add the ability to permanently delete from the system selected items that have been archived.

Archived items build up and can create confusion when building menus and groups. I find myself changing names of archived items to include wording like "DO NOT USE", etc...

One time when I asked Toast to clear out archived items it created havoc as some of the properties of those archived items somehow created some crossover confusion, etc...

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

rcmck — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:07:34 GMT

How are you archiving items? Archived items don't show up in the menu builder, maybe you are confusing removing with archiving? Archiving items can only be done from the items database. https://www.toasttab.com/restaurants/admin/menuitems

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

Tyler_S — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:33:15 GMT

Absolutely would love to see this option as well. I haven't had issues with archived items tripping me up lately, but I still have no reason to keep them all. Some items I genuinely would like to archive as we only sell them for a certain time frame each year, but others I would strongly prefer to permanently delete and not have to sort through ever again.

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

flyfish66 — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 16:38:34 GMT

Let me rephrase. How do we permanently delete items, menus, menus groups that have been archived. The archives start to get very cluttered when creating, testing, removing, making deep copies, making copies of copies etc...how do we clean that up. Thanks

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

sidework — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 23:36:19 GMT

YESSSSSS. We run weekly specials. I have hundreds of archived items I will never use again, and I like to keep everything organized. Would love to permanently delete items from the archive!

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

au79teahouse — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 02:56:08 GMT

totally agree on this

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

rcmck — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 03:04:34 GMT

It would be nice but I assume there are probably some good reasons you cannot, historical reports possibly, as well as the chance of a compromised account login or rogue employee with menu permissions just deciding to delete your entire menu, that would be a disaster. On a side note has anyone else also received access to the previously internal only tools for menu cleanup? Doesn't delete items but makes cleaning up unused items a lot easier.

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

au79teahouse — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 03:17:19 GMT

No, I don't have any information on the menu cleanup tool. I thought of the reasons you mentioned and I can understand why. It would be nice to somehow "hide" menus/items that were no longer in use.

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

Rob — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 16:31:51 GMT

As mentioned by rcmck, the Toast system doesn't allow for the permanent deletion of menus, items, and other elements due to historical reporting purposes and data integrity. The Menu Cleanup Tool, which is an internal tool, also moves these elements to an "archived" state rather than deleting them permanently.

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

adamj — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 20:19:10 GMT

Worth Reminding your teams to always search history before creating new menu items. This would help to minimize duplicate items from being created.

Here are some additional tips:

Create a naming convention for archived items that is clear and easy to understand. This will help teams to quickly identify and avoid using archived items.
Use the "Archived" filter in the Items database to quickly find and view all of your archived items.

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

adamj — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 20:19:56 GMT

Maybe try "generic" titles like App Special, etc.

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

flyfish66 — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 20:53:33 GMT

Yes, understand that and we do put tags on archiving items like "Do Not Use", etc...But if you make a deep copy of an item and later remove the wording "Deep Copy" and later archive the same item...then you now have 2 copies of an item with the same name and Archives get cluttered with these deep copies etc.. The wording "deep copy" must be removed so the item doesn't show with that wording in Online Ordering, kitchen tickets and or customer receipts. It would just be better to be able to permanently delete items you no longer want in archives.

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

au79teahouse — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 01:17:33 GMT

Exactly. It also creates a lot of confusion with including/excluding items when creating a discount. You have to navigate through every item you have created since the dawn of time.

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

Tyler_S — Sat, 21 Oct 2023 13:35:41 GMT

There is no reason for this policy though. Hell half of my archived items have never been used on any level and only exist because Toast royally screwed up setting up the menu initially. I have a full copy of my entire menu at one location that has never ever been used but I have to sort through it every time I make a discount.

Simply designing the system to check if an archived item has ever been rang in before permanent deletion would be a HUGE improvement. Even if the item has been rang in in the past we should still be able to delete it if we wish. Our sales records are our business not yours.

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

LisaCalvino — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 15:40:30 GMT

Our item count skyrocketed after Toast bungled our Doordash menu creation. Twice. Now we're stuck with hundreds of "zombie" items and modifiers. Nearly 6000 items and 4000 modifiers in our items database.

We have been asking for a way to deduplicate our menu database and keep hearing "no".

Maybe hear us for a change, Toast.

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

Rob — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 01:35:01 GMT

I have shared your feedback with my team. Thank you all for taking the time to provide your input!

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

RiverInnBen — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 05:33:18 GMT

I need this ability for original data load process of inventory in Toast Retail. When I attempt to bulk overwrite values in Toast Retail, the overwritten values do not persist, and only the new values are persisted.

Since I cannot use bulk update successfully, I'd like the ability to delete the entire dataset and then re upload.

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

josh212 — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 18:52:57 GMT

I believe that there is a disconnect when it comes to managing the archive versus removing items. If you no longer want an item on a menu or a modifier to be shown on a particular item, you should delete it from the menu group or modifier groups. This allows you to re-add it as an existing item.

If you are permanently discontinuing an item then you should archive it. I believe that it is kept in the archive solely to handle credit card dsiputes or historical financial issues so the times don't appear as "null," This is especially useful for customers looking back on receipts for either loyalty or in general as you dont want to had a receipt that just has "null" Items

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

flyfish66 — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 19:07:59 GMT

Archived items cause many issues especially when there are many duplicates. The issues they create are too profound to discuss here. Long time Toast users certainly know the issues and I’m sure would be very happy if items could just be permanently deleted. Items can certainly also be archived as there is a benefit to that but permanently being able to delete items in archive is something that only long time Toast users who have come across certain circumstances too numerous too mention here would appreciate.

Re: Ability to Permanently Delete Archived Items

josh212 — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 19:30:52 GMT

O @flyfish66 i know this all too well lol

these were about 1/4 of the items i had to manually remove visibility from 1 by 1 as a new tech support decided to do 7 deep copies of a pizza topping modifier group in which every item is also used as an item with different sets of modifiers. However it would be even more annoying if the order data wasn't there