Dashboard iOS App: Ask us anything about the updates to sales reporting!

[Tom]

Hello Seller Community!

On January 31, 2023 we took a deep dive into questions and addressed your feedback about reporting on the Square Dashboard App. The Dashboard product manager, @JenLaxmi, and product designer, @cameron_s hosted this event. 

We know that real-time, on-the-go access to your business’ performance is crucial for your business. The insights sellers shared in this Q&A will help us make improvements to the Square Dashboard iOS App in 2023!

Have a look below to see what fellow sellers had to say and learn more from the product team.

[JenLaxmi]

Hi @Eldridgepark - thanks for all the feedback! Will try to address these in order.

1. When you say Sales, do you mean the Point of Sale App? We’re actively working on consolidating some of these workstreams into a single space and are excited to share more soon.

2. We’re looking into how to increase the feature set around comparisons outside of 2 time ranges.

3. To clarify, are you seeking a separate metric that lists the number of transactions?

4. We’re actively working on incorporating customers data, beginning with Dashboard Web and then following with the app.

5. Thanks for this example, we’ll chat with our UX team to see how we can bring this to life.

6. Can you give an example of what kinds of trends would be most valuable for you? Is it highlighting certain peaks? Notifying you of spikes or outliers? Looking at seasonality?

7. We plan to bring more visibility to selected locations in the near future!

[Sandycappelli]

We are a non profit thrift store and love the square POS system.  One feature that is missing that would be sooo helpful is if we could add a donation at the end of a sale (similar to a tip).  At the end of each sale we ask every buyer if they would like to round up or make a donation (like so many other businesses do) and the only way we can do it is to add it as a sale item.  Is adding something like this something that would be considered as a new feature?

Thank you,

Sandy Cappelli

sandy@alotofgood.org

909-938-9660

[Slyce]

It is very important to keep hour sales break downs. And all the search parameters are important not to lose. It be great to expand on that as others have mentioned. Clock in and out times, import or add notes to sales days. When looking year over year is great, but sometimes we closed early due to snow or something so if notes could be attached to a day or weather that be a cool feature. Also picking if we want to see net vs gross sales or more custom functions integrated. Seeing other categories, like discounts, comps, etc.

As a base app the app works great and should not lose any features, so if things could be added without losing anything that would be an improvement. Changing how it works now, or losing functions would make the app way less a necessary snap shot portable tool it is.  Probably one of the most undervalued apps you have provided which separates you from the competition. 

[JenLaxmi]

We hear you on the additional features, @Slyce. So glad to hear that the baseline feature set is of high value. We’re working to make improvements while keeping the experience seamless and valuable for our sellers. We’re actively looking to add in some more of those metrics. Thank you for the feedback!

[twentysixcafe]

The three most important numbers I use every day include:

• gross sales
• number of sales
• average $ per sale

The number 1 visualization I use is the hour-by-hour bar chart.

please please do not remove those facts or bury them.

Secondary information I use every day:
- Sales comparisons w/ previous week's day (percent difference)

- Item sales

- Category sales

- Timecards

I would love to see, at the top, # of customers in addition to # of transactions.

[cameron_s]

@twentysixcafe Thanks for this feedback! The top features you mentioned will still be prominently displayed on the homepage, and we’re excited to let you know that we’ll be adding additional metrics options to the app soon (new & returning customers being some of them)

[earthlywell20]

Hello, 

It would be very helpful to have an option for Deposit Payments options, EMR for medical records or forms for Med Spas and a Al a cart / build a bundle for the subscriptions: Ex: Text, Email, Payroll, and Loyalty

We should have an option to choose which services we want a subscription for. 

I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts. 

[JenLaxmi]

Hello, @earthlywell20. Thanks for this feedback, we’ll bring this to the appropriate team.

[kaschwartz]

I would love to be able to be able to filter by time of sale. We cash out our tips at the end of the night and there's no easy way for me to see how much the 12 to 5 shift got in tips, versus the 5 to 10 shift on the app. I have to pull up my computer or use the website version on my phone (which is clunky and hard to use on such a small screen.

[cameron_s]

@kaschwartz Hello! Currently you can select specific hours of the day for a Custom timeframe, but we’ll look into enabling this as a filter for the other timeframe settings (today, this week, etc.)

[kasmiller]

We would really like to see labor and labor cost in real time.

[cameron_s]

@kasmiller Getting labor cost into the app is one of our top priorities - this is coming soon!

[beveragemgmt]

I would love the ability to do the following:

• be able to filter by device name/device. Specifically to be able to see tips by device once filtering by device. 
• export a report in a pdf view.  Currently, even on the desktop version of Square, exported reports are only in excel instead of seeing what's on the screen.  Currently I have to take a series of screenshots and put those in a word doc to save as a PDF.
• Would love to see more options on the widget, such as showing sales by location vs just total sales or sales from just one location. For example, seeing Store 1 - $x.xx, Store 2 - $x.xx, Store 5 - $x.xx, etc. to have a good outlook on sales at a glance. 

[JenLaxmi]

Hello @beveragemgmt, thanks for your feedback! We are looking into implementing filters, including by device. We are also looking to see how to best break out and compare sales metrics by location.

[robert10205]

Will there be a 52 week comparison tool? The prior update only had 1 year which disallowed comparing same days of the week. Very important. 

[JenLaxmi]

Thanks for your question, @robert10205! The current version (rolled back from the version you mention) should support this, as will our release coming up in February.

[RiceandRoux]

I have a couple of requests to make after using the newest version of the Dashboard iOS app.  

1.) As far as the metrics go, we are almost always looking at 52 weeks prior.  In restaurants, the goal is usually to beat same day last year sales.  There should be a way to set that as the default metric measurement, instead of having to change it from previous week every time I re-open the app.  

2.) There should be an option to have the default number at the top be "Net Sales" as opposed to "Gross Sales".  For us, net sales is what we always look at (99% of the time).

3.) For the metrics that are showing, (along with the % +/-) it should show the actual number next to it (maybe grayed).  That way, you can see, at a glance, the number you're trying to beat without having to press on "Net Sales".

4.) PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE - ADD THE OPTION TO SHOW THE CURRENT LABOR VS NET SALES % ON THE HOME PAGE.  As a QSR, we need to know what our labor % is at all times of the day.  We make cuts and staffing decisions based off of this throughout the day.  It would also be useful to add the hourly labor % to hear sales graph hour.  The graph is already there.  If you could just touch the hour to see the labor for that hour (similar to the web dashboard), that would be useful also.

5.) It would be great if you could have the option to list a little section for each location and their key numbers individiually.  It would like like Location 1 - Sales, Labor %, Metric +/-; Location 2 - Sales, Labor %, Metric +/-.  As of now, I have two locations and I can see all of them together (by default) or I can switch between individual locations.  This is not a major deal killer but just a request.  

[JenLaxmi]

Hi @RiceandRoux - thank you so much for these requests.

We are working to personalize and customize the experience so you have the ability to set your defaults and keep them that way. Our team is also brainstorming on the best way to showcase labor metrics. We will keep it in mind for the next release!

[augustalan]

I am a fan of the new homepage design. Definitely negates 25% of the feedback I gave on the other thread! 

I did put a bunch of feedback in the other thread this morning. 

https://www.sellercommunity.com/t5/iOS-Dashboard-Key-Metrics/Dashboard-Key-Metrics-How-s-it-going/m-...

For the key highlights:

1. you're doing great and keep it up!

2. Data focused on people is my goal! This app lets me keep up with both of my locations multiple times a day so I am always keeping up with the trend to make sure I'm staffing well and we are growing.

3. Is there a reason the system only shows reports in 1 hour increments? I'd love to be able to zoom in on data to see the 15 minute breakdown of sales/transactions. Since it's not in the web reports either it's a bigger project than today but knowing there is a why it's not possible would be great. I'd love to be able to target high sales time periods to see if it was actually 7:30am-8:30am instead of 7-8am really busy and 8-9am pretty busy.

[JenLaxmi]

Hello @augustalan 👋🏼

We’ve heard a lot about situations that call for hourly increments (that currently report up to the minute). We can look into how to help merchants customize the data by choosing increments they find most valuable.

[tomrcc]

Would love these 4 things:

1) Real-time push notification on Voids & Refunds, and view in app - who did them, when, reasons

2) Real-time push notification on Labor - no punch x min after shift start, punch in unscheduled, and view clock in & clock out in app

3) Top 5 AND bottom 5 items, and option to include items with 0 sales in reporting (iOS & Web Dashboard)

4) Forecasting and Trend insights (whole new module for square reporting in iOS & Web Dashboard)

I'm a Square for Restaurants user, so looking from a restaurant standpoint, but think the above are universally applicable.

Thanks!