Square Reporting Q&A: Get answers and influence product decisions!

[Tom]

Happy New Year, Seller Community! ✨

Effective and reliable reporting is crucial for the smooth operation of any business, and we recognize that there is always room for improvement with the reporting tools offered by Square.

This event was an opportunity to speak directly with @annakepler on the Square Reporting team, and contribute to how developments are prioritized throughout 2023.

On Wednesday, January 25, 2023 we hosted a Q&A to address questions and make sure your experiences are documented with the Reporting team's plans for the year ahead.

Not sure what to ask? Here are some example questions: 

• What is the best way to keep an eye on sales trends for my items?
• If I could do "_________" with reporting in the online Square Dashboard, that would save me so much time.
• How can I manage sales reports across multiple business locations?

[TCSlaguna]

Hello @annakepler and @Tom!

If I could have a Square Appointments report to help me calculate how much to pay my service providers for the previous week, that would save me so much time.

We would like an easy way to see appointments made and which ones were paid/unpaid. We would like an easy way to calculate how much to pay our Service Providers. 

We need a report that provides: 

1. Created Date
2. Appointment Date/Time
3. Appointment Length 
4. Client Name
5. Staff
6. Paid/Unpaid
7. Amount Paid for Service
8. Tip Amount Given

Currently Items 1-5 are available under Appointments-> Settings -> History, Items 6-8 are not. 

Transactions-> filter by Service Provider shows when a payment was made. Does not show appointment date/time and unpaid appointments. 

Team Report does not show Items 1-4, is based on when the appointment was made, not when the service was rendered. 

Use case: 

We pay our Service Providers every Monday. If we run a report for the week based on transaction date, the service may not yet have been rendered. A client can cancel, no service will be rendered, and I have paid the service provider for a service not rendered. 

Having a report based on appointment date, that shows paid/unpaid, amount paid for service, and tip amount given will help ensure that I am paying out my service providers the correct amount for services they have actually rendered. 

Our current process is complicated and takes a couple hours, when it could take only ten minutes with the above data. 

Thanks!

[ChocoRee]

(moved)

[annakepler]

Thanks for the feedback!
We’re going to be working more on various appointment reports throughout the year so it's helpful to hear exactly which ones people are looking for and what things people want to be able to do. I’ll definitely take this back to the team.

[TCSlaguna]

Thanks @annakepler 

If this is something that can be extracted using the Square API's, please let me know. 

[Candlestore]

A report that can be sorted by Best / Worst Item or Category.  

Being in Retail we need to know which Item or Items are our top performers and which we can stop carrying in our stores.

I just ran a report for 2022 and from the dashboard it just lists my items that were sold in alphabetical order, no way to sort or filter it to best or worst.  Not just by dollar amount but by quantity also.  If I sell 1 clock that retails for $600 but sold 30 of our $20 candles the dollar amount sorts are equal but the quantity of sales are a lot different.

[SonomaCountyAla]

100% AGREE WITH THIS!  This was the first report I was looking for our first week in business!  I see that it shows, briefly, the top 5 items by gross sales, but I'd also like to know the top items by number items sold and best profit margin on them...

[Craftinomicon]

100% Agree with this. I'd like to know the top 10 best and top 10 worst products by vendor so I know what items to not re-order. I'd also love a way to archive items & indicate that I've decided not to order them again without them showing up in my item list. 

[annakepler]

Hi @Candlestore ,

Thank you for the inquiry! If you have a Retail Plus subscription, you can view your item sales by category through the Cost of Goods Sold report. You can find this report in the Dashboard by navigating to the Reports section > Inventory Reports > Cost of Goods Sold. In this report, you can filter items using the Category filter at the top to view your top-performing items based on Quantity Sold, Total Revenue, Profit, etc. 

We are currently looking into building more specific item sorting in reports and SKU-level performance reports. Until then, you can also export these reports by category and then sort them in an external CSV file as well. 

Hope this helps!

[Candlestore]

@annakepler ;

This report you mention is a $$ based report not a Quantity based report, which is more what I am looking for.

[annakepler]

noted. I will take it to the team. Thank you!

[MuttsAndMunch]

The integration between Square and Acuity Scheduling/Squarespace needs to be better. All transactions booked through Acuity Scheduling come through as 'Uncategorized', which means for reporting, I have to go through manually to work out what was purchased. Square blames Acuity and Acuity blames Square - either way, it needs to be resolved. Can this be explored this year?

[TCSlaguna]

Agree. That was the main reason I moved from Acuity Scheduling to Square Appointments.

However, Acuity Scheduling had the reports needed to calculate how much to pay my service providers. Hoping Square adds them. 

[MuttsAndMunch]

Interesting. Might consider a switch down the line depending on Square's functionality. 

[Ladya28]

I agree here, we had to move back to acuity just because everything was organized better for us and we could see the price breakdown on the balance due once clients paid their deposits. I would have continued square calendar but it was a bit behind acuity. 

[SonomaCountyAla]

If I could get a report of drawer reports... I'm looking to keep an eye on which staff's drawers are regularly over/under.  I'd LOVE to have some sort of report that could show that.

Also, in the Category Sales reports, we can't see the TOTAL COLLECTED in the category sales report.  I have to export, then ADD the Tax + Gross sales columns to get the total collected  - there doesn't seem to be a way to get TOTAL COLLECTED per category...

Also, I note that the Labor vs. Sales reports don't include numbers from Square Payroll!!  What??  We don't use Square Time Cards, but I DO use Square Payroll!  It would be helpful to see our labor expenses vs. our Square sales.

[ChambersSF]

I would also like to see better reporting for cash drawers. I can't even use it because it doesn't factor in tips or service charges which we pay out of the cash drawer to the bartenders.

[annakepler]

Hi @ChambersSF! Square for Restaurants Plus includes the ability to run Shift and Close of Day reports from the POS. These reports can give you more visibility into cash and card tips collected as well as service charges.

[PerroneTech]

Please excuse my brashness here, but when it comes to reports, why is cost of goods behind a paywall? That seems like a very basic metric to track and I would like to know what in order to know that I would have to pay for Square for Retail Plus? How much it costs us to run our business is something I want to see in reports every day.

[sugarlab]

I would love to be able to see reports on like average day over a period of time. Being able to see average Monday sales would be great. Especially for a business like mine where sales can drastically fluctuate based on the day of the week. 

[annakepler]

Thanks for your feedback. An Average Sales per Day broken down by the day of the week sounds like it would be useful to plan- especially if there's a lot of fluctuation to make decisions like: When’s the best time to close and do inventory? We plan on investing more in Sales Trends and comparison reporting this year.
I will take this request back to the team.