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?

[sugarlab]

Yes!!! Thanks Anna 😄 

[Candlestore]

Sales Trend Report-

With this just being the beginning of 2023, I went to look back to see how I did between 2021 and 2022.   Cant see it, not only that but now I am limited to only seeing a comparison of a Days sale compared to the same date the prior year.  This is not helpful since I may need to compare a Weekends sales after or before a holiday to the same weekend after or before the holiday the prior year.  Why is this so limited but for tax purposes we need to keep records for 7 yrs?

[annakepler]

Hi @Candlestore ! are you still seeing this issue? You should be able to compare other years. The issue could be around the performance of the reports loading slowly since there can be a lot of data depending on the business.  We keep an (currently) unlimited amount of transaction data, so you should not be limited there. Only in the case of GDPR-like compliance do we delete data.

I hear you. It's more important to compare where the day fell on the week rather than the specific day. That makes a lot of sense.

[Candlestore]

After seeing this now it seems to be working and I can see 2021 data.

thank you  @annakepler 

[annakepler]

Woohoo! Glad it is working.

[btepaint]

EVENT REGISTRATION REPORT

I need a quick way to pull a report of who has registered for an event. (I use the square website and square to collect payments). I have previously used event registration software that also included the following capabilities that I really miss and would like to have again: 

Capability to email and/or text a reminder with last minute instructions for parking, etc to that specific list of people. Bonus if this could be automated when I set the event up online! 

Capability to send a follow up text/email after the to say thank you, offer a coupon for future, ask for a review, give opportunity to subscribe to text/email newsletters. Bonus if this could be automated when I set the event up online! 

Another reason this report with text/email capacity is important is for last minute notices of cancellation, time change, venue change, etc. Currently we have to sort the transactions, click on the person's profile, hope that you have access to their email or phone, contact that one person, then go back to the list and find the next person. I really need a way to send one quick email/text to the specific group of people who have registered for this one event. 

Another feature on previous event software I have used is the capability to print the registration list with details they have selected during registration. Examples: food selection, seating choice, notes such as "arriving late", etc. 

Thanks for your consideration 

[TCSlaguna]

Yes, yes, yes! Completely agree with @btepaint. 

In fact, I added it to the Appointments Feature Requests page almost a year ago. 

Currently every time someone signs up to one of our events, I have to open my Events Signups Google Sheet and copy-paste Date Purchased, Order Number, Quantity, Name, Phone, Email. With events of 100 people, this takes quite a bit of my time. 

We also would love to print the registration list. Our last event we had a spin wheel where customers could get different discounts. We would then email them the coupons. Being able to mark down the discount they won on the list would be fantastic. 

[turquoisetophat]

Highly second this! Currently I am having to create a Google doc to keep track of everyone's email addresses in case of an emergency cancellation. This is tedious and time-consuming; a way to quickly pull a report of everyone who has registered for a specific event would be super helpful! 

Thanks for considering!

[juliaskwarlo]

I would love this also for custom fields in the customer directory. I track points/snack preferences/allergies and other things inside of each persons profile. I would love to be able to pull reports based on those custom fields.

[annakepler]

Hey @juliaskwarlo , good news! This is something you can do today in Customer Directory. To add a custom field, you’ll want to navigate to Customers->Settings->Configure Profiles and then click the “Create custom field” button in the top right-hand corner. Once added, this new field will be displayed on each profile. Hope that helps, but let me know if you have any other questions.

[juliaskwarlo]

Hi Anna! 

I do know this is available and I am currently utilizing it. 

What I was actually asking is if we could have the capability to run reports on those custom fields.

[Craftinomicon]

I would also love this! I use a third party software to track event ticket sales, but if I could do it directly in Square I would. 

[annakepler]

Thanks for your feedback. We’re always striving to improve our reporting capabilities and would love to hear more about this. In particular, are you scheduling people for these events through Square or another service?

[btepaint]

I'm not sure what you're asking - I use square website as I originally stated. I create an item in the "event" category and publish it on my website. People go to my square website and buy a "ticket" to the event in advance. But there is no easy way to pull a report of everyone who has purchased a ticket. I am not currently using any other event software apps or software. But I need to be able to print out a class list. 

When they register I also use a workaround through modifiers or options to gather other important info that I would like to have on my class list/report like phone numbers, children's age, grade, etc. Sometimes people select from 3 to 4 types of projects for the paint class - I need this info on my class list so I can prepare. Or maybe they are requesting customization or personalization for their paint project. Currently, I just write everything down in a notebook. Very time consuming. I would really love to just print out a list with the modifier info on it. 

If that doesn't make sense, please let me know. It's important to me to have this capability, and based on other replies I'm not the only one. Thank you 

[Amyeichlerart]

@btepaint What you’re asking makes complete sense. I asked the same question in 2020 on the forums for the same issue you’re having… also for art class tickets. The response was minimal so I hope there’s more traffic this time! If Square offers the ability to sell event tickets, there should be a better way to contact, or at least print out, the ticket holders. The current workaround for exporting transaction/order details is time consuming when the solution would be take minimal effort on the Square side. 

[Catchpenny]

I'd love reports for the following!
- separate out sales from online vs in-store for hourly reporting and day of the week reporting. I don't really need to know if we get a lot of online sales at 6pm on a Wednesday from the website, but I do need to know that for our brick-and-mortar location so I can plan for staffing. 

- The sales trend report to show more than 1 day at a time for the hourly view would be lovely. Again, this would be a great tool to figure out when to spend payroll hours. 

- The ability to sort by profit margin and EXCLUDE items missing a COG would also be super helpful! We have over 2,000 individual items in our inventory, and it skews the reporting when I pull a COG report with a bunch of old stuff that we no longer stock that's missing a COG input showing as a 100% margin. 

[annakepler]

Thanks for explaining. You should be able to use the source filter to get online or in-store, but you can’t get online versus in-store as you noted. Also noting that you want to see more than 1 day to understand payroll hours– I’m guessing because the day of the week matters (as it fluctuates?)  

Regarding your comment about sorting by profit margin – this is possible if you are a Retail Plus subscriber. The Cost of Goods Sold report provides more granular metrics by SKU. You can sort items by ascending/descending profit margins when you select the “Profit Margin” column text on the right. You can find this report (and other inventory reports) in the Dashboard by navigating to the Reports section > Inventory Reports > Inventory by Cost of Goods Sold report.

[Catchpenny]

Thank you for the response! I do have Retail plus, so I'll check out the inventory reports dashboard. 

[caitesajwaj]

• For EXPORTING order data from Square Online- please make it so that there is a customer name or on each line of data (ie each item ordered). It's impossible to sort otherwise, and creates a huge headache if I want to see a list of customers that ordered a specific product.
  
  
• Synchronize items' category assignments between Square Online and Square POS - I have so many items that wind up in "uncategorized" on the reports from POS when they are categorized on the back end of my online store

[annakepler]

Thank you for your feedback @caitesajwaj !

Regarding the order export, we’re actively looking at better ways to format the data, and hope to have more updates later in 2023 on this.

Similarly, regarding syncing categories between the POS and Square Online, we’re actively working on improvements here that should address your needs. We look forward to sharing more with you later this year!

[ChambersSF]

I would like the ability to configure and report on various Other Payments rather than have them all funnel into that one bucket with check payments. I'd like to be able to define other payment methods such as Accounts Receivable or Advance Deposit Redeem. This will be a deal breaker for larger orgs such as mine who would like to consider a transition from legacy POS (Micros, Aloha, etc) to Square.

We are an event venue that takes advanced deposits which then need to be applied to actual revenue. Right now, getting reports on these payment methods requires me to download a transaction report and run a pivot table to break out the different transactions closed to the various Other Payments.

On that note, it seems this month, check payments aren't labeled as 'Check' anymore in that transaction report. Maybe that's a glitch but it's definitely throwing a wrench in the works.