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?

[annakepler]

Thank you for your feedback @beachbird92 ! 
We are looking to offer some customization within the reports, it should help with it. 

[Flowermart]

I would like to see all no tax sales listed on the report.

[MacITArk]

What I find most difficult when trying to reconcile with my bank is tracking which invoices were piled together to make up a single deposit. The bank only shows the total amount deposited, which may be one or many invoices depending on the day. Maybe this is a reporting thing and maybe it’s a how-square-does-deposits thing. I understand a coffee shop that does hundreds of small transactions isn’t keeping track of each, but a consultant like me who is seeing one or two clients per day needs to be able to sort out what was taxable in that deposit, and to do that I need to track it back to the invoices. 

[BevBafus]

We are a small coffee shop.  I use Square Capital for our financing.  I would love it if the app on my phone would show not just the fees in the Sales Summary, but would also show the amount deposited for the day, and the amount paid to Square Capital.  I have to look in three apps to find this information each day.

[annakepler]

Thank you for your message @BevBafus ! I will definitely pass this feedback on to our App team.

[sharkie_rich]

I wish the process for receiving product from a vendor, adding it to inventory, and then creating a report on that transaction was easier (or even possible - not sure it is). 

I wish transferring stock from one department to another, and then being able to pull a report on that activity, was possible.

The inventory function of Square is not robust, and this is evident when compared to Quickbooks point of sale for desktop. QB inventory tools and functions are much more transparent and the tools are easy to find and use.

[annakepler]

Thank you for sharing your feedback! We always strive to improve the experience for the Sellers. I will share this back with the team.

[caseygoldenbee]

I would love to see the option to archive items in inventory. I can't outright delete them without messing up the accounting side of things, but with well over a thousand individual item entires it would be so amazing for my team and I to archive outdated items.

[annakepler]

Hi @caseygoldenbee ,

Thanks so much for the suggestion! We are actively working on archive functionality – stay tuned!

[PamperedPaws]

It would be AMAZING and save me time if my accountant could access my checking/savings statements with their admin login while they’re pulling the other reports they need. 

[aiqi]

Thank you for sharing! We’ll look into this.

[kasmiller]

If we could run a report and sort by modifier just like you can do with items this would be super helpful. You can currently run a report by modifiers but we have 1,000s.

[annakepler]

Thank you for your message! Can I ask what report is this? We are looking to introduce some better sorting and filtering in our reports. Hopefully, it will help once it is available.

[kasmiller]

It’s the modifier sales report. You can’t search by modifier item. We are an ice cream shop, and we use modifiers for toppings, waffle cone upcharges etc, being able to search by these modifiers would be super helpful or being able to search for modifiers that only have a dollar amount associated. We use several modifier categories for our online store and for each fill in modifier on the online store, a new modifier is added, which means we literally have 1,000s.

[Roadman]

If i could integrate my square checkings account to quickbooks online, i would be able to properly input my expenses and better manage my bookkeeping.

[McBrookSports]

I AGREE!!! I feel like I am doing double the work because the integration seems minimal into quickbooks online.

[RedFoxArtGlass]

It takes me FOREVER to find the taxable products I sold and the non-taxable products sold. 
basically, I really think this information should all be on one page. You have some of the information on the Reports page and some on the Tax page.
 

[chada]

Yes, agreed. It is very confusing. We’ll consider this. Perhaps you can tell me understand what you are trying to answer and what your process is today?

[plastercarousel]

Here are a few things that I would love to be able to do in Square reporting...

1. See the current year (or whatever timeframe I choose like a day, week, etc.) vs. same time period of previous years in one view. Sort of like what you see when you compare multiple stocks on a chart.

2. Be able to see see sales based on specific holidays to determine if it is worth being open for them. For example, July 4 for the past x years, Christmas Eve for the past x years, etc. Right now, Square does something similar but it doesn't always end up being the actual holiday when doing the comparison. 

3.  `Reporting based on profitability - for example, if I could enter a cost basis per item, Square could then tell me profit margin, net profit, etc. 

4. Reporting based on actual net sales - have a default report that shows gross sales plus tips minus discounts minus fees. No need to include sales tax as that is a net zero once submitted to the government. This would give a good idea of actual money coming in. This could be even more powerful if a cost basis per item (see #3) was included as you could see what you actually profited on sales (not including other costs like services, rent, etc., of course). 

[chada]

Great ideas! For 1 and 2, we have Sales Trends, but looking to improve it. For 3- there is a COGS report with the Retail plan. For 4, it sounds like you are trying to answer “What money is coming” and you wanna remove the tax to get to that. We’re thinking about more than a few of these. Thanks for the feedback!

[Jask99]

Notes. I can only get to them by drilling into a transaction or the detailed sales report We are an antique store and use the Notes to give a brief description of what actually sold. We'd like an easier method to see everything that sold for that day that I can access from my phone. We'd also love Subcategories!!