Hi Isabelle,
Wanted to add a few things here...
We are not on Square for Restaurants, we are on the Standard Square Point of Sale App. The monthly costs associated with Square for Restaurants is way way way out of reach for us. It also is setup for full service restaurants with coarsing, table maps, etc, plus an entirely different set of tools designed specifically for a restaurant. We wouldn't be able to use the additional tools and features with Square for Restaurants as it doesn't fit the business model of a small neighborhood corner bar and grill. Plus, a restaurant would not normally be open passed midnight unlike a bar.
A "Live Sales Report" to me, after being in the financial and financial reporting field for over 30 years, means a sales report of the current business day that reflects an up to the minute sales figures to include unsettled credit cards and in some systems it also includes the sales in open tickets. Although, this would be beyond helpful in determining when to run flash specials on a busy night in an attempt to meet that nights sales goals or just simply checking to see how far away from goal you are and to rally staff if you're not close. I know this has been a requested report by many users that would be useful for sure. But, this isn't what I'm looking for.
Basically, I need an "End of Business Day Report" that I can pre-set the default perimeters on to reflect the ACTUAL open AND close of the business day in the Register itself. In other words the "All Day" switch in the Sales Report should be defaulting to the perimeters that "I" setup for the opening and closing business hours of my business. The perimeters Square has defined as "All Day" may not fit with what an individual Square user's business hours actually are. This is exactly the issue...
In my case, for my business, my All Day settings should be 8:00AM - 2:00AM (next day) which should be able to be set as a default and never changed. The sales report in the dashboard remembers these settings why can't the sales report on the Register do the same?
Here's the problem. I've sat down with every employee and have walked them through how to run a proper Sales Report which they use to reconcile tips. I've let them drive and show them how important it is to unclick "All Day" and to manually adjust the times on the sales report to 8AM-2AM (next day). The very next day, the sales reports are wrong again and tips are off again. I remind them, show them again, and the very next day... guess what? There wrong again. As a result, not only is the final sales report useless to me from an accounting perspective, but it reflects inaccurate figures on the tip line, and gives them inaccurate sales figure to compare to their daily goal.
Hey, I can rerun sales reports from the dashboard to get sales for a business day for accounting purposes ... this doesn't cost me much but a little time and paper. However, the time it takes me to backtrack, refigure, and then collect tips from employees that have overpaid themselves based on incorrect figures in the All Day Sales Report is very costly!
Here is the biggest issue... Since my business hours don't fit the exact mold that Square has predetermined as All Day (being 12AM-11:59PM), my All Day sales reports are incorrect unless manually adjusted every single time. The biggest issue is with tips.
For Example: Let's take the following individual transactions for just 1 business day...
03/03/2020 8:00 AM - Marks the beginning of the business day & Doors are unlocked.
03/03/2020 11:00 AM Sale 1 $10.00 + Tip 1 $5.00
03/03/2020 2:00 PM Sale 2 $20.00 + Tip 2 $2.00
03/04/2020 12:30 AM Sale 3 $10.00 + Tip 3 $1.00
03/04/2020 1:45 AM Sale 4 $5.00 + Tip 4 $1.00
03/04/2020 2:00 AM - Marks the end of the business day & Doors are locked.
Employee doesn't listen and pulls All Day Sales Report, the Tip Line will say $7.00 (Tip 1+2) according to the "default" sales perimeters Square has set.
Employee listens to management and switches off "All Day" and manually adjusts times to reflect actual business hours, the Tip Line will say $9.00 (Tip 1+2+3+4)...this is totally correct, Good Job management says.
But, here's the problem, let's say we are open for business the next day and only have cash sales with cash tips.
Employee again doesn't listen to management and pulls the All Day sales report the tip line will say $2.00 (Tip3+4 from the previous days business already paid out to employee in cash from the drawer). Employee pays themselves an additional $2.00 that was already paid out the previous day. Management must work at re-reconciling tips to get the proper figures, track down the employee and have them pay back to cash drawer. A lot of wasted time here.
If employee listened to management and pulled the sales report, turns off All Day, and manually adjusted the perimeters as requested the tip line would say $0.00.
Now compound this issue over 6 days of business, over 50 daily transactions, over 2 shifts, and then over 6 employees. You've got a big costly problem!
I'll also add that Sales Trends report is skewed significantly because of this issue. If I want to look at sales by the day some of my "daily" sales are mixed in with the next day's daily sales because Square cuts the Sales Trends report off at 11:59PM, so for instance my Monday's sales will be mixed in with Tuesday daily sales. My Saturday sales are mixed in with Sunday's sales ... we are not open on Sundays. As a result, this report is worthless to me because the figures are skewed across the entire week. Unlike the Sales Summary Report, which will allow me to set the default perimeters only in the dashboard.
