Sales Report- Item Sales Order

[IVEZA]

Hello,

I am looking to acquire a business that offers a variety of services. I have been given 12 months of square sales reports and one thing stood out that alarmed me. I noticed at the bottom of each months sales report, there is typically a large sum of sales under Custom Amount. I guess my question is does the sales report automatically itemize the Custom Sale Amounts to the bottom of the report or is there a chance the person selling was somehow manipulating their sales at the end of each month using the Custom Amount tab option? Any insight would be gratefully appreciated, thank you! 

[Candlestore]

@IVEZA ,

You may have to ask the Seller of the business what they use the Custom Amount for.   I bought a business 3 years ago and they had a lot of items that the qty was 1 and just had a price on the item, so no scanners.  Everything that they priced with a price tag would come up a custom amount.  Other items they had categories for and you could enter the item by name.  

Another thing could be I used the Shipping Cost and entered that as a custom amount since its variable.  I did finally make a barcode for scanning when I want to enter a shipping cost and now that shows up as an Item Shipping but still has a custom amount entered.  

My Custom amounts are throughout the month though not just a big lump sum at the end of the month.  Make sure on the report that it is by date for the sales so the custom amount would be spread through the month if he is doing something like I do, or if it is all on the last day ask the seller.  

The seller should be able to get you a CSV file that you can sort by date better than the screen reports in Square Dashboard.  

I just looked at my Category Sales for December 2022 and had 403 items Sold that were not in a category, but I can not find the report right now that has the Custom Amount in it.  

My wife also finds it easier with our Custom Candles to use the Custom amount to enter the price, which leaves me wondering How many Custom Candles she sold in a week, month or Year, I see a few when I probably rang them up and entered the price.  

My point is there could be multiple reason for a custom amount figure, but it should not be from 1 sale on the last day or so of the month as a lump sum.

[IVEZA]

Thanks for the response! I really appreciate it. So from my understanding the gentlemen selling the business said he would write in custom orders for speed reason instead of looking through to find the package or item. Does that make sense? 

[Candlestore]

Yes depending how his Catalog is setup, how many items and if he does not use a scanner.   Can be a pain if his catalog is like mine of 5000 plus items to scroll through them if he does not have a quick way to access them.  Setting up categories and a good naming convention.  If someone brings up an item and You think its called a widget but the created item is actually a Tetris..... and you type in widget you will come up blank for an item, so you just hit custom and the price.  Not the most efficient way but can be done for speed. I know of a business that was using an outdated Register and to do Credit Card sales they used a tablet or phone to process their sales with Square.  So the old Register got the total, then this total was typed into Square for credit card sales, so every transaction was a Custom Amount in Square.   

So his explanation does make sense if these transactions are throughout the month, and not one big transaction at the end of the month.

[IVEZA]

How exactly do I explain to them how to pull up the CSV file. The broker said he is having a hard time finding out how to do it. I'm not sure if he's the most computer savvy 😂

[Candlestore]

@IVEZA ,

The current owner would have to login into the Square dashboard.

https://squareup.com/login

Then go to Transactions  (in the left column)

On the Transactions page choose the date range

Then choose export:  on the right side.

There will pop up 3 choices to export:

Transactions CSV

Items Summary CSV

Items Details CSV

  The Transactions CSV  -will only show the amounts of the transactions

   The Items Summary - Will only show the Items sold and cost of the items

  The Items Detail CSV will show  The date, time of transaction plus the sales price, tax, and qty of items sold

I would suggest asking for the details CSV since this will show you the date and times of these transactions for Custom Order.  Depending how he does the business or the type of business these Custom orders could be all entered at the end of a day if he writes down the credit card sales information.  When I have a Phone order, I enter the Credit card information as the person gives it to me so that I have no record of the CC details.  So my custom orders would be at various times throughout the day(s).  I can also see these with the Higher Square charges as a Card Not Present Charge, for phone orders.

Here is what the Items CSV Goes from colomun A-AE file looks like:

  Had to change this image a Down load to the Item CSV   I miss labeled it before.

[IVEZA]

Keith,
You went above and beyond and you did not have to, I truly appreciate the help! Thank you so much! 

[Candlestore]

Your welcome Iveza.

[IVEZA]

I have one more question, do tips and gift card purchases show up on the full CSV reports? 

[Candlestore]

Here are the headers for the Transactions CSV download   Column H and J show the Gift Card and Tips Quantities if that helps.  At the bottom you can scroll right to see the rest of the Headers also.  This is for the Transactions Download file.   I also download the Transactions the Items Detail Csv from the Transactions Tab to see which Items were sold.

Date

Time

Time Zone

Gross Sales

Discounts

Service Charges

Net Sales

Gift Card Sales

Tax

Tip

Partial Refunds

Total Collected

Source

Card

Card Entry Methods

Cash

Square Gift Card

Other Tender

Other Tender Type

Other Tender Note

Fees

Net Total

Transaction ID

Payment ID

Card Brand

PAN Suffix

Device Name

Staff Name

Staff ID

Details

Description

Event Type

Location

Dining Option

Customer ID

Customer Name

Customer Reference ID

Device Nickname

Deposit ID

Deposit Date

Deposit Details

Fee Percentage Rate

Fee Fixed Rate

Refund Reason

Discount Name

Transaction Status

Cash App

Order Reference ID

Fulfillment Note