Discount Reporting

[stripp]

I run restaurants and want to track the impact and profitability of different coupons. It doesn't look like the POS gives enough information to calculate this. I've seen other POS systems that do this well and I'd be surprised if Square cannot do this. It already gives you the number of redemptions and the discount amount, but it really should provide the gross amount of the checks it was applied to, before they were discounted. Right now, I don't know the effect of incremental sales on the coupons sent out. 

It would also be nice to have the functionality to have a BOGO coupon that made it easier for staff to apply the discount. For example, if I want to do a BOGO Ice Cream, the staff just hit the BOGO Ice Cream discount and it automatically applies to the cheaper of the two ice creams ordered. Right now, I believe the only way to do it is to program a 100% discount button and trust that the staff apply it to the correct menu item, or worse, the entire check.

Please let me know if anyone is aware of something I may be missing. 

[isabelle]

Hey @stripp!

Thanks for posting in the Seller Community 🎉

What about the information offered in Square Dashboard > Reports > Discounts:

OR

There's this information provided from Square Marketing campaigns when you send our a discount code:

I'm assuming this is for in-person sales. Let me know if I misunderstood you 💡

[stripp]

Unfortunately, this is not the necessary information. For example, I am running a BOGO on poke bowls. Someone comes in with the coupon and gets two poke bowls and they pay for one of them. But they also ordered two drinks and two appetizers. I want to know the gross sales for that whole transaction, because the incremental sales (apps and drinks) contribute to the overall success and redemption of the BOGO campaign. 

If there was a transaction report I could export that included the specific discount as an item (not the discount column, but the actual name of the specific discount in the item column), I could manipulate the data myself in a pivot table. This way, it would flag the discount and attach it to the order number or order ID number, and then I could check sales for those order ID's. 

Please let me know if there is a way to get that I am not aware of, other than manually checking each transaction for the specific discounts. Thank you!

[Kassi_]

Hey there, @stripp - 

I am jumping in for @Isabelle__ on this one. 

There is an option to export your transaction history into a spreadsheet, but it provides the dollar amount of the discount that was used. 

Right now, the information you're looking for in a report would be a Feature Request. You might be able to piece something together using the export of Transactions (Item Detail Summary has the most information) and the Discount Report to make it work in the meantime. 

Thank you for reaching out about this. I can get it over to our Product Team to look into the Feature Request. 

[stripp]

Thank you, Kassi. I have to say, Square has some of the best marketing capabilities I have ever seen in a POS. Even 5 years ago, it was unheard of for a small to medium size restaurant company to have this kind of ability to reach its existing customers. Especially because we just went cashless. We are paying more in cc processing fees, but I know the data is as accurate as it could possibly be and don't have to account for 15% of the sales to be a toss up. 

Here is some functionality I have thought might be helpful. For example, this is in relation to the EDDM direct mailer I just sent out. 

- Create coupon code for external advertisement, not just through Square Marketing.

- Ability to apply more rules for discounts. As much as I train the staff, I go through each transaction, and some of them still enter it incorrectly and give too much of a discount. A BOGO by category would be amazing. Some of the issues I've had with staff are:

1. Applying the discount to the most expensive item, not the second most expensive item as a BOGO should be,

2. Applying the discount to include upsells, not just the menu price of the item, for example, the customer should still pay for adding guac to the free item

3. Applying the same coupon more than once on a transaction,

4. Allowing guests to redeem the BOGO and $5 off (loyalty redemption) on the same transaction. 

5. Applying the discount when the transaction doesn't even qualify for a BOGO

- A way to track the long-term revenue from a customer gained through a marketing campaign, such as a mailer. Example, a new customer comes in and redeems that coupon, I can track that single purpose as a redemption, but what is the true value of the campaign over 6 months? 

- Similar to the last point, but the ability to tell me how many new customers came in on a marketing campaign. 

- I would love to know how many guests are just coming in the one time to redeem the coupon and never coming back. 

- Clover's second generation software produces a heat map of the concentration where customers live. The ability to use this information to target other areas with something like a mailer. Then track what geographic area where the redemptions came from.