New Column in Transactions CSV?

[TheRealChipA]

Greetings,

This morning, as I always do, I downloaded the Transactions CSV (and other CSVs) to a spreadsheet I have that does some offline analysis I need.  But it seems that between yesterday morning and this morning there is a new column titled “Service Charges” in the Transactions CSV, inserted between “Discounts” and “Gift Card Sales.”

First, I think this is a great column since I’m assuming it contains something I asked for a few months ago — that being a column that specified how much in online order service charges a transaction contains, if any.  If that is the case, thank you.

Having said that........ it seems to me that anytime you add a new column to any CSV there should be a very prominent note somewhere to alert us to the fact.  That way we don’t have to track down where the change happened, what the change is, etc.  Right?

Even better would be to adopt a policy of NEVER inserting new columns into CSVs, but rather add all new columns to the end of each row.  That way the new columns don’t mess with calculations, etc, in the spreadsheets that we download the CSVs into.  More right?

I’ll add one more thing.  I did, this morning before I downloaded my CSVs from yesterday’s sales, upgrade to Restaurants Plus so that I could beta test the Square KDS.  I can’t imagine this would add a new column, but I wanted you to know about that.

So.... is it possible for your engineers to set up some procedure whereby we are prominently alerted to change(s) to CSVs when they are implemented?  Or alternatively to ONLY add new columns of information to the end of rows, and then still alert us that they have been added?

Thanks,

Chip

[LocavoreStore]

Looks like it's a facet from trying out Square for Restaurants. I got a little nervous when I saw your post because I rely on Transaction CSV's to do weekly reporting, and any additional column would really screw me up.

Luckily, the Service Charge field your talking about doesn't show up on any transaction CSV that I can download (Square Point of Sale).

[TheRealChipA]

That helps pinpoint it to Restaurants, then.  However, the really odd thing is that up until this morning I’ve been using the free tier of Square for Restaurants for the past few months, and that column was not there either.  It was only after I upgraded to Square for Restaurants Plus that is mysteriously appeared this morning.

Anyway, I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one who dreads new columns just showing up in CSV files.  😏