Square Reporting Q&A: Get answers and influence product decisions!

[Ani_]

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.

Participate in the upcoming Square Reporting Q&A to let the team know what's going well and what can be improved — because who better to provide insight on how to improve these tools than the sellers who use them on a daily basis? 😉

This event is 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, she and her team will be here to address any questions you may have, and make sure your experiences are documented with their 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?

Click 'Reply' below to ask your question ahead of time, and we’ll answer every question on Wednesday, January 25, 2023. We're looking forward to hearing from you!

[grovetealounge]

Agreed!

[aboderoc]

Quantity of items sold would be SO helpful for us! Our items range from a few dollars to almost $6k - dollars isn't a great metric for us.

[annakepler]

definitely sounds like a useful KPI. I will take it to the team. 

[annakepler]

Thank you for your feedback @augustalan !

I will take it back to the team. We are working to improve our platform and mobile app to offer you more granular data at your fingertips. Stay tuned!

[CAMCLT]

Please correct reports to not count gift card income twice. It currently adds gift card amount sold, as well as gift card balance used (not wanted), into the total sales income.

[ButterflyBags]

Taxes are entered separately as state, county and city; but I can only see total sales tax collected. Why can I not find it for each separate entity. As it is I have to recalculate everything manually for each different location. 

[annakepler]

Thank you for your message @ButterflyBags !
Can I ask in what reports you want to see the tax breakdown? I assume Sales Summary, but are there others? 

[E1]

I'd love a way to determine who is booked for future dates without having to pull the entire appointment history.  Is there a way?

[annakepler]

 Hi @E1 , thanks for reaching out.
I’m not certain I understand, mind elaborating on what you’re trying to accomplish? Have you tried using the Appointments calendar? 

[E1]

I am enjoying the new reporting associated with Appointments.  Is is possible to add a retention one that monitors rebooking (so people who have appointments in the future) and % of booking rate (so % of time booked vs unbooked)?

[annakepler]

Thanks for the feedback! We’re going to be working more on various appointment reports throughout the year so it's helpful to hear exactly which ones people are looking for and what things people want to be able to do. I’ll definitely take this back to the team.

[E1]

I'd love a way to export data reports easily from the Reports page

[annakepler]

Would you be able to share more details @E1 ? Today there is an export button on all the reports that allow you to download the CSV of the data present in the report. What would make it easier for you - export in other formats, scheduled report delivery, integration with other systems for reports to be sent? Any details are helpful.

[E1]

Is there a way to create more automated texts or messages based on appointment type?   For example, to send someone an email with appointment specific information 3 days before their visit?

[annakepler]

Unfortunately, Appointments functionality is a little out of the area of my expertise. I do know that the team constantly working on offering more customization options to our merchants. I will pass your request on to the team. 

[E1]

Customer Data - it would be helpful to run reports associated with new vs. existing (I don't find the insights helpful) or visit or treatment type

[annakepler]

Hey @E1 , appreciate the feedback, anything specific you’re looking for? Our team is actively looking at enhancing our reporting capabilities.

[grovetealounge]

My 2 biggest things I'd love to see updated for reporting purposes:

1. Give us an extra column/field in our items to add COGS.  That way, when I pull sales reports I not only see quantity sold and sales in $, but I can also see profitability.  For all the things you guys let us include in our item buildouts, I'm shocked that a COGS field hasn't been added yet.  Right now, I have to keep a separate excel file with all my items, their retail price, and our COGS to properly track things.  I'd love to be able to add COGS for each item so when I pull a report I'm able to also quickly find the intersection between most popular/highest grossing items and those that give me the greatest profit - then I can use that data to refine my menu and/or adjust what items I'm promoting and advertising.  It would also help inform me which items I should be highlighting on our menu boards or which items I should scrap.  COGS is such an critical piece to running any business, I'm still shocked it's not an available metric for us to use

In the picture below, I would think you could just add another field next to the Price or Stock column that says COGS and lets us enter in a dollar amount

2. Gift card reporting has come a LOOONGGG way recently and I appreciate it more than you know!  One thing that it is still missing for me is something like a "lifetime" report that shows me a summary report for all gift card transactions from my first day of business.  Anytime I try to expand the time frame of the report to span greater than 1 year, Square just doesn't load a report. Is that intentional or is that a bug?  I would love to be able to see how many gift cards have been loaded (and with what amount) over the last 4 years and what my outstanding total is that is still "out there" loaded on gift cards that hasn't been used yet

[pfab]

We have spoken to a square team recently about the projects and invoicing on square.  I forgot to mention during that call that we would love to see a "accounts" feature for our customers much like the accounts feature that the online stores have for theirs.  We dont typically sell online, we send invoices after we provide the services,  some customers would love to see what they have paid for and what they still owe online, and have the option to pay for more than one invoice at a time and choose which they can pay for.  Another thing we would love to be able to do is let customers use discount codes on their invoices.  Right now only customers buying from the website would be able to use their codes.  We want to incentivize our customers with being able to take advantage of discount codes for their birthdays, for paying on time after so many months etc.  

One thing we did mention to the square team about invoices is we would love to also be able to send our customers a running balance all at once instead of sending "reminders" having our customers to deal with multiple emails at once. 

[annakepler]

Thanks so much for your suggestions! We’ll take note of your feedback for accounts, consolidated payment, reminders on multiple invoices, and discount codes (that is a new idea!) Regarding accounts, a short-term workaround is you could use Projects (an Invoices Plus feature) to group all invoices for a particular customer and share the Project with the customer so they can view all their invoices in one centralized location.

[JKO]

Things I would like:

* In category reporting, let me select the horizontal axis. I don't care about time of day but I would like to see this graph with month on the horizontal axis.

* The same thing applies with discounts. Show me discounts by month (or let me select that), so I can quickly see the impact of promotions.

* I'd also like to track by things like color or custom attributes. For example, I have a custom attribute of bronze vs silver... I'd like to see sales tracked by that metric.

* Finally, last year I found it really difficult to trace back from the Square tax report to my actual sales. It would be helpful to allow me to dig down into that report.

Jan