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Feature Request: Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) for Restaurants and Bars

Beta Member

Feature Request: Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) for Restaurants and Bars

The title of this post has been edited from the original: Costs for Restaurants and Bars

 

 

We're a restaurant, and love the simplicity of Square reports. However, Square lacks the simple ability to track costs of our menu items, so we cannot see a profit report using Square. 

 

Square for Retail, for instance, allows you to enter in the Price and the Cost of an item (T-Shirt price is $15, cost is $2, profit is $13). Why is this input field disabled in Square for Restaurants?

 

I'm trying something as a workaround: subscribing to both Square for Retail and Square for Restaurants. The moment I turned on Square for Retail, the cost field appeared in my item details. Huge!

 

Consider this: when you comp items to employees and customers, you're paying sales tax on the retail price of that item unless you've determined, and have the ability to track, costs. If you have costs established, you pay the usage tax based on the cost, not the retail price. 

 

I'm really baffled by the absence of cost entry field for items. Who doesn't want to track profit along with sales?

12 Comments

What's the best way to get COGS for Restaurant?  How in the world is that missing from the POS?

Admin

@HighGrainBrew You're right, there isn't a Cost of Goods Sold report with Square for Restaurant or with Square Point of Sale. That feature it is available if you subscribe to Square for Retail.

 

I'm sorry for the frustration this has caused, I'll share your interest in that report with appropriate teams here, if that report is built in to other apps in future we'll definitely let you know! In the meantime there are couple of integrations that might help. If you go to the Apps section of your online Square Dashboard, select the Restaurant Mangement filter and take a look at the PlateIQ and MarketMan integrations (among others). I hope one of these integrations can help in the meantime.

 Is there no way to track item costs in Square for Restaurants? This feels like a missing feature (and something that is included with Square for Retail). Please help!

Beta Member

I know I'm bumping this post/request up quite a bit, but I came here looking for the same thing.  The fact that COGS is such an integral part of understanding our businesses (mine is a quick service restaurant) and profitability - and not having a field to input COGS for each menu item seems silly.  I would love to see a field added alongside the field we input the price of an item where we can input our COGS.  That way when we pull reports from Square, we would be able to get a more accurate picture of our Net Sales.  Seems like that's a pretty significant piece missing from the Net Sales total that Square currently gives us

 

Additionally, it would help us better identify profitability of specific items and categories.  This would be very helpful when determining what items are popular vs which are most profitable.  For my business, we rotate our menu seasonally. By comparing popularity against profitability it would help us better focus our menu rotations and gain insight into how to better dial in those 2 so they align

OK I will give those a look. Thank you for the reply.

It doesn't look like Plat IQ is an option any longer. I see it in the app store, but it gives an error message when trying to active. The Market Man tool you mentioned is $150 a month. Not something I wanted to pay extra for when I'm already paying to be subscribed to Square a substantial fee with multiple locations

 

Beta Member

I was just about to start a new thread about this. I am setting up the Square POS for Restaurant (for our bar) and I cannot see a cost price for items I add? How can this be?

What use is it, if I cannot calculate profits? Surely I am missing something??

Beta Member

I agree. This is the most basic of options in any POS system.

I am dumbfounded that Square has not implemented this, in spite of multiple requests.

Replying to keep track of this request. This is a something that is basically a necessity for us in our day to day workings.

 

Replying to bump this much needed COGs feature. Please!!!!