You probably know who your regulars are, which items sell out fastest and when the morning rush hits its peak. But what about the specifics? Do you know when most of your sales occur, down to the hour, weekday and month? Or how much of your sales come from new versus repeat customers?
The world’s largest retailers employ armies of analysts and use complicated tools just to understand these types of things. They’re pricey and tedious to set up—not the best option for small businesses. So we’re levelling the playing field by integrating analytics into Square Point of Sale and Square Dashboard, giving you easy access to sales trends, buyer insights, helpful charts and personalised data to help you run your operations efficiently.
Here’s what Square Analytics can help with:
1. Keep tabs on what you’re selling
You may think that people are cuckoo for cupcakes, but it could be that plain old loaves are actually your bakery’s best-selling item. With Square Analytics, you’ll see real-time charts that show you exactly which items are flying off the shelf, so you can adjust your inventory accordingly.
2. Know who your customers are
Where do your sales come from? Are repeat customers your bread and butter or do most sales come from people popping in for the first time? Square data tells us this varies wildly by industry. With buyer insights, you can deep dive into which group makes up the bulk of your sales.
3. Figure out your best hours
With two locations in central London, Curator’s Coffee have already seen the benefits of Square’s business insights when it comes to understanding their daily activity better, “So we use the dashboard to analyse a number of things about our business. So average transaction span, what times are popular. We see peaks and troughs. We see what items are popular. Everything. It helps us – the analytics from the dashboard help us make decisions about everything about our business.”
4. Identify your top salesperson
You can now view staff sales to keep tabs on each employee’s performance. When someone’s shift ends, you can run a custom report to see how much that staff member sold. And Square Analytics is mobile-optimised, so you can check in on your staff while on the go.
5. Get real-time insight into how business is going
See how your business is growing with every new sale. Visit your Square Dashboard to see sales charts and widgets update in real time with each transaction. You no longer have to sort through lists of sales in spreadsheets and create your own pivot tables just to get a clear picture of how your business is going. (And if you’ve never made a pivot table before, you’re not missing anything.)
Square Analytics is free with Square Point of Sale and integrates the full suite of Square products like Invoices.