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Square Glossary

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Below, you’ll find definitions of terms that may be useful when using Square.

General Square Terms

Term Definition
Account Adjustment Funds debited or credited to your Square account. Account adjustments are displayed within Transactions of your online Square Dashboard and in your Transactions spreadsheet.
Chargeback Period The number of calendar days during which the cardholder or issuer has the right to dispute the transaction with the acquirer.
Close of Day The time your payments are grouped for transfer daily. Customize your close of day time to receive a single transfer for a full day’s business activity.
Deferred Funds An amount of earned funds that will be payable at a later date.
Manually Entered Transaction The act of manually entering payment information for transactions in which the card isn’t present (phone or internet orders). When manually entering a payment, you need to enter the card number, expiration date, CVV, and billing zip code. All of this information is required to process a manually entered payment.
Refund by Amount Refunding your customer a specific dollar amount, instead of the full purchase amount.
Swiped Transaction A swiped transaction is a payment accepted through the Square magstripe reader, chip card reader, or Square Stand.
Non-Transactional Bank Account A bank account is considered non-transactional if Square can only credit, but not debit funds. Square requires a transactional bank account in the event of refunds or chargebacks.
Transactional Bank Account A bank account where funds can be credited and debited. This allows Square to establish two-way communication with your account in the event of refunds or chargebacks.

Analytics Terms and Definitions

Review the list of analytics terms below to help you better understand your sales reports with Square.

Term Definition
Gross Sales Overall product sales in a period, including modifiers. This amount is not adjusted for refunds or discounts, and doesn’t include taxes and tips collected on a sale. Gross sales exclude the sale of a physical gift cards from Square, but include the sale of products tendered with your gift cards.
Refunds Amount of product refunded in a give period. It excludes partial refunds, and refunds of gift cards sales.
Discounts Deductions applied at the time of sale. Discounts are calculated before tax, and can be applied either as a percentage or dollar amount of the entire sale or to a specific item. Discounts applied to the sale of physical gift cards from Square are excluded.
Net Sales Gross sales amount minus discounts and refunds. Net sales describe the overall product sales in a period, after the deduction of refunds and discounts. Net sales don’t reflect the sale of Gift Cards.
Gift Card Sales Total amount collected from the sale of Square Gift Cards. This measure is adjusted for refunds and discounts applied to Gift Card sales.
Tax Sales tax amounts applied at the time of sale. Tax is calculated on a per-transaction basis. See the specific tax applied for each sale in Transactions on your online dashboard. You may have multiple taxes for your business that you turn on/off depending on your needs. If you use multiple tax rates in a single sale, the “taxable sales” and “total” tax collected on your tax report may not add up.
Tips Gratuity added to the transaction by your customers. This excludes cash tips because they’re not recorded in the Square app. See the specific tip applied for each card payment in the Transactions list.
Cash Rounding Adjustments applied according to the Swedish Rounding System. Applies in countries where low denomination coins have been discontinued. Rounding is applied on the whole bill (not each individual item) after discounts, tax, and tip are applied.
Total Collected Total amount collected from the customer. Total collected includes net product sales in a given period, tax, tip, gift cards from Square sales, and other cash rounding adjustments collected from the customer.
Average Total Sales The Total Sales (Net Sales + Tax + Tips + Gift Card Sales + Amount-based Refunds) divided by the number of sales.
Fees Total Square processing fees in a given time period. Fees will be deducted from your next transfer.
Net Total Total collected amount minus fees. Net total reflects the amount collected from your operations after Square’s fees are deducted.

Customer Terms

The homepage of your online Square Dashboard provides data on your customers’ spending behaviors. See the table below for customer terms on this page.

Term Definition
Your Customers The number of customers that have purchased from you within a given period of time. Customers are identified based on their payment card. Purchases from Cash and Other Tender are excluded entirely.
Returning Customers Returning Customers are any buyers in a given period that have purchased from you anytime before. A customer is classified as Returning based on their payment card; purchases from Cash or Other Tender are excluded entirely.
New Customers New Customers are any buyers within a given period of time – as far as Square can tell through previous card payments – that have never purchased with you before. Purchases from Cash and Other Tender are excluded entirely.
Customer Spending On average, your Total Collected per Customer Visit. Total Collected includes Tax and Tip. No sale transactions are not included in this calculation.
Customer Visits On average, your Visits per Customer in a given period.
Customer Frequency Customer Frequency is a view of how often your customers visit in the last 30 days, and how much they spend per month. Improving the number of monthly visits over time is an indicator of loyalty and ultimately customer value. These values are based on customers that pay with their payment card.
Customer Recency Customer Recency provides a count of the total number of customers who visited within a given period of time, as well as the percentage this number is out of the total amount of customers in your directory.
Channel Filters Channel filters enable you to segment your customers by different channels, such as in-store, online, third-party apps, subscriptions, invoices, and more.

Learn more about Square’s customer engagement features.

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