Square for Retail Reporting
With Square for Retail Plus, you have access to five powerful reports: Cost of Goods Sold, Projected Profit, Vendor Sales, Inventory by Category and Inventory Sell-Through. These reports are not available with Square for Retail Free.
Important to note
Since your profit is determined by the price you pay for an item (unit cost) subtracted from the item’s sale value, you’ll need to make sure your inventory for all adjustments include applicable unit costs for your stock.
If you need to add or update your unit costs for historical adjustments, visit the History tab on your online Square Dashboard to get started.
If you update the unit type for an item, your reporting will reflect each unit type as a separate line item.
Cost of Goods Sold
The Cost of Goods Sold report helps you keep an eye on your profit margin by keeping your topline metrics – cost of goods sold (COGS), total revenue, profit and profit margin – front and centre. Drill down deeper into your numbers by setting your desired filters and clicking Export to download a CSV.
The COGS column will account for additional costs (such as tax and shipping) associated with the order. For example, when you receive a purchase order, you can choose to include shipping and handling by selecting Add Optional Fee once the order is received. Including additional costs when receiving an order will increase visibility into your profit margin.
Here are some examples of how adjustments affect your COGS and inventory value:
Note: Inventory is considered an asset. For the adjustments outlined below, a credit decreases COGS or Inventory Value and a debit increases COGS or Inventory Value.
| Stock Adjustment | Impact on Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) | Impact on Inventory Value |
|---|---|---|
| Re-count to adjust up: re-count is considered a physical inventory count | Credit | Debit |
| Re-count to adjust down: re-count is considered a physical inventory count | Debit | Credit |
| Receive | No impact | Debit |
| Return | No impact | No impact |
| Restock | Credit | Debit |
| Damage/Loss/Theft | Debit | Credit |
| Transfer | No impact | Credit to origin location, debit from receiving location |
| Sale | Debit | Credit |
Filter on Cost of Goods Sold Report
The COGS report includes sales, restocks, re-counts, losses, damages and theft. You can filter your COGS report to see just the information you’re interested in. For example, you can filter to see just the cost of your sales, without the impact of losses.
The following are the filters and data you’ll see:
All Stock Actions: You can view your costs and margins based on all adjustments (a true Cost of Goods Sold), including re-counts, restocked returns and losses.
Sales: You can view your costs and margins based on just sales and returns (this does not include re-counts and losses).
Sales and Inventory Re-counts: You can view your costs and margins based on sales, returns and re-counts (please note that a re-count that adjusts up will credit (decrease)* your Cost of Goods Sold, while re-counts that adjust down will debit (increase) your Cost of Goods Sold).
Sales and Losses: You can view your costs and margins based on sales, returns and losses (including theft, damage, loss and a re-count adjustment down).
Vendor Sales
The Vendor Sales report allows you to view which items are sold in a given time frame, sorted by vendor. By selecting a date range and filtering by vendor, you’ll have an accurate look at how each of your vendors are performing.
With easy-to-view graphs included in the Vendor Sales report, surveying your top vendors by net sales and units sold will be a breeze – meaning more time back for you to focus on other aspects of your business.
Projected Profit
The Projected Profit report shows you the potential profit of your business inventory. Slice your data to see how received inventory boosts your business, view each location’s profit potential and see how each inventory category is contributing to the strength of your business.
The Projected Profit report is generated one hour after your scheduled close of day and will not reflect changes in real time.
Note: The Projected Profit report will only reflect inventory value for the past 70 days.
Inventory by Category
The Inventory Category report compares the data from the previous two reports to show the cumulative value of your inventory by category, including your profit margin by item category, total inventory value and potential profit.
Sell-Through Report
The Square for Retail Inventory Sell-through Report provides you with an organised daily snapshot of all of the information you need to effectively manage your inventory – making purchasing decisions, price adjustments and identifying any dead stock easier.
Sell-Through is a percentage that compares the amount of inventory you receive from a vendor against what’s actually sold over a given period of time. The percentage is calculated by dividing the number of items sold in the selected time period by the quantity of items on hand at the start of the period plus the quantity received or adjusted during the period. Then multiply that number by 100 to find your percentage.
You can also automatically generate new purchase orders online. Auto POs let you know which of your items could be running low on inventory. At a high level, Square makes decisions based on a few pieces of information:
The current inventory amount of an item, both in stock and on order
A sales prediction for that item
A lead time prediction for that item
Square will suggest reordering an item if, based on those pieces of information, we predict you will sell out before more items will arrive from your vendor.
Note: The Sell-Through Report is a snapshot of your inventory activity and will not reflect live changes. The report will update and refresh nightly every 24 hours and will have a timestamp stating the last time it was updated.
History
When you manually adjust your stock, accept a purchase order or make a sale, your History log will reflect each adjustment. Your History log is a detailed record of every stock adjustment – helping track and account for the stock levels for each item.
Identify and Filter by Item Unit Cost
You can apply filters on your inventory history log to view stock intake with an associated unit cost, without a unit cost or all historical adjustments. If you need to update inventory without an associated unit cost, apply the filter Missing Cost.
To identify missing unit costs:
Go to Items from your online Square Dashboard.
Click Inventory Management > History.
On the All Costs drop-down menu, select Missing Cost.
The Missing Cost filter will display a list of items that aren’t associated with a unit cost.
To add a unit cost:
Tap Add Cost next to one of your items.
Enter the unit cost > tap Save.
If the original stock intake was with a purchase order, click the link listed on the historical adjustment details page to update the associated unit cost.
Note: Stock adjustments that deduct from your inventory levels will credit or debit your Cost of Goods Sold and Inventory Value (depending on the type of adjustment) based on a first in, first out (FIFO) accounting method. If the cost appears to be inaccurate, you can edit the cost of the original stock intake. For this reason, you are unable to update the unit costs for stock adjustments that deduct from your inventory levels, such as re-counts that adjust down, loss, damage or theft stock adjustments.
For example:
Let’s say you accepted a purchase order or manually received 10 items at a cost of $15 each. Later, you manually re-counted to reduce the item’s stock to eight items. The re-count adjustment will debit your Cost of Goods Sold and credit your Inventory Value by $30. The adjustment will show in your History, but to update the unit cost (say to $10), you’ll need to locate the original receive adjustment. After you update the original intake adjustment, the re-count adjustment will automatically reflect the new unit cost and Inventory Reports will be updated.
Bulk-Reviewing Missing Unit Costs
For items with a cost associated at the variation level, you’ll see the option to Review Missing Costs for adjustments in your History. Keep in mind, if an item in your library is missing a unit cost, you’ll need to update each variation before you can bulk resolve missing costs from your History log. You can add default costs by importing your item library or manually editing the cost of each item variation. Apply default costs to past actions for accurate reporting and margin calculations.
To get started:
Go to Items from your online Square Dashboard.
Click Inventory Management > History.
Confirm each item variation has an associated unit cost.
If there are missing items or vendors, click Bulk Actions > Review Missing Costs or Review Missing Vendors.
When you select See Stock Actions, you’ll see each historical adjustment missing an associated unit cost.
When you update one historical adjustment, the unit cost for every other adjustment will reflect the new unit cost for that particular item.
You’re not able to bulk-update the unit cost for item variations you’ve deleted from your item library. To update historical adjustments for a deleted variation, you’ll need to update each variation unit cost from your History log.
Review answers to frequently asked questions about Square for Retail reporting.