Reporting with Square for Restaurants
With Square for Restaurants, you have access to restaurant-specific reporting to help you track your best selling items, team member sales and much more. While most of your reporting lives on your Square Dashboard under the Reports tab, you’ll also have access to Live Sales (including open bills) and specialised reports like shift, sales, cash drawer and close of day reports right in your Square for Restaurants app.
If you are new to Square reporting, check out our Summaries and Reports to help you get started navigating the Square Dashboard.
Check out the full comparison of features between Square POS, the Square for Restaurants Free Plan and Plus Plan.
In-App Reporting
To view your Restaurants app reports, tap the Account tab. On Square Register tap Utilities.
Run Shift Report: For team members looking for a running total of sales, open bills and cash owed to the house.
View Live Sales: With the Live Sales tab, you’ll be able to view the overall performance of a shift, in real time. Live Sales include closed bills (with and without a finalised tip amount), as well as open bills.
The Live Sales report reflects open bills. To view only finalised sale amounts head to the standard in-app Sales reports below. You can also find the reports in your online Square Dashboard.
View Sales Report: Typically for team members with manager passcode access, the Sales report is a comprehensive overview of the day’s sales organised by category, item and payment type.
Run Close of Day: The Close of Day report will close out all open bills, remaining cash drawers and run your service report. You’ll typically only want to run your Close of Day report once your restaurant closes for the night.
Cash Drawer Report: View cash sales and tip out team members using the Paid In/Out feature.
Shift Report
Shift reports are broken up into five main sections:
Shift Summary
The Shift Summary section displays the details on the total time worked by a team member in a given time period.
Tip Details
If your restaurant accepts optional tipping, the Tip Details section breaks down accepted payments and how they impact your team members’ earned tips.
Cash Sales shows the total cash transactions accepted by a team member.
Non-Cash Tips shows the total tips (if optional tipping is enabled) from payment card transactions accepted by a team member.
Cash Owed to You is used for businesses that pay out payment card tips in cash at the end of a shift. This number will represent the value of payment card tips (if applicable) that are over the cash accepted by this team member.
Cash Owed to House will show the amount of cash a team member should have in their bank after paying themselves tips (if applicable).
Read more about declaring cash tips and tip pooling with timecard management for team members.
Sales Summary
The Sales Summary section details the total covers and total revenue collected from those covers during your team member’s shift.
Category Sales
Category Sales displays the number of items in each of your categories that your team member sold during their shift.
Item Sales
Item Sales shows the number of individual items sold by your team member during their shift.
Live Sales in App
Overview: A quick view of all closed bills, open bills and their combined value.
Open Bill Details: View all open bills, total amount, average total amount and total covers.
To view your Live Sales report in app:
Tap on Account.
From the list of reports, select View Live Sales.
From here you’ll be able to review a detailed breakdown for all closed and open bills – including the number of bills, gross amount, average bill amount and covers.
Dashboard Reporting
You can find a suite of advanced reporting tools in the Reports tab of your online Square Dashboard.
Your Sales Summary report gives you a high-level view of sales for a given time period. You can view the broad-stroke performance of your restaurants by taking a look at the graph representations, or drill down further by filtering by location, team member or menu.
Live Sales on Dashboard
Access your Live Sales report on the Square Dashboard from a computer, tablet or your mobile phone browser. To get started:
From your Dashboard, click Reports > Bills.
Filter by Open Bills, Closed Bills or All Bills for the specified period of time.
Note: This filter applies to all relevant data (tables, sales, number of transactions, etc.) and can be seen in the following reports: Sales Summary, Sales Trends, Item Sales, Category Sales, Section Sales, Team Sales, Labour vs Sales, Discounts, Modifier Sales, Taxes and Service Charges.
Generate Reports and Apply Filters
In addition to the basic summary, you can organise and generate several different reports to view various data sets: sales trends, payment methods, items, categories, sections or individual team members. Each report contains a toolbar of customisable options – so you can refine your reports and filter your view online.
For example: You can customise your Item Sales report to see how many BLT sandwiches were sold at 4 of your 6 restaurant locations in the last 6 weeks, specifically during dinner service.
Category Rollup Reporting
When you create a Category Rollup, you’ll be able to group and view the sales for several categories at once. Category Rollups are visible from your Category Sales and Item Sales reports online, and will also display on your in-app team member Shift and Close of Day reports.
For example: If you have three item categories (Liquor, Beer, and Wine), you can create a Category Rollup Alcohol to review the performance of all three categories. You can also apply additional filters on the Category Sales report (such as date, time of day and team member) to help you drill down further into your item sales.
Just make sure you’ve set up item categories online first.
To get started:
From your online Square Dashboard, head to Reporting > Reports > Category Sales.
Click Rollups.
Select multiple item categories. When you’re all set, tap Create a Category Rollup.
Keep in mind, although you’ll see your Category Rollups for both online and in-app category reports, you will not see a change to your item layout or menu display on the Restaurants app. Rollups are for reporting purposes only.
Once you create your Category Rollup, you can apply your new filters to your Item Sales report.
Export Your Reports
Square for Restaurants allows you to export a CSV file directly to your desktop or send reports to connected accounting software.
To download a custom report:
Go to the report you’d like to export.
Click Export Report in the upper right corner.
Select CSV or the accounting app connected to your Square Account.
Your report will automatically download to your computer or send directly to the connected accounting app.
Learn more about Square for Restaurants reporting – including customising your closing procedures, Shift Reports, and your Close of Day report.