Can I view refunds by category?

malibuclub · ‎06-11-2017

Question. We've been having troubles balancing our sales to what was collected yesterday and I think I've landed on the discrepancy. We have pulled our sales by category with the summary sheet and that shows the full refunds, but partial refunds are not being calculated out of the category sales. So if we did $10 in drinks, and refunded $2, it is still showing that we have Net Sales of $10 in drinks, not $8 as would be expected. Took me about an hour to figure out what was going on....I'm kind of floored that partial sales are not taken out of the Net Sales, or at least that's what it looks like to me. I've had to go through every transaction and pull all partial sales, see what category the original sale was for and manually back out those refunds in my books. Really surprising, and really inefficient.

Russell · ‎07-11-2017

Hey @malibuclub -

When viewing the Sales Summary from your Online Dashboard, you should see three columns: Sales, Refunds, and Net. You should be able to see the correct total broken down by tender in the Net column.

If you're unable to locate the discrepency from the Sales Summary, feel free to reach out to our Support Team directly for help.

malibuclub · ‎07-11-2017

That doesn't answer my problem at all. The refunds are not reflected in the ***Category***, not by tender. I can see that there are refunds, but I need to know what category they were from for our accounting. Was it in beverages? Was it in prepared food? Was it in packages snacks? We book all our inventory according to the categories and when a refund goes through we have to keep separate manual tabs on all the transactions and manually adjust our accounting for the refunds according to what category they were from. It's a hassle....it's from a database....that information is in there so why not have a UI that will allow us to easily pull that data? The Dashboard is great and the Custom Reports are rocking....they just need more flexibility so that we can pull out the data from the database without having to slog through the csv exports.

Russell · ‎07-13-2017

I'm so sorry for the misunderstanding there, @malibuclub.

Square Point of Sale does not offer itemized refund reporting at this time, though I can definitely see why you my want to track this. Currently, sellers must manually track inventory with the free Point of Sale software.

I'll be sure to pass the feedback over to our Product Team and let them know you'd like to mark off refunded drink or food items with Point of Sale.

malibuclub · ‎08-24-2017

Thanks for the response Russell. As an end user, there definitely needs to be some work on the refunds end for refunding specific items and have that reflect in the reporting directly without manual adjustments.

The Gift Cards when refunded should clear from the card balance (so onerous and a huge opening for mistakes to need to do a refund on a gift card and then to clear the balance separately).

Items partially refunded should be reflected in the category and item sales, and Items fully refunded should be reflected in the category and item sales as well as being returned to inventory.

These are pretty basic needs of retailers.

primitivebarn · ‎02-01-2019

I completely agree. I got the square to easily track my vendors/consignors which are my categories. I need to know which vendor the refund is coming from or I will be overpaying them.

Helen · ‎02-03-2019

Hello @primitivebarn, can you reply here with a bit more information about how you're currently processing refunds so we can share your experience with the Reporting team? Also, since this post was written we've added support for itemized refunds from the app, and you can see Returns/Items Returned from the Category Sales report too.

️ Helen
Seller Community Manager

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tippy808 · ‎06-13-2022

I have the same issue. The way I could view the individual transaction was from the home screen, going to "transactions" and changing the date to the month view. Then I could scroll through the monthʻs transactions to look for the refund. In the far left column thereʻs an icon of the visa/mc/amex, etc. payment method. The oneʻs with the refunds have a circle with a left arrow in it on the icon showing you it was a refund. You can also look in the far right column with the transaction totals, and the refunds have a parenthesis around it. Itʻs still going to be a bit of manual work on your part for record keeping since square doesnʻt itemize it in reports, but I hope that helps, and I hope you donʻt have too many returns! 😊