Square Glossary
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. Customise your close of day time to receive a single transfer for a full day’s business activity for businesses operating after 24:00. |
| 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, expiry date, CVV and billing postcode. All of this information is required to process a manually entered payment. |
| 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 VAT and tips collected on a sale. |
| Refunds | Amount of product refunded in a given period. It excludes partial refunds. |
| Discounts | Deductions applied at the time of sale. Discounts are calculated before VAT and can be applied either as a percentage or pound amount of the entire sale or to a specific item. |
| 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. |
| Tax/VAT | 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 card 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 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 deposit. |
| Fee Invoices | Invoice for fees paid to Square in a given month. |
| 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 behaviours. See the table below for customer terms on this page.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Your Customers | The number of customers that have purchased from you using a payment card within a given period of time. Purchases from Cash and Other Tender are entirely excluded. |
| Returning Customers | Returning Customers are customers in a given period that have purchased from you using the same payment card as before. Purchases from Cash or Other Tender are excluded entirely. |
| New Customers | New Customers are any buyers within a given period of time that have never purchased with you using this specific debit or credit card before. Purchases from Cash and Other Tender are entirely excluded. |
| Customer Spending | Your average Total Collected from all card payments per Customer Visit. Total Collected includes VAT and Tips collected. No sale transactions (£0 transactions recorded when opening the cash drawer), and Cash and Other Tender transactions are not included in this calculation. |
| Customer Visits | Your average visits per Customer in a given period, tracked by recurring use of a payment card. |
| 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. |