How to Read Your Square Sales Reports (and What They Won't Show You)

Where your sales reports live

Your detailed reports are in the Square Dashboard, either at squareup.com/dashboard or in the Square Dashboard app on your phone. Log in, tap or click Reports, and you'll see the full list. The point of sale app on your register shows lighter versions, daily totals and recent transactions, but the real reporting lives in the Dashboard.

The reports that matter most for a restaurant are Sales Summary, Item Sales, and Category Sales. If you're on a paid Square for Restaurants plan, you'll also see section sales, labor reports, and live sales. If you're on the free tier, you get the basics, which is still enough to understand what's happening each day.

One thing worth knowing: Square's reporting and its deposit history are in different places. The reports show what you sold. The deposit history, under Balance in the Dashboard, shows what landed in your bank. They measure different things, and they live in different sections, which is where the confusion starts.

The item sales trap

The Item Sales report is the one most restaurant owners look at first, and it's the one most likely to mislead you. It shows each menu item's units sold and gross sales. Sorted by revenue, it tells you what's popular. That's useful, but it's not the same as what's profitable.

A burger that sells 200 units at $14 looks like your star. But if the plate cost is $9 you're making $5 per plate. A side salad that sells 80 units at $8 with a $2 plate cost is making $6 per plate. Square's Item Sales report ranks the burger higher. Actual margin says the salad is earning more per sale.

This isn't a flaw in Square. Square is a point of sale system, and it tracks sales accurately. It just doesn't store your cost of goods, so it can't do the math that turns sales data into profit data. If you're using the Item Sales report to decide what to promote, what to cut, or what to reprice, you're making those decisions on revenue alone, which is half the picture.

If you want to run those numbers on your own menu, our free menu item profitability calculator lets you plug in prices, costs, and units sold to see which dishes are actually earning.

One thing worth knowing is that the full Item Sales report only lives in the Square Dashboard. The point of sale app on your register shows a simplified view with your top-selling items, but not the complete item-by-item breakdown. If you're checking numbers from the POS screen and something seems to be missing, that's why.

If you've ever renamed a menu item, you may have noticed its sales history restarting from zero. Square treats a renamed item as a new entry in reporting, so the old name keeps its historical numbers and the new name starts fresh. That means a single dish can show up as two separate lines in your Item Sales report with the totals split between them, which makes it look like both are underperforming when really it's one item with a broken history.

If you charge for add-ons like avocado, extra cheese, or a side upgrade, Square also gives you a separate modifier sales report that lists which modifiers customers choose most. It's worth checking alongside Item Sales, since add-ons can be a meaningful part of what a dish brings in. One catch: a modifier only shows sales in that report if it has a price attached, so free modifiers appear with $0 even when customers pick them often.

If you use item variations, like small, medium, and large sizes of the same drink, the report shows the item's total with each variation on its own line beneath it. That makes it easy to see which size sells most without losing the combined picture.

The transactions report and CSV exports

Sales Summary and the other reports show totals. When you need every individual sale, for your bookkeeper, a dispute, or a question the reports can't answer, you need the transactions report and its CSV exports.

Where to find it

In the Square Dashboard, go to Payments & Invoices, then Transactions. Set your date range, then click Export. Square moved this in mid-2025 when it removed its older Reporting section, so if you're following an older guide that says otherwise, this is where it lives now. CSV exports are only available in the Square Dashboard, not in the point of sale app.

Transactions CSV or Item Detail CSV?

Square offers more than one export, and picking the wrong one is the most common mistake.

The Transactions CSV has one row per payment. It shows the money side of each sale: gross sales, discounts, net sales, tax, tips, total collected, how the customer paid, Square's fees, and the net total after fees. It also includes the deposit ID and deposit date for each payment, which makes it the export to use when you're matching sales to what landed in your bank account. This is also the file most accounting tools expect.

The Item Detail CSV has one row per item sold. It shows what was in each sale: the item, its category, quantity, variation, the modifiers applied, gross sales, discounts, net sales, and tax for that line, along with the date and time. It doesn't include Square's processing fees.

Use the Transactions CSV for money questions, like deposits, fees, tips, and payment types. Use the Item Detail CSV for menu questions, like what sold, when, and with which add-ons.

Answering questions the reports can't

The Item Detail CSV fills several gaps in Square's built-in reports. Because every row has the item, the time of sale, and the modifiers applied, you can build views Square doesn't offer, like which add-ons people order with a specific dish, or what sells best on your slowest days and hours.

When you need both sides of a sale, export both files and match rows using the Transaction ID column, which appears in both. That links each item to the payment it was part of, including fees and how the customer paid.

Exact column names can vary slightly depending on your Square plan and features, so check the header row of your own export before building a spreadsheet around it.

The one thing Square's reports won't show you

Square tells you what sold and how much it brought in. It does not tell you what you earned. That's the boundary of a POS report, and it's not a knock on Square, it's the nature of a system built to process transactions rather than track food costs.

Profit by menu item, margin by category, and cost trends over time all require knowing what each plate costs to make. Square doesn't store that, so its reports stop at revenue. For a restaurant trying to figure out whether a price increase worked, whether a supplier change is saving money, or which items to feature and which to rethink, that gap matters.

Flumen fills that gap. It connects to your Square account, pulls your sales data automatically, and puts sales trends, menu item performance, day-of-week and hourly patterns, and average ticket on one page. On the paid plan, you can also enter what each item costs to make, and the dashboard shows gross margin and margin by item from your live sales. No exporting, no navigating between report screens.

Frequently asked questions

Where do I find sales reports in Square?

In your Square Dashboard at squareup.com or the Dashboard app, under Reports. Sales summary is your overview, Item sales and Category sales break down what sold, and Square for Restaurants adds section sales, kitchen performance, and live sales. The point of sale app shows lighter versions, but the detailed reports live in the Dashboard.

Why don't my Square sales match my bank deposit?

Because they measure different things. Square deducts its processing fees before paying you, bundles several payments into one deposit, and processes refunds separately, so your gross sales report and your net bank deposit rarely line up. It's not an error, it's the difference between what you sold and what landed after fees and timing.

Does Square show profit or margin by menu item?

No. Square reports gross sales and units per item, but it doesn't store your cost of goods, so it can't show profit or margin. Your best-selling item and your most profitable item can be different, and Square's reports can't tell them apart. Seeing true margin means pairing each item with what it costs to make, and that takes your own cost records. You can run the numbers with our free menu item profitability calculator, or on Flumen's paid plan, enter each item's cost once and track margin by item from your live sales.

What's the difference between Square's Transactions CSV and Item Detail CSV?

The Transactions CSV has one row per payment and shows the money side of each sale, including tips, Square's fees, and the deposit each payment landed in. The Item Detail CSV has one row per item sold and shows what was in each sale, including the category, variation, and modifiers applied, but not Square's fees.

Want the full rundown of Square's reporting features? See what reporting Square gives restaurants

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