thread Re: How to track “waste” for items after transaction is complete? in Payments Troubleshooting

How to track “waste” for items after transaction is complete?

clecookiedough — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 19:47:21 GMT

Hi! I’m trying to figure out a solution to track “waste”items for my ice cream shop.

an employee might make a milkshake with chocolate instead of vanilla and they have to remake it for the customer.

they wouldn’t know this until after the transaction is completed in square.

what’s the best way to track the wasted items in square? I’m open to all suggestions / process changes!

Re: How to track “waste” for items after transaction is complete?

BofBArtStudio — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 16:01:09 GMT

Great question. I am interested as well.

Currently we comp the items that are wasted and have a comp reason set up as "accidental damage / incorrect product".

I wish that comps were separated from discounts in the reports so that we can better see how much we actually give in discounts versus what was comped.

However I'm interested to see if there's a better way.

Re: How to track “waste” for items after transaction is complete?

MayaP — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 22:44:46 GMT

Hey there @BofBArtStudio @clecookiedough. There isn't a way to track waste, but you can use this workaround below. I hope this helps!

1. Create a 100% restricted discount called "waste." This way they can limit who can use this discount and remove inventory from items.

2. At the end of the day, add all the items they need to mark out to one transaction and apply the 100% waste discount to the sale.

3. There are 2 ways to keep a record of everything they used this discount for. One thing I'm thinking is they take a printed receipt of all the items they marked out as waste that day and add their quantities to a file in Excel. This would help them to track how many of each specific item were wasted that day vs. the next option to track this that I'm going to explain which gives you the total number of items at a high level and dollar amount discounted. If they go on Dashboard to Reports > Discounts > Select the discount applied, there will be an itemized list of which items this discount applies to. While this shows the total number of times the discount was used, on an item level it does not go into detail the quantity of the items discounted, only the dollar amount. Attached is an example of what I mean by this.

Re: How to track “waste” for items after transaction is complete?

BofBArtStudio — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 17:06:09 GMT

Thanks for your response. Yes we currently do it that way but with a comp and then a comp reason.

Re: How to track “waste” for items after transaction is complete?

BofBArtStudio — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 16:57:48 GMT

This is what we normally do, but we use a comp instead.

However, in sales summary reports, we wish comps were separate line from discounts.

We view comp as internal (product damage, waste, samples, etc) and then Discounts are are used only for customers.

Tracking spillage

BreadQueen — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 21:06:31 GMT

Does anybody have a method for tracking spillage/waste?

Re: Tracking spillage

Ellie_ — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:46:10 GMT

Hi there, @BreadQueen,

I have moved your post to a thread where other Sellers discussed tracking waste or spillage in their account. If there are any additional questions you have, please let us know!

I also see that this is your first post on the Seller Community, so I wanted to say welcome! We are so happy to have you here. Since you are new here, we recommend checking out our Orientation & Etiquette.

Tracking Food Waste?

TessC — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 18:18:36 GMT

I am looking for best practices on tracking food waste through my Square for Retail + system. Does anyone have a process that is easy to log and subsequently pull reports?

I've seen suggestions of creating a "Customer" called "Waste." Any other suggestions?

Thank you!

Re: Tracking Food Waste?

Candlestore — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 16:20:09 GMT

@TessC ;

Since this is for Retail, you may want to look if the Square for Resturants may have something that tracks waste for food items. With Square for Retail or POS I am not sure of a way to even track stolen items. You can mark it as a Loss, but I have not found a report that shows a list of all Loss items. It does just reduce the Inventory by the number you enter for that item.

Re: Tracking Food Waste?

JJ_ — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 23:54:53 GMT

Hi there, @TessC

I have moved your post to a thread where other Sellers discussed tracking waste or spillage in their accounts. If there are any additional questions you have, please let us know!