thread Re: Tracking costs of selling services in Payments Troubleshooting

Tracking costs of selling services

Toodles — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 12:01:59 GMT

I'm using Square retail and have added a cost to all of my stock. However, some of my items are services. I have added my cost of proving these services, but as I don't have any 'in stock' to 'track' the system is assuming I'm providing these services without any cost accrued.

How do I get square to automatically take the cost of a service off the money received when I sell that item so that my actual profit is accurate?

Re: Tracking costs of selling services

tranguyen — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 12:53:30 GMT

Hi @Toodles, thank you for contacting us! I'll be happy to help wit this. Before we get start, am I right in saying that the services all have a cost assign to them and you'd like to take the cost of the service off the total of money receive from customer?

I'm not sure if this is setup may work, but you can setup a discount for the value of the service and named it after the service provided. That way, you can apply it to the sale at checkout and it'll take the cost off the total sale amount.

You can learn more about creating and managing discounts in our Support Centre. If this is not what you need, let me know what the desired flow should look like and I can definitely have another look on my end!

Re: Tracking costs of selling services

Toodles — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 16:13:06 GMT

I think I've explained badly! I run a dog grooming salon and boutique. The shop side of things is sorted. I buy in goods, and put the costs into the system. People buy the goods at rrp and square retail kindly works out my profit. Perfect.

The problem is with the services I provide on the grooming side. For example, say I charge £20 for a groom, and I've estimated that with running costs and salaries, that service costs me £10. Someone gets this service and pays me £20. However, because there was never any 'stock' entered, square has assumed my costs are zero and has my net profit as £20, when it should be £10.

I want square to automatically account for costs listed, regardless of stock.

Re: Tracking costs of selling services

tranguyen — Mon, 21 Dec 2020 17:24:38 GMT

Thanks for clarifying @Toodles! Hmm, I'm not sure if this feature is available with Square for Retail, but let me check in with the Retail team and see if perhaps they know of any workaround. Once I have more information, I'll be sure to follow up on this thread.

Re: Tracking costs of selling services

DeboraTentis — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 09:39:46 GMT

Hi,

I need this feature too, please. For exactly the same reason, just adaptable to skincare facials.

Thank you!