Artists cooperative

[TMG]

we are a small coop with 20 artists. I just want to select the name of an artist to the sale of his work nothing else, very simple (so, no entry of each artist's inventory).

i tried entering their names in category, or in item, none of this gave me what I need .  HELP - thanks

[TMG]

Answering my own question here: I created 3 categories based on three basic types of sales, then I entered names of artists related to each category. Voila. Initially I had difficulties because I created more categories with artists belonging to more than one category. Hence the headache.

testing shows me the name of the artist, or names if multiple sales, that 

is great. Cannot test how reports will look like? Will they include the categories? Suspense. One reason I cannot play with the reports is that I have no clues yet how to access the dashboard... Where is that info? Feeling as if I were thrown in an alien land without a map, all alone 🙃 Almost

oh one thing that really bother me is the word completion. Completely maddening when one tries to enter people's name. The only way out is to type, erase, then retype. How to turn out this most infuriating feature? Pray tell me

[Helen]

Welcome to the Square community @TMG! 

I'm glad to hear categories will help you organize sales for the artists in your Coop. Sorry for the initial headaches! I'm not sure where you're seeing 'Completion'. Can you let me know a bit more about this?

As for your questions about reports, you will be able to see several different types of reports from the Dashboard including a Category Sales report. 

If you don't have any sales yet, I recommend exporting the Summary CSV file. Although you won't see any data until you start processing, you'll still be able to see what's included in the report. For example, you'll see that Category Sales includes the Items sold, Gross Sales, Refunds, Discounts, Net Sales, and Taxes.

To export a Summary CSV report:

1. Sign into your Square Dashboard.
2. Click Sales from the menu on the left-hand side.
3. Click on the name of the report you'd like to see, for example Category Sales.
4. Click Export and Summary CSV which you can open using Excel or another common spreadsheet program.

Below I'm including a few resources to help you get started with the Square. I hope these are helpful!

• Square Dashboard Overview
• Summaries and Reports from the Online Dashboard
• Advanced Reporting 

If you have any other questions let us know. 😀 

[TMG]

Thank you! I will try everything you suggest. Is it ok to download the report even if I tried the system with .01 ct to see how it worked or should I issue "a refund" to start with a clean plate?

i am really grateful for your input

[Helen]

👍 I'm happy to help!

It's up to you really—if you download a report before refunding your test sales they'll appear as normal cash sales in each report. 

If you download a report after you've refunded all of your test sales, they'll appear as sales that have been refunded in each report.

A 'normal' report would probably have some combination of both sales and refunds. So you always keep one or two test sales, and refund at least one before downloading a report. That way, you'd be able to see how both sales and refunds appear in a particular report. 

When you've finished reviewing the reports, you can refund your test sales once and for all! 

[kgaroh]

I have a small artisan coop where I sell several items (jewelry) for multiple artisans.   So I tried creating a modifier as each artisan and assigning these with each item (jewelry item).   In the transaction report the sales amount is not recorded by modifier (just by item).  If a customer buys multiple items with different artisans I cannot run a report by modifier to see how much each artisan made for the day. When I do I get all zeroes.  What do you suggest?  I tried categories as the artisans but couldn't assign multiple categories per item.   Each item appears to be able to have one category.  So as an example I have an item a necklace and I have 5 different women that make that necklace.  I can use the modifier (aritsan) but I cannot run a report for all the artisans (modifiers) and see how much they each sold.

[Helen]

@kgaroh I moved your post to this thread so you can see how another seller set up their artists using categories. @TMG Do you have any advice to share now that you've been using Square for a while? 😀

I agree that modifiers aren't useful when it comes to reporting, so you could create multiple variations for one item to track artist sales instead.

To do this: create one item, e.g. 'Necklaces' and then set up an item variation for each artist. Variations are typically used to track different price points like Small/Medium/Large but you could enter an artist's name and a different price for each variation (or the same price!).

Then when you select 'necklace' from the Point of Sale app at checkout, you can select which artist's necklace it is. You can use the Item Sales CSV report to track sales; you'll see the artist's name in the column under 'Price Point Name'.

Hope this helps but I do recommend to keep testing your set up and taking a look at any reports to make sure the information you need is available!