Multiple Vendors in one Shop Questions

[TheWitchesBrew]

Hello,

I am in the process of starting a shop with 20+ other vendors that I will be selling items for. I have read that I can separate them by categories in order to run reports monthly for payouts. One of my questions is, how do the fees work with multiple vendors on one slip? Does the report show for each vendor category what they paid for square fees for the month with their items? or how is this done/reflected. 

Thank you for any guidance on this question. And any helpful guidance on this type of model as well.

[TheRealChipA]

Hi there @TheWitchesBrew. I have looked at various Square standard reports and so far can’t find anything that will actually get you to where you want to be.

The Fees report does not allow for category filtering.  Nor does the Payment methods report. Nor does the Sales Summary. The Category Sales report does not show fees collected.  Nor does the Item Sales report.  All roads with standard reports lead to a dead end, so far.  There are also no CSVs you can export that give fees at the item level — only the transaction level.

This means I can only think of one workaround — you are going to have to download a couple of CSVs — the transactions CSV and the item details CSV — for the dates in question.  Then you will have to import those into Excel and link them so that your spreadsheet can calculate the fees for each item using the fee basis in the transactions file.  Then you’ll have to summarize those by category (which in your case is vendor).

Even if you do this, you still won’t get an exact fee.  This is because I assume any transaction can contain items from multiple vendors.  Square’s fee structure consists of the base fee (2.6%) + a swipe fee that is applied only once per transaction.  So you’ll have to prorate that swipe fee among each vendor in the transaction, as well.

Obviously, this means that you need to be comfortable with spreadheets and formulas — maybe even Power Query and Pivot Tables, which will make the task much easier and quicker.  If you aren’t, I can probably help you set something up offline.

Another easier quicker solution would be to run a category report for the desired period.  Then prorate all fees charged during that period based on each category’s percentage of sales.  That is obviously MUCH quicker than trying to do this at the item level, which is very complicated in the end.

I will say, though, that the reason Square doesn’t have this capability is that it wasn’t really built to do something like you are trying to do.  So anything we come up with will necessarily be a workaround.

[TheWitchesBrew]

Thanks so much for your reply.

I really appreciate it.

Would it make any sense to take total sales for the shop- take vendor sales individually and get the percent for each- and then divide square fees into the percent each vendor sold?

For example, (My numbers wont make sense, just go with me lol)

If the shop makes $4000 AND square fees were $200 

My vendors make $1000  (25%  of total sales)  =  $50/$200 for square fees

                              $700    (17.5%  of total sales)   = $35/$200 for square fees

                              $2000  (50%  of total sales)   = $100/$200 for square fees

                              $300   (7.5% of total sales)   = $15/$200 for square fees

Would that make any sense whatsoever? LOL

Thank you!!

[Candlestore]

@TheWitchesBrew ;

As @TheRealChipA has said this business model is not really setup for Square.

You have One Square account, selling for 20 vendors.  So who at the end of the month would be subject to the Sales tax?  The one with the main Square Account.  Now again as chip pointed out this can be calculated from Excel Spreedsheets that you export from Squares Transactions.  This will be work for someone.  

My suggestion(s) are :

1. maybe setup each Seller at your store as a Vendor rather than a Category  You can Pull Vendor Reports just like you can category Reports
2. The big difference is if you have 2 vendors selling similar Items you can still list them in the Same Category. Like T-shirts for example
3. The other thing you could do is on top of the fees Square and Sales tax that would have to be calculated you could just charge a % of sales to cover this.  If Vendor A had $2000 in sales Square fees average 3% say and Sales tax is 6% or about 9%... Charge your vendors 10% to keep it simple plus Rent based on the Square foot because you have rent of building plus utilities and other overhead for the building.

[TheWitchesBrew]

Thank you.

I was considering just adding a 3% to each vendors overall sales for the month to cover square fees. 

I will be responsible for remitting taxes for everyone through my square account.

I cant see Vendors on my square app. Do I need a different version?

[Candlestore]

@TheWitchesBrew ;

Yes according to this page : https://squareup.com/us/en/point-of-sale/retail/pricing 

You would need Square for Retail for Vendor management.  Sorry I missed this was for POS and not the Retail app.  But if your looking at using this for Vendors at your location, Currently for the upgrade its about $90 a month divided by 20 vendors would not even be a 5 upcharge to each vendor for your Backoffice fees and tracking their sales.

[semvaart]

We have a similar situation. 50 artists in a co-op gallery. We take a commission of the artist's price. Out of that commission we pay sales taxes, rent, etc as noted by Candlestore. We assign each artist a Square category. At month end, we pull a spreadsheet of the item list of what sold in each transaction, sort by category, apply the artists' percentage and sum each each category to pay our artists. We are able to make categories work with minimal spreadsheet follow up.

When we first looked into this, the "Vendor" support was only available if you used paid POS options and we were smaller then and economizing as much as we could.

[TheWitchesBrew]

Hmm.. trying to keep costs for all as low as can be.

I appreciate your support, time, & energy as I navigate this.

[TheRealChipA]

We are here as you try to figure it out. Don’t hesitate to reach out when you need to. 

[Jlisko]

I'm curious, what percentage of each item do you keep?