Bulk Tagging
Bulk tagging Square deposits on the Ambrook Ledger is the most straightforward way to account for Square sales.
To get started, login into your Square profile and download both the “Category Sales” and “Sales by Payment Method” reports. You should set the date range on the export to whatever period you plan to do bulk tagging for. This can be monthly, quarterly, or even annually depending on how up to date you want your books to be over the course of the year. Here is an example of what the CSVs for both exports should look like.
Once you download the reports, you are going to use them to determine the splits that will be used on your income and enterprise tags, as well as to account correctly for non credit card sales.
Example
Here is a picture of a sample Category Sales export, with a Total row added. For the purpose of this example let’s assume these are sales for January 2024.
In this example let’s assume your business exclusively uses Square at the Farmers Market and cares about tracking income across four enterprises: Pork, Chicken, Beef, and Produce. By doing some spreadsheet work using the Net Sales and Taxes columns, you can calculate the splits that would be applied on the category and enterprise tags.
Next, you can use the “Sales by Payment Method” report to determine what needs to be accounted for by cards, cash, and checks. Going from the below export:
To the following splits by payment method:
With this prep work done, the next steps are:
Tag credit card deposits:
Go to the Ledger and filter to January 2024 and only transactions with a positive amount (deposits).
They would then type Square into the search bar and select the checkbox next to all the deposits with “Square” in the description.
Selecting “Tag” at the bottom of the screen, they would then apply the above percent splits on category and enterprise to the Square deposits, which will cover all credit card sales.
Tag check deposits:
Determine if the check was deposited individually or as part of a bundled deposit to the bank.
If deposited as an individual check, find it in the ledger and use the same income and enterprise tag splits.
If part of a bundled deposit, find the deposit in the ledger, create a line item for $50.00 representing that individual check, and then apply the category and enterprise tags to that line item.
Tag cash deposits:
If your business uses a “cash on hand” balance sheet account, create a new cash transaction for $244.00 and use the same splits as above.
If your business just tags cash when it’s deposited in the bank, you should determine when the cash was deposited and tag that entry with the predetermined splits.
If the deposit was for a larger amount than the cash sales (e.g. there was cash from other sources) you should make a line item for $244.00 and apply the tags to that, similar to how checks were handled.
Following these steps can help you account for your Square sales in a way that is not overly time consuming but still gets your books in order for Schedule F filings. If you want to talk through your own business using actual data you can reach out via Ambrook Support.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I account for Taxes?
Tax collections are managed directly in your point of sale system, so you’ll need to get in touch with Square or your accountant to determine if you need to be collecting taxes.
How do I account for tips?
If you want to track tips, you will need to create an income category tag for them and then include that total when you are calculating your category tag splits. This can be a little more complicated, so reach out to Ambrook Support if you have questions.
How do I account for the credit card fees?
This accounting method doesn’t allow you to track credit card fees easily, if you want to do that you’ll have to either tag deposits individually or use the sales invoicing method.
How do I account for payments with the method “other”?
This varies on a case by case basis, but these are often payments you marked as completed over Venmo or Cash app. If this is the case, you need to transfer those funds to your bank account, and then tag that deposit in your ledger.