Square Sales Reports
Using the Item Detail CSV to count book sales from your Square terminal
If you sell books in person with Square, at a book fair, a launch event, a market stall or your own shop, those sales can count toward your authors' royalties just like your Shopify or Squarespace orders. Square doesn't send statements, so you export your sales from the Square Dashboard and upload the file to Familiar.
The Export You Need
Item Detail CSV (items-<start>-<end>.csv)
One row for every item sold or refunded, with its date, category, item name, variation, quantity, SKU, GTIN, gross sales and net sales. This is the file Familiar reads. Because every row has its own date, one export can cover several months and each sale is filed under the right one.
Not the Item Sales Summary (item-sales-summary-<start>-<end>.csv)
The summary adds up each item over the whole date range and has no dates, so Familiar can't tell which month a sale belongs to. If you upload it, Familiar will ask for the Item Detail CSV instead.
How to Export It
Open Transactions in the Square Dashboard
Sign in to the Square Dashboard on a computer. Exports aren't available in the Square Point of Sale app. Go to Transactions, which Square files under Payments or Orders & payments depending on your account.
Choose the Date Range and Locations
Pick the dates you want, usually a full month or the days of an event. If you have more than one Square location, include every location where you sold books.
Export the Item Detail CSV
Click Export and choose Item Detail CSV. Square downloads a file named like items-2026-10-01-2026-10-31.csv. Don't open and re-save it in Excel first, which can reformat dates and drop the leading digits of ISBNs.
Upload to Familiar
Upload the .csv file. Familiar recognizes Square's file names and selects Square for you; if it doesn't, choose it from the distributor list. You don't pick a month.
Set Up Your Square Items So Books Are Recognized
Square sells anything, so Familiar has to pick the books out of everything else on the register. A row counts as a book when:
- • its GTIN or SKU is an ISBN (10 or 13 digits). Familiar uses the ISBN to match the sale to the book in your catalog, or
- • the item is in a Square category named Books. Without an ISBN, Familiar matches the item by its title.
Everything else, such as T-shirts, tote bags and tickets, is skipped. The most reliable setup is to put each edition's ISBN in the GTIN field of its Square item variation, with a separate variation for each format (Hardcover, Paperback). Familiar reads the format from the ISBN when the book's details in Familiar have it, otherwise from a variation named Hardcover, Paperback or Ebook.
How Familiar Reads the Export
- • Gross Sales is the price before discounts and comps, and Net Sales is what the customer paid for the item after them. Familiar records Net Sales as your net receipts and works out the discount from the two.
- • Sales tax is left out. It isn't revenue, and Square reports it in its own column.
- • Rows with the event type Refund are recorded as returns and subtracted from that month's sales.
- • Each row is filed under the month of its Date, in the time zone your Square account reports in.
- • The export shows amounts with a currency symbol but no currency code. A $ is read as your royalty base currency when that is a dollar currency (US, Canadian, Australian), and as US dollars otherwise. £, € and ¥ are read as pounds, euros and yen.
The Item Detail CSV doesn't include Square's card processing fees, which Square reports per payment rather than per item. If your contracts pay royalties on receipts after fees, account for them as an expense in Familiar.
Troubleshooting
“This is a Square Item Sales Summary”: you exported from the Item Sales report. Export the Item Detail CSV from Transactions instead.
“No book sales were found”: none of the items had an ISBN in GTIN or SKU, or were in a Books category. Add the ISBNs to your Square items, or move them into a Books category, and export again.
“Mixes amounts in more than one currency”: export each Square account or currency separately.
A book shows up twice: the Square item title differs from the title in Familiar and the item has no ISBN. Add the ISBN in Square, or add the Square title as an alternate title on the book.