Square CSV Exports: Transactions, Items, and Catalog

Square Speaks Spreadsheet Fluently

Square Dashboard exports let cafés, retailers, and service businesses pull transactions, item sales, catalog, team tips, and customers as CSV. Owners in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia use those files for inventory reviews, accountant handoffs, and ledger imports — often discovering that deposits never equal gross sales because of fees, tips, taxes, and refunds.

This guide covers which report to download, how to clean it, and how to map it without double-counting bank deposits.

Which Square CSV Do You Need?

Pick the report that matches the question.

Step-by-Step: Export Transactions for Bookkeeping

Monthly close path used by most small shops.

• In Square Dashboard, open Reports (or Transactions) and set the date range in the location’s timezone.
• Export CSV for the filtered view.
• Archive the raw file with location name + period in the filename.
• Open a working copy in the Online CSV Editor; drop summary/total footer rows if present.
• Separate Gross Sales, Discounts, Tax, Tips, Square Fees, and Net Totals into clear columns.
• Reconcile deposits to payout/deposit reports — not to gross sales.
• Map cleaned rows into QuickBooks/Xero or an Excel workbook your accountant expects.

Date,Time,Gross Sales,Discounts,Tax,Tips,Fees,Net Total,Payment Method,Customer Name
2026-05-03,14:02,42.00,0.00,3.47,5.00,-1.52,48.95,Card,Jane D
2026-05-03,14:18,12.50,-2.00,0.87,0.00,-0.41,10.96,Cash,

Gross, Tax, Tips, Fees, Net

Square’s economics are easy to mis-book.

• Gross sales ≈ item revenue before discounts (confirm Square’s definition for your report).
• Tax collected is a liability until remitted — not income.
• Tips are typically payable to staff (liability) until paid out.
• Processing fees are expenses.
• Bank deposits are transfers from Square clearing — not a second sale.

Catalog and Items CSV

Bulk menu edits are powerful and brittle.

• Export catalog first; keep Square’s item tokens/IDs intact for updates.
• Preserve SKU and GTIN fields as text so leading zeros survive Excel.
• Modifiers and variation rows must follow Square’s template — do not invent columns.
• Re-import with a small pilot set before a full menu rewrite.
• UK/AU/CA shops: confirm tax rates attached to items match the location settings.

Regional Notes: US, UK, CA, AU

Same Dashboard patterns; different tax and date habits.

• US: sales tax columns vary by location; multi-state sellers need location-level exports.
• UK: VAT configuration lives in Square account settings — CSV will not invent a VAT return.
• Canada: GST/HST/PST columns depend on province setup.
• Australia: GST-inclusive pricing is common; confirm whether amounts are tax-inclusive before Xero mapping.
• Normalize dates to ISO when sharing files between US and UK bookkeepers.

Excel Pitfalls

Square IDs and phone numbers are fragile in desktop Excel.

• Import ID and phone columns as text.
• Remove currency symbols if any report localized them as text.
• European Excel users opening US comma CSV: use Data → From Text/CSV and force comma delimiter.
• Save cleaned UTF-8 CSV before uploading elsewhere.

Square → QuickBooks / Xero

Prefer a clearing-account pattern like Stripe/PayPal.

• Create Square Clearing, Square Fees, Sales Tax Payable, and Tips Payable as needed.
• Post sales and tax from item/transaction summaries.
• When the deposit hits the bank feed, clear against Square Clearing.
• Explain residual differences with fees, disputes, and timing.
• Link related guides: QuickBooks CSV and Xero CSV for importer details.

Common Mistakes

Shop-floor classics.

• Mixing multiple locations in one total without a Location column filter.
• Treating cash and card the same for deposit reconciliation.
• Editing catalog CSV item IDs “for readability.”
• Using a transactions export as a catalog re-import file.
• Closing the month on sale date while the bank shows next-week deposits — without documenting both.

Best Practices

Make Square close repeatable.

• Export transactions and deposits for the same period every close.
• Archive raw CSVs per location.
• Pilot catalog uploads.
• Document tip and tax account mapping once per legal entity.
• Clean PII-aware customer exports in the browser when freelancers help.

Why Use Convert CSV Online?

Convert CSV Online is free, browser-based, and requires no account for everyday conversions. Inspect Square exports in the Online CSV Editor, convert to Excel for accountants, and keep client sales CSVs in a client-side workflow on Windows, macOS, or Linux.

Conclusion

Square CSV reports are trustworthy when you separate sales, tax, tips, fees, and deposits. Export the right report, clean deliberately, and reconcile the bank to payouts — not to gross volume.