Set and update unit costs
About setting and updating unit costs
Unit cost is the cost incurred to produce, purchase, or acquire a single unit of a product or service. It includes all relevant costs, such as materials, labor, and overhead. You can add unit costs to your item catalog in Square to produce more detailed reports with COGS (Cost of Goods Sold), and better calculate your margins.
Tracking stock and including a unit cost for item variations will ensure your reporting going forward will accurately reflect your cost of goods sold, profit, and profit margin.
Before you begin
There are three ways to add your unit costs:
Online bulk import: Learn how to bulk import items.
Manually update individual items: Learn how to create and edit items.
Receiving purchase orders: When you receive stock using a purchase order, the unit cost for items is automatically saved. Learn how to create, receive, or cancel purchase orders.
Stock adjustments that deduct from your inventory levels will credit or debit your COGS and Inventory Value (depending on the type of adjustment) based on a first in, first out (FIFO) accounting method. If the cost appears to be inaccurate, you can edit the cost of the original stock intake. As a result, you are unable to update the unit costs for adjustments that deduct from your stock levels — such as re-counts that adjust down, loss, damage, or theft stock adjustments.
Set up unit costs
Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Item library.
Select an existing item, or click Create item to add a new one.
Enter the item's unit cost. If receiving stock for ran item, any unit cost added will become the default unit cost.
Bulk edit unit cost for variations
Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Item library.
Select the relevant items, then click Edit items.
Scroll to Unit cost and enter the new unit costs.
Click Update variations.
Update missing unit costs and quantity
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Inventory management > History.
- Adjust the date to the relevant timeframe when you received stock.
- Select Missing Cost from the All Costs drop-down menu.
The Missing Cost filter will display a list of items that are not associated with a unit cost.
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Inventory management > History.
- Use the search and filter options to locate the receipt of the item.
- Click Add Cost and enter the unit cost > Save.
The Bulk Actions option appears when there are items with both missing vendors and missing costs. If only one of these actions is needed, the button will display either Review Missing Vendors or Review Missing Costs accordingly.
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Items & services (or Items & menus or Items & inventory) > Items > Inventory management > Item library.
- Go to Inventory Management and click History.
- Click Bulk Actions > Review Missing Costs.
- If items have default unit costs you can apply them, or click Review Missing Costs for a list view to manually enter unit costs.
For items with a cost associated at the variation level, you’ll see the option to Resolve Unit Costs for adjustments in the History tab.
If an item in your library is missing a unit cost, you’ll need to update each variation before you can bulk resolve missing costs from your History log.