Square default unit cost missing? Find and fill it
Items with no default unit cost leave gaps in your Square cost of goods sold report. How to find them and fill the costs from a supplier file.
Square works out cost of goods sold, profit and profit margin from the unit cost on each variation. An item with no cost still sells like any other. The gap only shows up later, as cost of goods sold and margin numbers you can't trust.
Where a missing cost can sit
Square keeps a cost in two places. The default unit cost lives on each variation in your item library. Every delivery you book in also records a unit cost of its own. When stock goes out, Square takes it first in, first out, and the cost of the batch that left is what lands in cost of goods sold.
So a gap in the item library and a gap in your stock history are two separate jobs. Filling one leaves the other as it was.
Find items with no unit cost
For stock you already received, use the History log. In the Dashboard, go to Items, then Inventory management, then History. Set the dates to the period you want, then pick Missing Cost from the All Costs menu. The list shows the stock you received with no unit cost attached.
For the item library, export it and look down the Default Unit Cost column. A blank cell is a variation with no default cost. Sort by that column in your spreadsheet and the blanks collect at the bottom, where you can count them.
Fill the costs from a supplier file
For ten items, type the costs in. Bulk edit in the item library takes up to 250 variations at a time, which covers a small shop. Past that, the numbers are already in your supplier's price list, and an import moves them across in one go.
Start from your own Square export, so the import updates the items you already have. Load it into the Square tool with the price list. The tool matches rows by SKU, then GTIN, then the name, with capitals, punctuation and extra spaces ignored. A matched item that has no cost in Square shows Not set under Old cost and New cost under Cost change, and it counts as a cost change like any other.
Open the Square tool to try it with your own file.
| SKU | TT-2210 |
|---|---|
| name | Linen tea towel |
| old cost | Not set |
| new cost | 3.40 |
| cost change | New cost |
Check the unit before you approve anything. A lot of price lists quote a case. If a case of 12 costs 40.80, the unit cost is 3.40. The tool uses the number in the column you mapped as Unit cost, so divide case prices in the file before you load it.
Approve the rows and download the file. Your approved costs go into the Default Unit Cost column of your own export. Import that file from the Dashboard, the same place you exported it from.
Related guide: Update Square unit costs from a supplier spreadsheet
Items the supplier doesn't list
One price list covers what one supplier sells you. Items from other suppliers, and anything you make yourself, stay blank after the import. Repeat the steps with each supplier's list. What is left after that is usually short enough to type in or bulk edit.
Fix the history too
A default cost helps from today on. It does not reach back to stock that came in with no cost. Square asks you to set the cost on every variation first. Then go to History and choose Review Missing Costs (under Bulk Actions if vendors are missing too). Square offers to apply your default costs to those old deliveries, or gives you a list to type costs into.
If the stock came in on a purchase order, the history entry links to that order, and you can correct the cost there. Some entries stay as they are. Square does not let you change the cost on stock that left through a recount down, loss, damage or theft. If one of those looks wrong, edit the cost on the delivery that first brought the stock in.
Keep new items from starting blank
Receiving stock on a purchase order saves the unit cost for you, and a cost you enter while receiving becomes the item's default. When you add new items from a supplier file, map the cost column at the same time.