Reports & Taxes

Reading your Square numbers on the tax report

Why Square sits outside the Combined Tax Summary, why its fees are real where Shopify’s are estimated, and what to add up yourself when you file.

1. 1THE ONE THING TO KNOW: Shopify is INSIDE the Combined Tax Summary on Reports → Tax. Square is NOT. The Total Revenue and Net Income at the top of that tab do not include a penny of your Square sales.
2. 2That is deliberate, not an oversight. Square reports its ACTUAL processing fees and refunds from its own payment records. Shopify does not report fees at all, so FairKeep estimates them at 2.9% + $0.30 per order.
3. 3Mixing the two would mean adding a measured number to an estimated one and presenting the result as a single figure. It would look tidier and be less true, so Square is kept separate and labelled.
4. 4WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU FILE: take the Combined Tax Summary figure, then add the Square net sales (minus refunds) from the Square tab. That total is your revenue.
5. 5Reports → Square shows the year: gross sales, discounts, net sales, tax collected, refunds and processing fees. The taxable revenue line is net sales minus refunds.
6. 6It also splits your Square takings into money taken AT A MARKET versus EVERYWHERE ELSE. A payment on a register linked to an event is already counted as that event’s income — adding it again would count it twice.
7. 7If everything shows under "Everywhere else", no register is linked to your shows. Open an event, link the register in the Square POS section, and the split starts working.
8. 8Reports → Shopify answers the same question for Shopify, but goes further: it shows your events and Shopify sales side by side and combines them with the overlap removed.
9. 9The Tax tab also carries a Square Sales section and a Square Sales Funnel. Same figures, shown alongside the rest of your tax numbers.
10. 10One more difference worth knowing: the new-versus-returning customer split is not comparable between the two. Shopify uses a customer’s lifetime order count; Square works it out within the 90 days fetched.
11. 11If Square cannot be read at all, the page says so rather than showing zeroes. "No sales" and "the connection failed" are different answers, and on a tax page the difference matters.

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