How to track vendor and booth sales in Square

If you run an antique mall, flea market or craft mall on Square, you need to know exactly what each booth sold so you can pay each vendor. Square rings the sales beautifully, but it does not split them by vendor for you. Here is the reliable way to track vendor and booth sales in Square, end to end.

Why Square alone does not give you per-vendor totals

Square is built around a single seller and a single catalog. Its reports answer "what did the store sell?", not "what did booth B03 sell, and what do I owe that vendor after commission and rent?". There is no native concept of a vendor, so there is nothing for Square to total by until you add it.

That is the one thing you have to get right before any of this works: a consistent way to tag every item (and every sale) with the vendor or booth it belongs to. Once each sale line carries a vendor code, turning Square data into per-vendor statements is just arithmetic. Without it, no tool can tell booth B03’s mug apart from booth B07’s.

Step by step

Five steps take you from a Square catalog to a payout figure for every vendor. The first two are setup you do once in Square; the rest repeat every reporting period.

Step 1 — Pick a vendor-coding convention in Square

Decide one way to tag every item with the vendor or booth it belongs to. A reporting category per vendor is the simplest reliable option on standard Square. A catalog custom attribute is the most robust if you are on Square Retail Plus. A SKU prefix works well if you already use SKUs. You only need one convention, applied consistently.

Step 2 — Apply the convention to every item

Go through your Square catalog and make sure each item carries its vendor code the same way. Gaps here are the main reason sales end up untracked, so it is worth doing once, properly. New items a vendor brings in get the same code before they go on the floor.

Step 3 — Pull your Square sales

Get the sale lines out of Square. The quickest start is the Square "Item Detail" CSV export from the Dashboard reports. For hands-off reporting you can instead connect Square directly over read-only OAuth so new sales flow in automatically.

Step 4 — Turn sales into per-vendor totals and statements

Group every sale line by its vendor code, then compute each payout as net sales minus your commission minus booth rent. This is the step Square does not do for you, and the one BoothSettle automates: it reads the vendor code off each line and produces a per-vendor statement you can hand over.

Step 5 — Handle the leftovers

Custom-amount (keyed price) sales have no catalog item, so attribute them with the vendor code in the checkout note. Anything that still matches no vendor lands on an "Unassigned" list you fix by hand, which keeps every statement complete and auditable.

The vendor-coding conventions in Step 1 follow a fixed priority order when a sale is read: a custom attribute wins over a category, a category over a SKU prefix, then the item name, and finally the sale note as a fallback. The full detail, with examples and which to pick, is in the encode a vendor guide.

Convention	Set it in Square	Best for
Category	One reporting category per vendor, named with the code	Simplest reliable option
Custom attribute	A catalog "vendor information" attribute on each item (Retail Plus)	Most robust
SKU prefix	SKU starts with the vendor code and a dash, e.g. `B03-001`	If you already use SKUs
Note	Type the vendor code in the sale note at checkout	Custom amounts & fallback

The math: from sales to payout

Once every line is attributed, each vendor’s payout is the same simple formula, run on their lines only:

★Net sales − commission − booth rent = payout. Net sales already account for discounts and refunds, so you are never paying out on money that came back.

Refunds, discounts and tips are handled along the way. Because the calculation starts from net sales, a discount is baked into the figure and a refund reduces that vendor’s net sales for the period. Tips are not part of a vendor’s product sales, so they never inflate a payout. BoothSettle runs this for every vendor and emails each one a monthly PDF statement, so you are not rebuilding spreadsheets each month.

Try it without changing anything

You can see this on your own numbers in minutes. Export a Square Item Detail CSV and drop it into the free tool — no account, no connection — and it will group sales by vendor and compute the statements. When you want it hands-off, connect Square over read-only OAuth and statements generate on a schedule. Plans run $49/month for Starter (up to 60 vendors) and $89/month for Plus, with a 30-day free trial. The CSV tool stays free.

Start for free

FAQ

Can Square show sales by vendor?

Only indirectly. Square can group sales by category and run custom reports, so you can approximate per-vendor totals if every item sits in its own vendor category. But Square will not subtract each vendor’s commission and booth rent, and it will not produce a per-vendor statement you can hand over. That calculation and the statement are what BoothSettle adds on top.

What is the easiest way to track booth sales in Square?

One Square reporting category per vendor, named with the vendor code. It works on standard Square with no add-ons, it is easy to audit, and every sale of that booth rolls up to the right vendor automatically.

Do I have to connect Square to track vendor sales?

No. You can start by uploading a Square Item Detail CSV export to the free tool, with no account and no OAuth. Connect Square directly later if you want new sales to sync on their own and monthly statements generated for you.

What about refunds, tips and discounts?

They are handled. BoothSettle works from net sales, so discounts are already reflected in the figure and a refund reduces that vendor’s net sales for the period. Tips are not part of a vendor’s product sales, so they do not inflate a payout.