Best Practices

Required and Recommended Best Practices for Using Square with the Cornell Farmers Market Price Reporting Project

For the Cornell Farmers Market Price Reporting Project, data from numerous farms are combined for analysis. Therefore, it is most helpful for the research team to receive data in a somewhat consistent form from all farms. To that end, what follows is a guide outlining required and recommended best practices for project participants.

Our team can help you! We are ready to help you set up your Square over a Zoom call or in-person, just ask for help. In most cases, following the best practices will only take a few minutes to set up initially. We recommend logging in to Square online (versus via the app) for the easiest navigation of locations, categories, product names, and units. 

Locations

Use of the Locations feature is required for participation in the Cornell Farmers Market Price Reporting project. 

Square has a “locations” feature that allows you to create specific locations. Each time that you log-in, you will select the location at which you are selling. Then every transaction and item sold during that session will be tagged with the location. This is particularly helpful to the research team when farms have 2 markets with overlapping days/hours. 

We created a video to guide you through setting up Locations. You can view it here:

If you wish to use different prices at each Location, this video shows you how:

Product Categories

The use of Square Categories is recommended, but not required for participation. 

Square allows you to create categories into which you can sort your products. In the exported data reports, the category name is included in the data for each product sold. This can be a helpful clue for the research team to understand your products better. For example, a product called “ribs” is mysterious, but less so when it is in a category named “Beef.” The category name is up to you, but commonly used examples are: Beef, Chicken, Veggies, Fruits, Baked Goods, Mushrooms, or even greater detail, such as: Berries and Greens.

After we receive your data, our team assigns every product to a Product Category based on our “Point of Sale Product & Category Naming Protocol” which is routinely updated and can be found at the link below.

View Point of Sale Product & Category Naming Protocol

Item Naming and Units

The use of clearly named products, including the unit name for items sold “by the each,” is required for participation in the Cornell Farmers Market Price Reporting project. 

When you create an item in Square, clarity is key. For items sold by the “each” we need to know the unit, which can easily be included in the product name. Examples of units for items sold by-the-each are: quart, pint, bunch, bag, gallon, etc.. For example, a quart of cherry tomatoes could be named “Cherry Tom QRT” or “Tom CHRY QT.” Either is much clearer than a product simply named “cherries.” Including the unit in the name allows better pricing reports, so we don’t combine the price for pints of cherry tomatoes and quarts of cherry tomatoes.

If you sell items by-the-each, such as baby greens in bags, that are a set weight (not weighed at check-out), such as “1/2 LB Bag” or "Asparagus 1 LB Bunch" it is helpful to include those details in the name. Items that are sold by weight (by the LB) and weighed at check-out are set up in Square differently and our team can see this in the data (in the "unit" column).

Please include the name of the unit in your product name. If you name an item with a long name, you can still set a shorter version for what appears on the actual “square” on the grid that you use at checkout.

Table 1: Suggested abbreviations for units

Full Name	Possible abbreviations include:
Quart	QT, QRT
Pint	PT, PNT
Half Pint	HPNT, 1/2PINT, 1/2 PT, 1/2PNT, 1/2P, HALF PT, HALF PNT
Bushel	BU, BUS, BUSH, BSHL
Half Bushel	1/2B, 1/2BU, 1/2BUSH, HBU, HALF BU
Each	EACH, EA
Head	HD
Bag	BAG, BG
Bunch	BU, BNCH
Pound	#, LB, PND (for items already weighed and sold by the each).
Ounce	OZ,
Dozen	DZ, DZN, DOZ
Half Dozen	1/2DOZ, 1/2DZ, 1/2DZN, HALF DOZ, HALF DZ, HALF DZN
Gallon	GAL, GLN
Half Gallon	1/2 GAL, 1/2 GLN, HALF GAL, HALF GLN
Peck	PCK
Half Peck	1/2 PCK, HALF PCK

Items should be named in a way that is beneficial to the farm, but also clear to the research team. When naming a product, consider how you will want to review your sales data to inform decision making. For example, if comparing the sales of Red Beets and Golden Beets is important, create either two items or one item with two variations. This gives more opportunity for analysis than if all beets are sold under the simple name “beets.”

When naming products, also consider the check-out process and your total number of items. Using variations (described in the next section) may help speed check-out or hinder it, depending on your situation.

Variations/Price Point

Use of variations is not required for participation. 

Square data output lists variations of a product in the “price point” column of the Excel file. You can use “variations” to set different sizes, varieties, and flavors, basically a way to include more information about a product. You can also set different prices for each variation of a product. 

 For example, a product named “cream cheese” could have price points/variations that include “garlic & chive” or “maple” or, alternatively, price points could be “8 oz brick” and “12 oz brick.”  Additionally, naming of variations could result in: “8 oz garlic & chive,” “12 oz garlic & chive,” “8 oz maple,” and “12 oz maple.” There are at least 3 scenarios of how to create products and variations for this example and any of them are acceptable for the project. 

Product Name(s)	Variations
Scenario 1: Cream Cheese	Maple 8 oz Maple 12 oz Garlic & Chive 8 oz Garlic & Chive 12 oz
Scenario 2:  Cream Cheese 8 oz Cream Cheese 12 oz	Maple Garlic & Chive Maple Garlic & Chive
Scenario 3:  Cream Cheese Maple Cream Cheese Garlic Chive	8 oz 12 oz 8 oz 12 oz