title: “Square”

This guide covers the Square POS module. If your gallery has not switched it on (the Owner does that in Settings → Extensions), this page will not match what you see — skip it for now.

Square

For gallery staff. Connect your gallery’s Square account, get your artwork into the Square catalog, and work the three screens that sales come back on.

The card is under Settings → Square Integration, and it says what it is for at the top: Connect the gallery’s Square account. CartonCrew pushes the artwork catalog to Square and records sales from the register and the online store.

The one rule to hold onto: a work that is not in your Square catalog still sells — as a plain line item with a name and a price and nothing to match on. The money arrives, and no sale, no artist and no payout are recorded against it. Most of this guide is about not letting that happen, and about what to do on the day it does.

Money going the other way — what you owe an artist and how they are paid — is Artist payouts. This guide does not repeat it.

Importing your existing Square catalog first (read-only)

If your gallery already sells through Square, its catalog there holds the pictures, prices and descriptions of the works on your wall. You can bring those into CartonCrew before you connect, matched to the works you have already entered. Nothing is sent back to Square.

Settings → Square Integration → Import from Square (read-only) → Read my Square catalog. Only an Owner or Admin sees this card, and it is for a gallery whose Square is not yet connected.

• Square is never changed. You sign in on Square’s own screen, which asks only to read your items. Square refuses any change made with that permission. CartonCrew also refuses to send anything but a read, and it uses that sign-in once, to read the catalog, and then throws it away.
• You review before anything happens. The review has four parts:
  • Matched: one CartonCrew work has the same title. These are approved; untick any you do not want.
  • Needs your decision: more than one work could match, the two prices disagree, or the Square item has several variations. Choose the work, and whether to keep the CartonCrew price or use Square’s.
  • Not in CartonCrew: skip it, or create it as a new work for the artist you choose.
  • Already linked: nothing to do. A work in Recently deleted is never offered as a match and cannot be chosen to link; a link chosen before the work was deleted is not applied, and the item says so. Restore the work first.
• Apply fills in, it never overwrites. A work gains the Square picture, price and description only where it has none, apart from a price you chose to take from Square.
• The Square picture loses its white padding. A Square catalog image is a square file, so a wider or taller photo comes padded to a square with white. That white band is cut off as the picture is copied in, so the work shows at the photo’s own proportions on your website; a thin white edge, and a cream, grey or black border, are kept. The rule in full is in the Studio Website guide, under A white border around the picture itself is trimmed off.
• Keep the page open while Apply runs. Apply works through your items in rounds of about 25, and the card says “Keep this page open until Apply finishes.” If you close the tab or reload, the browser asks whether you are sure. If you click to another CartonCrew page or press Back, the card asks instead: “Apply is still running. If you leave, it pauses; press Apply again to carry on.” Press Stay to let it finish, or Leave anyway. Leaving loses nothing: the items already applied stay applied, and pressing Apply again carries on with the rest (within the 24 hours an import lasts).
• When you then connect Square, the same items are updated rather than duplicated. Your Square items take CartonCrew’s title, description, price and Label ID as their SKU. An item with several variations keeps one and the others are removed, and stock is set to 1. An import you leave unapplied expires after 24 hours; Discard import ends it at once.

Connecting Square

Connect Square, Reconnect Square, Disconnect, Push catalog to Square and Retry are all admin-only buttons. Other staff can look at the card; they cannot act on it.

1. Go to Settings → Square Integration.
2. Press Connect Square.
3. You land on Square’s own consent screen, where you sign in to the Square account you want to connect and approve the access. You are asked to sign in even if the browser is already signed in to a Square account — that is deliberate, so you connect the gallery’s account rather than whichever one happened to be open.
4. Square sends you back to the same screen you started on. A green Square connected. message means it worked. Square connection failed — please try again. means it did not, and nothing was stored.

The card under the fold says it plainly: One Square account per organization. Connecting authorizes on Square’s own consent screen; CartonCrew never sees your Square password.

Connecting also pushes your catalog. When you land back on the card after approving the connection, the push starts on its own and you watch it go — the same progress you get from the Push catalog to Square button, because it is the same thing. A large catalog takes a few passes; leave the page open until it finishes.

Two things worth knowing:

• If your catalog is already in Square, nothing is pushed. Reconnecting to pick up a new permission does not re-send hundreds of works.
• If you close the tab part way through, the rest is not sent. Nothing is lost or duplicated — press Push catalog to Square when you come back and it carries on. The card always tells you how many works are not in Square yet; see Pushing the catalog. Do not treat a healthy connection as proof the catalog is up — that number is the proof.

What the card shows once you are connected

Before you connect, if your gallery is on Square sandbox

A gallery that is still on Square’s sandbox — which is every gallery before go-live — has one extra step, and skipping it produces a blank page rather than an error.

Open your Square Developer Console, find the seller test account, and press Launch. Do it in the same browser you are using for CartonCrew. Then come back and press Connect Square.

Square will not let a sandbox test account approve a connection until it has been launched that way. It is Square’s rule, not ours, and it does not apply to a live Square account. The settings card says so too, so you should not have to remember it.

Reconnecting

Reconnect Square is the same button and the same consent screen as connecting. It does not delete anything, and it does not create a second account — there is one Square account per gallery, and reconnecting refreshes the one you have. Use it when:

• The badge reads expired or error and the card warns The Square connection needs reauthorization — reconnect below to keep sales flowing in. CartonCrew renews its own authorization quietly in the background; this banner means the renewal was refused, usually because the authorization was revoked at the Square end.
• The card warns The online store needs new Square permissions (orders + payments). Reconnect Square below to enable web checkout. Your connection was made before those permissions existed. Until you reconnect, the online store cannot take checkout.
• The card warns Square is not tracking stock for your works. This is the one to act on quickly. Every work is one of a kind, so CartonCrew tells Square there is exactly one of each — that is what makes Square mark a piece sold out the moment it sells, in the Square app and in your online store. Until you reconnect, a piece that has already sold stays listed as available in Square, and a second buyer can reach checkout for it.

If you connect a different Square account

Everything above is about reconnecting the same account. Connecting a different one — a new Square account, or your real account after a sandbox trial — is a bigger change, because your catalog lives in the account, not in CartonCrew.

Your works are not in the new account yet. They are still sitting in the old one, which you can no longer reach from here.

Press Push catalog to Square once, after you reconnect. That run puts every available work into the new account. You will see a count you do not normally see:

128 pushed · 40 unchanged · 300 moved to this Square account

moved to this Square account means CartonCrew found the work pointing at the account you left and put it into the one you are on now. Expect a large number the first time and zero every time after — if it is still large on the second run, something is wrong and it is worth asking.

Two things you do not have to do. You do not have to delete anything first: a work that is already in the new account is recognized by its SKU and updated rather than added twice. And you do not have to work out which pieces moved — the run does that, and the count tells you how many.

Until you run it, two things quietly do not work for those pieces. They are not in the register’s search, so they cannot be rung up by name; and a sale of one lands in Unmatched payments instead of against the artist, because the payment names a catalog entry CartonCrew does not recognize.

Disconnecting

CartonCrew asks you to confirm first, and tells you what stops working, because this is the one button on the card that takes your gallery offline for payments. You almost never need it. If the card is warning you about missing permissions, use Reconnect Square instead — it refreshes the account you already have, and nothing stops working in between.

The moment you disconnect:

• the register stops taking cards. A Terminal at the desk will not complete a sale.
• your online store stops taking checkout.
• artwork stops syncing, so stock counts and receipts stop updating.

Coming back is not as quick as leaving. You have to go through Square’s consent screen again, and if your gallery is still on sandbox you must launch the seller test account from the Developer Console first — otherwise that screen comes back blank.

Disconnect does two things, in this order:

1. It asks Square to revoke the gallery’s authorization.
2. It clears the stored authorization at this end and marks the connection revoked — whether or not step 1 succeeded. A Square outage must never leave live credentials sitting here that you believe are gone.

The card goes back to reading No Square account connected.

What disconnecting does not do. It does not delete anything you have already recorded: your sales, your sale alerts, your unmatched payments and your artwork all stay exactly as they are. It also does not empty the Square catalog — the items already pushed are still in your Square account, and CartonCrew simply stops updating them. Reconnecting later picks up where you left off; push the catalog again once you have.

If you want to use the register: reconnect once

If your gallery has the Point of Sale module and you go to Settings → Point of Sale, you may see a Reconnect needed notice. It is not a fault and nothing is broken.

Selling on a Square Terminal needs two permissions from Square that did not exist when your account was first connected, and Square only grants a permission at the moment you connect. So a connection made before the register shipped cannot pair a Terminal, however healthy it looks everywhere else.

The fix is one button: go to Settings → Square Integration and press Connect Square again. Your catalog, your sales history, your payouts and your online store are all untouched — reconnecting adds the two permissions and changes nothing else.

We say it here, on the card, rather than letting you find out at the till with a customer waiting.

How you find out a connection has gone bad

You do not have to. CartonCrew asks Square once a day whether your connection is still good, for every gallery, and the card tells you what it heard.

Under the permissions list you will see one of three things:

• Permissions last confirmed with Square on . Everything is fine, and the tick list below it is what Square says today rather than what it said when you first connected.
• Last check failed: . In Square’s own words. If Square has stopped accepting the connection entirely, the status changes to expired and the reconnect notice appears.
• Permissions have not been confirmed with Square yet. The daily check has not run for you yet. It is not a fault, and it is not a pass either — the ticks are showing what was granted when you connected.

That last distinction is the reason this exists. The permission ticks were only ever a record of what Square agreed to on the day you pressed Connect. If somebody removed CartonCrew’s access from inside your own Square dashboard, the ticks stayed green and nothing said otherwise until a person tried to use it and got a blank page.

A bad day at Square is not the same as a bad connection: if Square is unreachable, or busy, the check says so and changes nothing. Only Square actually refusing your connection marks it expired.

If you want receipts to name the volunteer: reconnect once

A Square receipt for a register sale can say who made it. If yours reads

Sale attributed to: Untracked team member

then your Square connection does not yet include permission to see your staff directory, and Settings → Point of Sale will say so.

It is the same remedy as above and the same button: Settings → Square Integration, Connect Square. Two things are worth knowing:

• Nobody has to re-enter their PIN. Everyone who already holds a register PIN is added to your Square staff directory as part of reconnecting. That also covers the case where you set PINs before you connected Square at all.
• Only the name on the receipt changes. Sales, commissions, payouts and your catalog work identically either way — CartonCrew has always recorded who rang each sale, and still does. This is about what Square prints.

What crosses into your Square account is a first name, a last name, a Team member ID, the volunteer’s phone number (from their artist record, or their volunteer record if they do not exhibit) and the job Member with no pay rate. No email address: Square cannot email your volunteers, which is deliberate — they work the till through CartonCrew, not through Square.

Why the phone and the job go across

Square’s Dashboard will not let you give a team member permissions or a personal passcode until the profile has a phone number or an email and a job. Without them every volunteer’s page says “complete setup” and you type the details in by hand. CartonCrew sends the phone and creates the job Member (once, in your Square account) so the profile is complete the moment the volunteer appears. A volunteer with no phone on file is still created; add the phone to their artist or volunteer record and press Add to Square on their row (open Settings in the sidebar, then the Point of Sale tab) and CartonCrew completes the Square profile. The same button completes volunteers added before this change.

The one field that is filled in is the Team member ID, which reads as their initials and a number CartonCrew gives them — so the first volunteer your gallery adds, Jane Whelan, reads JW-0001, and the next person with the same initials reads JW-0002.

It is there so a human can tell two volunteers with the same initials apart in the Square directory, and so every sale is tied to one person rather than to a name. It contains nothing from anybody’s phone number or email, and Square still has no way to contact anybody.

Several things follow from how it is built:

• It never changes. The number is given once, the first time the person is added to Square, and it stays the same when their name, their phone number or their PIN changes — even if they remove their PIN and set a new one later. Past sales carry this ID, so it must keep pointing at the same person.
• A number is never given to anybody else. Each gallery has its own numbers, starting at 0001. When a volunteer leaves, their number stays theirs; the next person always gets a new one.
• Everybody gets one, including a desk helper with no artist record and no phone number on file.
• Pressing Add to Square on somebody already listed is safe and useful. It does not create a second person. It fills in or corrects their Team member ID, and tells you what it is. If nothing needed changing, it says they were already linked and writes nothing.
• Volunteers added before this change carry an older Team member ID made from their phone number. Reconnecting Square (Settings → Square Integration, Connect Square), or pressing Add to Square for one person, replaces it with their new one.

Removing somebody’s PIN deactivates them in Square rather than deleting them, so receipts for sales they already made still carry their name.

What an unpushed work actually costs you

The Square card counts the available works that are not in your Square catalog. What that costs depends on WHERE the work sells, and the two are not the same:

• Online. A work that is not in Square sells as a plain line item. The payment cannot be matched back to the piece, so the money arrives and no sale and no artist payout are recorded. This is the one that loses you work.
• At the register. The work still sells. It is rung by name at its price, and CartonCrew records the sale and the artist’s commission either way — the till does not depend on Square knowing about the piece. What the work is missing is its place in Square’s own reporting and inventory.

So push the catalog, but do not read the number as money at risk at the desk.

Works with no Label ID cannot be pushed at all, and the card counts them separately for that reason: pressing the button will not move them. Give them a Label ID first.

The push happens in rounds, and that is normal

Push catalog to Square does not send everything in one request. A large catalog would exceed the time a single request is allowed, so the push goes in rounds and CartonCrew continues on its own until it is finished. A progress bar shows how many works are done out of how many there are.

A round can take up to a minute, so a pause is not a hang.

If something interrupts it — a dropped connection, Square being briefly unavailable — the screen says how many works had already been done and offers to carry on from where it stopped. It does not start again at the top of the catalog, and the works already pushed are not lost.

Pressing the button again is always safe. A work that has not changed since it was last pushed is skipped, so a second run costs nothing.

Pushing the catalog

Each work goes to Square named Artist - Title (for example James Whelan - Ceramic Mug), with the Label ID as the SKU, so the Register’s search finds it by title, by artist or by Label ID. (Square’s search reads the item name and SKU only, never the description.)

Square requires every item to have at least one variation, because the variation is what carries the price, the SKU and the stock count. A work has exactly one, and CartonCrew names it Regular, Square’s default name, so Square shows the item on its own rather than with a separate variation line under it.

A work reaches Square automatically when you create or edit it. Push catalog to Square is for everything else: a gallery that has just connected, an imported catalog, or a stretch where Square was refusing pushes.

Pictures go to Square as JPEG, PNG or GIF. Square takes no other format. When you upload a work’s picture, CartonCrew keeps a JPEG, PNG or GIF as it is, and your browser turns a WebP, AVIF or HEIC picture into a JPEG before it is sent, so every new picture is one Square accepts. A picture saved before this (for example a WebP) is not sent to Square: the work is still sent with its title, price, SKU and stock count, and it is listed as failed with Picture could not be sent to Square - upload a JPEG or PNG. Upload the picture again on the work (picking the same WebP file is fine; it is converted as it uploads), then press Retry.

Only works whose status is Available are pushed. A work that stops being available is hidden from the register rather than removed, so it stops appearing when staff search for it by title or SKU — and un-hides again if it becomes available. A work you delete in CartonCrew is archived in Square, not deleted (see Deleting works that are in Square below).

Deleting works that are in Square

Deleting a work in CartonCrew never deletes its item from Square. The item is archived instead: it stops appearing at the register and in Square’s item search, and it stays in Square, where you can un-archive it at any time. The work itself goes to Recently deleted for 7 days (sidebar → Artwork Catalog → Recently deleted), and Restore there brings the Square item back too. This matters most after Import from Square, because the item linked to a work may be one you created in Square long before CartonCrew.

Deleting one work. Sidebar → Artwork Catalog → Delete on the work’s row. A dialog says the work goes to Recently deleted for 7 days, what else is attached to it (inquiries, shows, homepage features, its Square link) and that its Square item will be archived. Only an Admin or the Owner can delete. If you really do want an item gone from Square for good, delete it in Square itself.

Deleting several works. Sidebar → Artwork Catalog → tick the works → Delete selected. Before anything is deleted, a dialog says:

• how many works need your confirmation, and why, work by work;
• how many cannot be deleted at all because they have sales or artist payouts (set their status to Archived instead), and why;
• how many items in Square will be archived.

Cancel changes nothing. Delete N works moves the ones that can go to Recently deleted for 7 days, archives their Square items, and then lists every work that was not deleted with the reason. Nothing is deleted from Square.

If Square does not answer. On a connected gallery, a work whose Square item could not be archived is not deleted: a single delete shows Square’s reason, and a selection delete lists that work with the reason while the others go ahead. Try again in a few minutes. If Square is not connected, nothing is sent to Square and the delete goes ahead as normal.

Before it pushes anything, the run gives a SKU to every available work that does not have one, so in normal use nothing is left behind for want of one.

Press the button; it reads Pushing… while it works. A large catalog is pushed in batches and the counts climb as it goes, so leave the screen alone until it settles.

The card also warns you when it matters, without being asked:

12 available works are not in your Square catalog. A work that is not in Square sells online as a plain line item, and the payment cannot be matched back to it — the money arrives and no sale or artist payout is recorded. Push the catalog below. Works with no Label ID are skipped until they have one.

Treat that number as a to-do, not a statistic.

Reading the push result

The result appears beside the button as a line of counts, like 128 pushed · 40 unchanged · 2 need a SKU · 1 failed. Read every one of them:

A failure names the work. Under the counts, a run that dropped anything lists the pieces it dropped — These works are not in your Square catalog: — each by title, with its SKU and the reason, and the title is a link straight to that piece in the catalog. A count of three failures with no names sends you hunting through hundreds of works; the names are the only part you can act on. If a great many failed, only the first hundred are named, and the card says so: Only the first N are listed. The counts above are complete.

Square’s own words are kept. The reason shown is the error Square returned, not a tidied-up version of it, because that is what tells you whether the problem is the connection, the location or simply too many requests at once.

Retrying a failed work

Failures do not disappear when you leave the screen. The card keeps its own list — N items failed to sync to Square: — with each piece’s title, SKU, artist, the error and Last tried with a date. Press Retry next to one.

• A retry always really pushes. It does not skip because nothing on the artwork has changed, because the cause is usually at Square’s end rather than in the piece.
• If it works you are told so: … pushed to Square. — or … is already up to date in Square., which is equally good news.
• If it does not, you are told that too, with the reason, and the list is rewritten to show what failed this time rather than last time.
• Two reasons you can fix yourself rather than retrying into: it needs a Label ID (SKU) first (give it one) and this gallery’s Square account is not connected (connect it).

Anything that comes back as a success really is in the Square catalog. There is no third answer.

Correcting stock counts

Every work is one of a kind, so Square should hold a stock count of 1 for a work that is available and 0 for one that has sold or been withdrawn. That count is what makes Square mark a piece sold out the moment it sells, so a second buyer cannot reach checkout for it.

A push sets the count of 1 as it goes. But a work pushed before your connection had permission to set stock counts was listed with no count at all, and pushing again does not fix it, because nothing about the work has changed and the push skips it. Check stock counts is for exactly that. Only an admin or owner can use it.

1. Press Check stock counts. Nothing is changed yet. The card tells you how many works already have the right count, how many available works need a count of 1, and how many sold or withdrawn works need a count of 0.
2. If anything needs correcting, press the Correct button (its label says how many stock counts it will change). CartonCrew writes those counts, and only those, at your stock location (the same one the push uses), then tells you how many it corrected.

Which location holds the stock. CartonCrew keeps every count at one Square location, the stock location, and the online checkout orders from that same location, so a buyer never meets a count of 0. By default it is your gallery’s own location, the first one on your Square account that is not an online store, so Square Dashboard and the Square app show a work in stock where it hangs. If your Square account has several locations, an Owner or Admin can pick a different one on the card (open Settings in the sidebar, then the Square Integration tab, under the connection details). After changing it, press Check stock counts and then Correct: the counts move to the new location and the old one goes to 0.

Sales tax on online sales. The online checkout charges the sales tax set up in your Square account for the stock location, the same tax the register adds: every tax that is turned on and applies to that location is added to the order, and the buyer sees it on Square’s payment page before paying. To change the rate, change the tax in Square Dashboard (Account and settings, then Taxes); CartonCrew reads it from Square each time a buyer checks out. If Square cannot be reached to read the tax, the checkout stops and the buyer is asked to try again, so a piece is never sold online without its tax.

Things worth knowing:

• Pressing it again is always safe. A count that is already right is skipped, so a second run corrects nothing and says so.
• A reserved work is left alone. A reservation usually means a buyer is paying online at that moment, and a count of 0 would stop their checkout.
• A work that cannot be checked is listed, never guessed. If CartonCrew has no record of a work’s Square variation, or that variation is not in the Square account you are connected to, the work is named with its SKU and no count is written for it. Retry the push for that work, then check again.
• If the card says Square has not given CartonCrew permission to set stock counts, reconnect Square first (see Reconnecting).
• Each correction is recorded in your organization’s audit log.

Compare Square with CartonCrew

If you think someone may be changing items directly in Square (a price typed in at the register, a work renamed or hidden in Square Dashboard), this report shows exactly what is different right now. Running it only reads: nothing is changed in Square or in CartonCrew. For each difference you then decide: keep the CartonCrew version (the default, see Send the CartonCrew version to Square), accept the Square value into CartonCrew, or dismiss it (see Accept into CCS or Dismiss). A Square item CartonCrew does not manage can be added as a new work (see Add a Square item to CartonCrew).

1. In the sidebar choose Settings, then the Square Integration tab, then scroll to the Compare Square with CCS card. Owner or Admin only.
2. Press Compare Square with CCS.
3. Read the table. Each row is one field on one item where Square no longer holds what CartonCrew would send: the item, the field, the value In Square, the value In CCS, and Changed in Square, the time Square says that item last changed. The newest changes are at the top; an item that is missing from Square altogether is listed first of all. An artwork or class name links to it in CartonCrew.
4. Press Export, then CSV or Excel (.xlsx), to keep a copy or send it to someone.

What is compared:

• Artworks: name, price, Label ID (SKU), description, category, and whether the item is archived (hidden from sale).
• Admin items: name and archived. A retired admin item should be archived in Square. The price is compared only for the five fixed-price items on the standard list, such as _Monthly dues.
• Classes: name, price, Label ID (SKU), description and archived.
• For every item: deleted or missing in Square, more than one variation in Square, and a missing picture in Square when CartonCrew has one.
• Pictures on artworks: a picture in Square when the work has none in CartonCrew, and a picture put on in Square in place of the one CartonCrew sent (Different picture). CartonCrew knows its own picture by the picture itself, not by its name: each time it sends a work to Square it remembers which picture Square kept, so a picture CartonCrew sent is never listed, whatever it is called in Square, and any other picture is listed even if it carries the work’s title.

Things worth knowing:

• Formatting is not a difference. A description that differs only in spacing, line breaks or HTML codes such as & is not listed.
• A size fixed in CartonCrew changes the description. The description carries the size as Dimensions: 24 × 30 in, so a piece converted with Artwork Catalog → Fix dimensions (or given a new Height and Width) is sent to Square again with the new text, as any edit is.
• Below the differences, Square items CartonCrew does not manage are listed, newest change first. These are live items that are not an artwork, admin item or class in CartonCrew, for example an item someone added in Square Dashboard.
• Works last sent to a different Square account are not compared. The card says how many. Pushing them again brings them onto the account you are connected to (see If you connect a different Square account).
• To fix a difference, send the CartonCrew version (below), or change the item back in Square. Running the report never fixes anything by itself.
• If Square is not connected, the card says so and checks nothing.

Recognize pictures CCS sent

Works sent to Square before CartonCrew started remembering its pictures (for example works brought in from the gallery’s own Square catalog, whose pictures keep the name they had in Square Dashboard) can show as Different picture although the picture is the same. To clear those rows once:

1. In the sidebar choose Settings, then the Square Integration tab, then scroll to the Compare Square with CCS card. Owner or Admin only.
2. Press Recognize pictures CCS sent. CartonCrew compares each picture in Square with the CartonCrew picture, byte for byte, and says how many are the picture CartonCrew sent, how many are different in Square and how many have no picture in Square. Nothing is written yet.
3. Press the Remember button (it shows how many pictures matched, for example Remember 12 as CCS’s) to record the ones that are the same picture.
4. Press Compare Square with CCS again: those rows are gone. A picture that really is different in Square stays listed.

Nothing in Square is changed by this, and each time you press Remember it is recorded in your organization’s audit log.

Send the CartonCrew version to Square

When Square holds the wrong thing for a work or class (for example its description is empty in Square), you can overwrite Square with what CartonCrew has. Push catalog cannot do this for a work CartonCrew believes is already up to date; this can.

1. In the sidebar choose Settings, then the Square Integration tab, then scroll to the Compare Square with CCS card and press Compare Square with CCS. Owner or Admin only.
2. Pick the rows to send: tick the box at the start of a row, tick several, or press the Select all button for a field (for example Select all Description differences) to pick every row of that field. Clear selection starts again.
3. Press Send CCS version to Square. A confirm step says how many items will be overwritten. A work with two different fields picked is one item.
4. Press Send to go ahead, or Cancel. While it runs, the card counts up (Sending to Square… 120 of 300 done). Large picks go in several rounds; leave the page open until it finishes.
5. The card then says how many were sent, skipped and failed, and names each skipped or failed item with the reason (for example It needs a Label ID (SKU) first). A failure never stops the rest. Press Compare Square with CCS again to check that the differences are gone.

Things worth knowing:

• Everything CartonCrew sends is overwritten, not only the field you picked: name, price, Label ID (SKU), description, category, picture and whether the item is archived.
• Only artworks and classes can be sent. Admin items, sold works (Square keeps a sold work archived with its sale) and Square items CartonCrew does not manage have no tick box.
• Each send is recorded in your organization’s audit log with who sent it, when, and how many were sent, skipped and failed.
• If Square is not connected, nothing is sent and the card says so.
• Each item sent is also listed in History as Keep CCS, with the field and both values.

Accept into CCS or Dismiss

Each row in the report has a Decide column.

• Accept into CCS takes the Square value into CartonCrew. It is offered only where the rules below allow it. A confirm step says exactly what will change; press Accept. CartonCrew then sends the work to Square again, so the two agree. That send also puts back the CartonCrew version of the work’s other differences, so those rows leave the list too.
• Dismiss hides that one difference. It stays hidden until either side changes the value again; then the row comes back. The summary says how many dismissed differences are not shown.

What Accept into CCS does, field by field:

A work in Recently deleted takes nothing from Square: Accept into CCS is refused for its price, name and picture, and nothing is copied or changed. Dismiss still works. Restore the work first (sidebar → Artwork Catalog → Recently deleted → Restore), then Accept.

Classes and admin items offer Keep CCS (classes) and Dismiss only.

Things worth knowing:

• A screen that is out of date never overwrites anything. If the value in Square or in CartonCrew has changed since you ran the report, the decision is refused with This difference has changed since the report ran. Run the comparison again and decide on what it shows now.
• A price change in Square never blocks a sale. It is only listed here.
• History (the History button on the card) lists every decision, newest first: when, who, the item, the field, the decision (Keep CCS, Accept into CCS, Dismiss or Add to CCS) and the values in Square and in CartonCrew. Every decision is also in your organization’s audit log.

Add a Square item to CartonCrew

A live Square item that CartonCrew does not manage (for example one added in Square Dashboard) can become a CartonCrew work, linked to that same Square item.

1. Run the report (see above). Scroll to Square items CCS does not manage.
2. Press Add to CCS on the item.
3. Pick the Artist (required, there is no default). The Title, Price and Use the picture in Square are filled in from Square; change them if you need to.
4. If the card warns that the Square item has more than one variation, note that CartonCrew keeps one: the others are removed from Square when the work is sent.
5. Press Add to CCS. The card says Added as with the new work’s Label ID and title.

CartonCrew creates the work (available, with a new Label ID), links it to that Square item, and sends it to Square: the same Square item now carries the Label ID as its SKU and the name Artist - Title. No second Square item is created. A Square item can be linked to only one work; adding it again is refused. Each add is listed in History and recorded in the audit log.

Admin items: dues, fees, deposits and donations

Your Square catalog probably has items that are not artworks: monthly dues, entry fees, a key deposit, donations, postcards. Many galleries name them with an underscore at the front (_Monthly dues, _Entry Fee). Make them admin items and CartonCrew records their sales as their own sales, instead of flagging each one as an unmatched payment.

All of this is on the Admin items card: in the sidebar choose Settings, then the Square Integration tab, then scroll to Admin items. Owner or Admin only; Square must be connected first.

Create an admin item in Square

CartonCrew creates the item in your Square catalog and looks after it from then on.

1. In New admin item, type the name, for example _Monthly dues.
2. Choose its Kind: Income (fees, dues, deposits, layaway, gift cards, sales) or Donation.
3. Press Create in Square.

The Square item is made the same way every time:

• the price is keyed at the register (variable price), so one item covers any amount;
• it is in the Square category ADMIN (made the first time it is needed);
• it has no stock count;
• it is not offered on Square Online;
• it is never taxed.

If your Square catalog already has a live item with exactly that name, it is linked instead, so you never get two. A name that is already an admin item here is refused.

Add the standard list

Press Add the standard list to create the gallery’s usual admin items in one go: _Admin, _Area Above Print Bin, _Art Access - Single Picture, _Convenience Transaction, _Donations, _Entry Fee, _Extra Space - Pedestal, _Featured Artist Postcard, _Fines, _Gift Card, _Layaway Payment, _Marketing, _Monthly dues, _New Member - First & Last Month’s Dues, _New Member - Initiation Fee and _New Member - Key Deposit. _Donations is a Donation; the rest are Income.

Five of them are made with the gallery’s set price instead of a price keyed at the register: _Art Access - Single Picture $105.00, _Monthly dues $135.00, _New Member - First & Last Month’s Dues $270.00, _New Member - Initiation Fee $100.00 and _New Member - Key Deposit $20.00. The rest are keyed at the register. To change a set price later, change it in the Square Dashboard; renaming or retiring the item here keeps Square’s price.

Any already here are skipped, and any already live in Square under exactly that name are linked rather than made again. A message says how many were created, linked and skipped. Pressing it again is safe: it skips them all.

Link an item that is already in Square

1. Press Choose from my Square catalog. CartonCrew only reads your catalog for this.
2. Pick the Square item. Items whose names start with an underscore are listed first, marked (suggested). An item linked to one of your artworks is not offered.
3. Choose its Kind.
4. Press Add admin item.

Rename and retire

• Rename, then Save, changes the name here and in Square.
• Retire archives the item in Square, so it no longer shows at the register, and stops recording new sales for it here. The sales already recorded stay. Turn on brings it back in both places.

Only this card ever changes an admin item in Square. The artwork push, stock counts and the catalog check never touch them.

What gets recorded

From then on:

• a payment made only of admin items is recorded under Organization Insights → Admin sales and is not an unmatched payment: no email, no badge;
• a payment that also holds an artwork records the artwork sale exactly as before, and the admin lines as admin transactions;
• a payment with an item that is neither an artwork nor an admin item still lands in Unmatched payments, as before;
• a refund in Square of an admin payment is recorded against it;
• admin items never become artworks, never appear on your website, and are never part of commission or payouts. The Square catalog import shows them as Admin item and will not turn one into a work.

The kind can be changed at any time, and is kept with each sale. Posting to QuickBooks by kind is planned for a later release.

Donation items

Every sale of an admin item whose kind is Donation (for example _Donations) is also recorded as a gift in Donor Management, in your gallery only:

• The gift is a monetary gift of what was paid for that line before tax. It is dated the day of the payment in the gallery’s time zone, with source Square. It waits in the unacknowledged gifts list, so you can send the acknowledgment from there.
• The donor is the Square customer attached to the payment. CartonCrew first looks for one of your donors with the same email address, then for exactly one donor with the same phone number. If neither is found, it creates a new donor from the customer’s name, email, phone and address. It never matches on a name alone or on the card.
• A payment with no Square customer is recorded on your Anonymous donor. Attach a customer on the Register when the donor wants an acknowledgment.
• A refund in Square reduces the gift to what is left of the line, down to $0.00, and adds a note to the gift. It is then no longer counted in the donor’s totals. A refund of a payment that also holds an artwork goes to Refunds to review, and the gift is not changed by it.
• A webhook Square sends twice never records a second gift.

Only donations rung up after this release are recorded as gifts. Earlier donation sales stay in Admin transactions. To add one of those to Donor Management, record the gift by hand.

Dues items

Tick Dues on an admin item’s row to say it is membership dues. Every sale of a dues item is then also listed in Artists → Dues → Dues payments and matched to the member who paid: automatically when the Square customer on the payment has the email address or phone number of exactly one current member, otherwise by a person choosing the member there. Matching records the payment on the member’s dues board, so they show Paid. The card’s last four digits are shown as a hint and are never used to match. The artist roster guide (Dues payments) has the detail.

When you tick Dues, the item’s past sales are listed in Dues payments straight away. _Monthly dues from Add the standard list is made as a dues item. Untick it to stop listing new sales there; payments already listed and matched stay as they are.

Card and print lines

Every artist has two extra Square items for cards and prints, named like Ada Lovelace - Cards and Ada Lovelace - Prints, in the categories Cards and Prints. They have no set price: ring up one line per piece and key in its price. No stock is counted for them. CartonCrew creates them for each new artist, and Artists in the sidebar → Roster tab → select artists → Generate card & print line items creates any that are missing (see the Artists guide).

When one sells at the register, CartonCrew records a sale of that artist’s card or print at the price you keyed, with the artist’s normal commission, so it reaches payouts and the artist’s My Sales like any other sale. The line stays on sale for the next piece. A payment made only of card and print lines is not an unmatched payment. A refund of one goes to Refunds to review like any other.

Push all pushes these lines too, and keeps them live while the artist is a current member. They are archived when the artist leaves or is archived, and restored when the artist returns. They never appear on your website.

Square’s API cannot hide an item from a Square Online store. If you run a Square Online site that publishes new items automatically, hide the Cards and Prints categories there.

Artists can also list individual card, print and gift item designs, each its own Square item with a fixed price and a stock count CartonCrew keeps, in the category Cards, Prints or Gift Items (see the Artists guide, Card, print and gift item designs). A register sale of one is recorded against that design and takes the pieces sold off its stock, never below zero.

Selling on your own Square Register

Square’s pairing for a third-party register works on a Square Terminal and a Square Handheld only. If your till is a Square Register, the CartonCrew register cannot send it a card payment; ring the sale on the Register itself, in its normal Square mode, against the catalog CartonCrew pushed. Search the Label ID (it is the item’s SKU), take the payment, and the sale reaches CartonCrew within seconds: the work is marked sold and the artist’s commission is recorded from the Label ID.

Who sold it. CartonCrew creates a Square team member for every volunteer who holds a register PIN. Give each of them a personal passcode in Square (Square Dashboard → Staff → Team → the team member → Personal passcode, four digits) and make the Register ask for it (on the Register: Settings → Security → Passcodes → Require passcode, with the timeout set so the next volunteer has to sign in). A sale taken after that sign-in carries the team member, and CartonCrew records the volunteer as Sold by on the sale: open Artwork in the sidebar, then Sales, for the column and the detail; in Organization Insights, the Sales dataset can group by Sold by. A shared team passcode does not attribute anything, and a sale made without a sign-in shows Sold by Unattributed.

Who bought it. When the volunteer attaches a customer to the sale on the Square Register (Add customer, then pick or create them), CartonCrew reads that Square customer when the sale lands and puts them in Patrons. An existing patron is matched first by email, then by phone number, and is reused rather than duplicated — only blanks on their record are filled in, nothing you typed is overwritten. A customer CartonCrew has never seen becomes a new patron with the name, email, phone and address Square holds, and the sale is linked to them, so the purchase shows on the patron’s record and in the sale detail. When one checkout holds two or more pieces, every piece’s sale is linked to that one patron, even when Square’s notices about the payment arrive separately; a sale that already has a different patron is left as it is. A Square customer with neither a name nor an email creates nobody. This needs Square’s customer-read permission: a connection made before it was requested shows a yellow note on the Square Integration tab asking you to Reconnect Square once; until then a Register sale with a customer attached is recorded without the buyer. Online store sales are unchanged — the buyer’s details still come from the checkout page. The artist’s “your piece sold” email never carries the buyer’s name.

Cash and check sales may still be rung in the CartonCrew register, which needs no card reader for them; pick one place per kind of payment so nothing is entered twice.

The four sales tabs

Sales come back on four tabs: Sale Alerts in the Artwork Catalog, and Unmatched payments, Refunds and Sales report under Financial in the sidebar. Financial is visible only to the Owner, Admin and Treasurer roles (and ChAImp support); other roles do not see those three tabs, even with the Artwork Catalog or Square tick boxes. The tabs answer four different questions, and it is worth knowing which is which before you need them.

Sale Alerts, Unmatched payments and Refunds to review each carry a red count on the tab when there is something waiting, and the gallery dashboard names them too — the dashboard calls an unmatched one a payment we could not match to a work, and marks it urgent.

Sale Alerts

A piece sells through your online store. The buyer has paid and the work is sold — but it is still on the wall, and the next visitor through the door will try to buy it. That is what an alert is for.

To open them: in the sidebar choose Artwork Catalog, then the Online Sales Alerts tab. The tab says what to do: Sold online — the piece is still on the wall. Put a red dot on it and tape this slip to the back (Print slip), then mark it picked up or shipped.

What each order shows. The picture, the title, the artist, the SKU, the Location the piece is hanging in, the Price, Paid in full (every online order is paid before it reaches you) and the order date. Then:

• The buyer: their name, email and phone, for a pickup and a shipment alike.
• How they are getting it, exactly one of two phrases: Local Pick Up (keep the piece for them; they give a 4-digit pickup code when they collect it) or To be Shipped with the name and address they typed in your website’s cart and the phone they gave on Square’s payment page. It says shipping is free for the buyer for the 50 states and DC, or what the buyer paid toward shipping this piece for anywhere else (your Shipping outside the United States charge, set under Studio Site; see the Studio Website guide). If no address came through, the row says so; check the order in your Square Dashboard before you ship. Below it, how the order’s sales tax was decided, for example Sales tax: Washington, 9.8% (DOR location 3406, Q42026) or No sales tax: shipped out of state (OR) (see Sales tax on online orders in the Studio Website guide).
• When it may leave the wall: Ready now, or, when the featured artist asked for sold pieces to stay hung until their show closes (see Gallery places → Featured artists and their pieces): Artist has requested that the show remains hung until after the close of the show. You may pick up your piece after Oct 31, 2026, or it will be shipped after Oct 31, 2026.
• Where the order stands: Awaiting pickup or Awaiting shipping until someone marks it, then Picked up or Shipped with who did it and when.
• The pickup code for a Local Pick Up order (see below).
• Last sent with the date and who sent the order notice, once one has gone.

Only your owners, admins and staff who work the catalog see the buyer’s details and the pickup code. Other galleries, member artists, viewers and anyone outside the gallery never do. A sale made before the store asked Pick up or Ship shows no fulfillment.

The order notice email

Every online order emails an order notice with everything on the row above (except the pickup code), and ends with numbered steps for what to do in CartonCrew for that order type. Who gets it is your choice: in the sidebar choose Settings, then the Square Integration tab, and use the Online order notices card. Add a member lists every active member of your gallery, whatever their role, so the person who ships can be told even if they are not an admin; Remove takes someone off. When nobody is listed, your active owners and admins get it. A member who is deactivated or removed from the gallery stops getting it straight away. Only an Owner or Admin can change the list.

Send order notice on an order sends the notice again, or for the first time for an order from before notices existed, to whoever is on the list now. Each send is recorded, and the row shows Last sent with the date and who sent it. An order from before pickup codes existed gets its code the first time you send or print it. A sale made at the desk is not an online order and has no Send order notice.

Resend buyer confirmation sends the buyer their order confirmation email again: the pieces, how they receive them and when, and for a Local Pick Up order your gallery’s address, hours and their pickup code. To find it, choose Artwork Catalog in the sidebar, then the Online Sales Alerts tab, and choose Resend buyer confirmation on the order, beside Send order notice. It always goes to the buyer email already on the order; you cannot type a different address. Use it when a buyer says the confirmation never arrived or they have lost their pickup code. The same people who can send the order notice can resend it, and each resend is recorded. If the order has no buyer email, the page says so and nothing is sent; contact the buyer another way. When your Square connection takes sandbox (test) money, the email still goes and is marked TEST. A sale made at the desk has no buyer confirmation to resend.

The slip for the back of the piece

Print slip opens the Online Order slip, half a letter page, and the print dialog. It shows Online Order, the order date, the customer’s name, the piece and its SKU, Local Pick Up or To be Shipped, Paid in full, when it may leave the wall, and for a pickup the pickup code in large type. Put a red dot on the piece and tape the slip to its back, so everyone on the floor knows it is sold and where it belongs. Allow pop-ups for CartonCrew if your browser blocks the slip.

Marking it picked up or shipped

• To be Shipped: when it has gone, choose Mark shipped. A carrier and a tracking number are optional; choose Save: shipped.
• Local Pick Up: when the buyer collects it, ask for their 4-digit pickup code (it is in their confirmation email and on their thanks page). Choose Mark picked up, type the code they give you and choose Save: picked up. A wrong code is refused and recorded; after 5 wrong codes, code entry locks for that order. If the buyer has lost the code, choose Buyer lost the code: Override, write why (for example how you checked who they are) and choose Save: picked up. The reason is recorded and shows on the order.

Marking an order resolves its alert. A pickup order cannot be marked shipped, a shipment cannot be marked picked up, and an order cannot be marked twice.

The sale shows the same: choose Artwork Catalog in the sidebar, then the Sales Report tab. Under Online in an online sale’s row you see Local Pick Up or To be Shipped, then Awaiting pickup, Awaiting shipping, Picked up or Shipped with the date and the staff member who marked it. That date, like the order date on the order notice and the packing slip, is your gallery’s own day (its time zone, or UTC if none is set). So are the Sold, Picked up and Shipped dates on each alert in the Online Sales Alerts tab, and the day a show hold is worked out from: an order placed at 8 pm on a show’s last day is held until the show closes.

The filter at the top of the tab is Pending (where it opens), Acknowledged, Resolved and All. Acknowledge tells colleagues someone is on it; Resolve closes an alert by hand. An alert is never deleted; resolved ones stay under their filter.

A sale at the register raises no alert, because the piece is already off the wall and in the buyer’s hands.

What the buyer and Square see

The buyer gets Square’s receipt and a confirmation email from your gallery: the pieces, Paid in full, Local Pick Up (with your address and opening hours from Settings, and their pickup code) or To be Shipped (with their address), and when. The thanks page they land on after paying says the same, in that browser tab only. In your Square Dashboard the order shows as a pickup or a shipment, from your gallery’s name website, with the note Online order - Local Pick Up or Online order - To be Shipped. The pickup code is never sent to Square.

Unmatched Payments

This is the hardest tab to understand and the most important one to work, so it gets the most room here.

What it is. Square has taken money, and CartonCrew looked at what the order contained and found lines that match nothing in your Square catalog. For those lines no sale exists, no artist is attributed and no payout has been calculated. The tab says it without softening: Money Square has taken that we could not attribute to a work — so no sale and no artist payout exist for it yet. Record each line of a payment to its work, or to the artist’s Cards or Prints line, or dismiss it.

A payment is a basket. One payment at the till can hold pieces by several artists — three custom-amount lines for three different artists, say. Each line is its own sale for its own artist, so you work a payment one line at a time, and it stays Open until every line is recorded or dismissed. The row tells you how far it has got: 1 of 3 lines recorded or dismissed.

When some lines of a payment match your catalog and others do not, the matched lines are recorded by themselves as always, and only the others come here. Nothing in a payment is left behind.

Layaway payments are not here. A payment rung on the Register as your _Layaway Payment item that CartonCrew could not put on one layaway by itself waits on Artwork Catalog → Layaway tab → Layaway payments to match, with the reason it was not matched. It is not listed on this tab, and it is not counted on this tab’s red number, on the dashboard, or in the “unmatched payment” email. If the same sale also had other items, those items are listed here as usual, and the layaway part is recorded from the Layaway tab.

How one arises. Almost always one of these:

• A work that was never pushed to Square. It still sells through your online store, but as an ad-hoc line with a name and a price and no catalog entry behind it — there is nothing to match on. This is the common cause, and it is the reason the settings card counts your unpushed works out loud.
• A custom amount, or an item made in the Square Dashboard, rung up at the register — a work, a card or a print typed in by hand, or a deposit.
• A mis-keyed line that does not correspond to anything in your catalog.

A $0.00 payment is not listed. When a $0.00 checkout is completed in your own Square app (nothing rung up, or only items priced at $0.00), Square still records it as a completed payment, usually as cash. No money changed hands and nothing was sold, so CartonCrew does not list it here; it notes that it set it aside in Settings → Recent Activity instead. A $0.00 payment that holds a priced item discounted to nothing is still listed, because a piece may have left the gallery.

Why CartonCrew does not just work it out. When the sale came through your own online store, the product knows which works that order was holding, and it would be easy to record a sale from that. It deliberately does not. The same route carries register quick-sales and mis-keyed lines, and a sale recorded against the wrong work pays the wrong artist — a corrupted payout is far harder to unwind than a visible gap. So the held works are offered to you as Held by the same order — candidates, not a match, and a person decides.

What a row shows you:

• the amount, and the date it was paid;
• how many of its lines are done, while it is open;
• What Square recorded — the line items exactly as Square has them, with names, quantities and amounts. For an online line the name is usually Artist — Title, which is often all you need;
• the payment reference, and Open the receipt in Square to see it at the other end (once a line is recorded, its sale keeps the same receipt: see The Square receipt of a sale);
• Held by the same order — candidates, not a match, when your own store put works on hold for that order, with each one’s current status and listed price.

Owners and admins are emailed when a new one appears.

Working a payment: Record line by line…

In the sidebar, open Financial, then the Unmatched payments tab, and on the payment press Record line by line…. The dialog Record this payment, line by line opens and warns you what you are about to do: Each line is its own sale — the artist’s payout is calculated from it and they are emailed. Choose the work for each line deliberately; CartonCrew will not guess.

Every line Square recorded is listed with its name, quantity, its amount before tax, its share of the tax and, if it has one, its Square item reference. Each open line has its own Record this line… and Dismiss this line….

To record a line:

1. Press Record this line… on that line.
2. Choose in Work, or the artist’s Cards or Prints line. Candidates held by the same order are already in the list, labeled held by this order. For any other work — a register sale has no hold behind it and no candidates at all — type a title or medium into Search the catalog and press Search. Each artist’s Cards and Prints lines are always in the list, by artist name.
3. Check Sale amount to record (before tax). It starts at the amount Square recorded for that line before tax. The tax on the payment is shared across its lines in proportion to their amounts (Square’s own figure for each line when it gives one), adds up to the payment’s tax to the cent, and is never part of the amount the commission is worked out on.
4. Only if the amount really is different, change it — Why is the amount different? then appears and must be filled in. The reason is kept with the line and in Settings → Recent Activity with the old and new amounts.
5. Press Record this line.

That records a sale identical in every way to a line that matched by itself: the artist’s share is worked out at their commission rate on the amount before tax, the piece is marked Sold, the artist is emailed once for that line, and it appears in your Sales report and in your payouts. It carries the real Square payment, order and line references, so it reconciles against your Square activity like everything else. A Cards or Prints line is never marked sold: it stays on sale, and for a card, print or gift item design the quantity comes off its stock.

If Square has a customer on the payment, that person becomes the patron on every line’s sale — one patron for the whole payment, and an existing patron with the same email or phone is reused rather than added again. A payment with no customer records its sales with no patron.

Suggested matches. When a line’s name is an artist’s name followed by a word like Variable, Cards or Prints — the way custom amounts are often rung up at the till, typos included — the line shows Suggested: (artist) — Prints line (or Cards line when the name says card), and that artist’s line is already chosen when you press Record this line…. It is only a suggestion: check it, change it if it is wrong, then record. No suggestion is made when the name is close to two artists, or to nobody in your gallery.

Record all suggested… at the top of the tab lists every open line that has a suggestion, across all open payments: the payment, the line, the amount before tax and its tax, and Record to with the suggested line chosen. Change any choice, or pick Leave for later to skip a line, then press Record N lines. Each line is recorded exactly as if you had recorded it on its own, at the amount Square recorded before tax, and you are told which were recorded and which were not. Lines without a suggestion stay open for you to work one by one.

Some things are refused, and the line stays open for you to try again:

• a line that is already recorded or being recorded (two people, or a double click) — This line is already being recorded or has been recorded. The other lines of the payment can still be recorded.;
• a work that is already Sold, or in Recently deleted;
• a work whose artist’s membership has ended;
• an amount that would record more than the payment’s lines took, tax included — check the amounts already recorded;
• a line that is a _Layaway Payment — record it on its layaway instead.

To dismiss a line — a deposit, a mis-keyed line, something already recorded another way — press Dismiss this line…, write why in Why is this line not a sale? (required) and press Dismiss this line. No sale and no payout are created for it.

A member paying dues: This is dues… When a line was a member’s dues, not a sale, press This is dues… on the line, then Move to Dues payments. The line leaves this queue (it shows as dismissed, Moved to Dues payments) and is listed in Artists → Dues → Dues payments, where it is matched to the member: automatically when the Square customer on the payment is exactly one current member, otherwise by a person choosing the member there. It never becomes an artwork and never pays an artist.

If the line was rung on a Square item, Treat this Square item as dues from now on is ticked: the item becomes an admin item marked Dues (or an admin item you already have is marked Dues), so later payments for it go straight to Dues payments and never appear here. One move clears the pile: with the box ticked, every other line still waiting in Unmatched payments that was rung on the same Square item (any of its variations) moves to Dues payments at the same time, each as its own dues payment, matched to the member automatically where the Square customer is exactly one current member. The message says how many lines moved, and the list refreshes to show only what is still waiting. This works for an item since removed from your Square catalog too: the lines still carry its id, so that id is what is remembered. Untick the box to move only this one line and remember nothing. A custom amount has no Square item, so only that payment moves. Moving a line is for owners and admins, like the other line actions.

Dues a member pays automatically (a Square subscription) arrive under the subscription plan rather than a Square item. Ticking Treat this Square item as dues from now on on one of those lines makes the plan an admin item marked Dues, so every later automatic payment of that plan goes straight to Dues payments. If Square cannot be reached at that moment, refuses CartonCrew’s access, or has no record of the item, the line still moves to Dues payments; the message says the item was not remembered, so its later payments will keep appearing here until you tick the box on one of them again (reconnect Square in Settings → Square Integration if the message asks). The other waiting lines move with it only when they carry exactly the same Square id. A line rung on an artwork’s Square item is still refused and stays here: record it to its artwork instead. If you already have an admin item with the same name as the subscription plan (for example _Monthly dues), ticking the box adds the plan to that admin item instead of making a second one, so its automatic payments count under the item you already report on.

Counted in Admin transactions. Every dues payment, however it arrived, is counted once in Organization Insights → Admin transactions, under its admin item: the one rung on the register, else the one that knows the line’s Square item, else your admin item with the same name as the line (capital letters and spaces at the ends do not matter). So a dues line moved with the box unticked, a subscription payment or a custom amount named _Monthly dues counts under your _Monthly dues admin item. Only your own gallery’s admin items are ever used, and never a _Layaway item. If you have no admin item for the line, it still moves to Dues payments and the message says it was not counted in Admin transactions: add an admin item with that name (Settings → Square Integration → Admin items), then press Artists → Dues → Dues payments → Check for past payments, which also counts any moved before this.

When the last line is recorded or dismissed, the payment is Resolved, and anything the same order was holding that no line was recorded against goes back to Available.

Ending a whole payment: Dismiss…

Press Dismiss… on the payment and the dialog Dismiss this payment explains itself: Use this when the payment was not a sale of a work — a payment taken at the register, a deposit, or something already recorded another way. No sale and no payout are created. If the order was holding works, it tells you how many will go back to Available. If some lines were already recorded, they stay recorded; only the lines still open are dismissed, and the payment ends Resolved.

Choose why in Why is it being dismissed? (required): Not a sale, Test, Duplicate, Not in our Square account or Other. Dismiss stays grayed out until you choose one. Then write what it was in What was it? (optional). For Other the note is required. For the rest it is optional, and you should fill it in anyway: in three months, a reason on its own answers less than a sentence does. The reason, who dismissed it and when are shown on the row afterwards, for example Dismissed: Not a sale by (name) on (date).

Not sure the payment is real? Check in Square. On an open payment, press Check in Square. CartonCrew asks your gallery’s own Square account about that payment. This is a read only: nothing in Square changes, and no other gallery’s Square account is ever used. The answer is shown on the row:

• Found in Square, with its status, amount and how it was paid (cash or card, for example), when Square has it;
• Not in this Square account, when Square has no such payment in your account. Press Dismiss… afterwards and Not in our Square account is already chosen as the reason.

Check in Square never dismisses anything by itself; you decide. If Square cannot be reached, you are told so and nothing is recorded.

Restore. Dismissed a payment by mistake? Set the filter at the top to Dismissed, find the payment and press Restore on it. The payment and the lines that were dismissed with it are open again, back in Open. Restore is refused once any line of the payment was recorded as a sale or moved to Dues payments, because reopening it then could record the same money twice.

Dismissing, restoring and checking in Square are for Owners, Admins and the Treasurer, like everything else on this tab. Each one is listed in Settings → Recent Activity, and nothing is ever deleted.

Recorded lines are final. A line that has been recorded cannot be worked again, and neither can a payment once every line is done. You are told This payment is already linked — it cannot be worked again. (a resolved payment is stored as linked). Ending a payment releases every reservation the order created, so nothing is left stranded on hold; restoring a dismissed payment does not put those works back on hold. The filter at the top is Open (where it opens), Resolved, Dismissed and All. Dismissed payments are hidden until you choose Dismissed or All, so a decision is always there to be looked up. On a resolved payment, See the lines shows what each line became.

Payments from before per-line recording. A payment that was waiting in the queue before this change is shown the same way. The first time you open its lines, CartonCrew reads the order from Square (a read only — nothing in Square changes) to learn each line’s reference and tax. If Square cannot be reached, it uses the lines it already had and treats the rest of the payment as tax.

Preventing them is the same job as everything above: keep the catalog pushed, and take the settings card’s count of works that are not in Square seriously.

Refunds to review

A refund made in Square, outside the register lands here — in practice, a refund from the Square Dashboard, which is the only way to refund a sale made through your online store. Your owners and admins are emailed when one arrives (Refund to review). CartonCrew changes nothing on its own: the piece still reads sold and the artist’s commission still stands, because a refund in the Dashboard says nothing about whether the piece came back.

Each entry shows the refund amount and date, and for each piece: its title and SKU, when it sold and for how much, Online store or In store, the artist, and the commission (owed, already paid, or none). A refund for less than the sale is badged Partial — not gallery policy.

An owner or admin chooses one of two things:

• Return to sale. The sale is reversed, the piece goes back to Available and back on Square, and a commission that has not been paid yet is cancelled. If the artist was already paid, you also choose whether the gallery absorbs it or it is carried forward against the artist’s next payout — see Artist payouts. A partial refund cannot be returned to sale.
• Keep sold. The piece stays sold and nothing else changes. Say why; the reason is kept with the refund.

A decision is final: a refund you have decided cannot be decided again. Square sends each refund more than once as it moves through its stages; it is shown once. A refund at the register only appears here when the artist had already been paid, and then it asks only the absorb or carry forward question.

Editors and viewers do not see this tab’s entries and cannot decide them.

Sales Report

Every sale, with the figures as they were at the moment of sale. The tab says what that means: From the sale-time ledger snapshot — later edits to artworks never change these figures. Repricing a piece next month does not rewrite what it sold for.

At the top, From and To set the date range, and Export gives you the same rows as a CSV or Excel (.xlsx) file for Excel, Google Sheets or your bookkeeper.

Dates are your gallery’s own days. A sale’s Date, the From and To range, and the date column in the CSV and Excel file all use your gallery’s time zone (in the sidebar, open Studio Site, then the Featured tab and choose Your gallery’s timezone). A sale at 8 pm is on that day, not the next, and From and To each include the whole day, from midnight to 11:59 pm. If no time zone is set, the report uses UTC. A past sale you recorded by hand keeps the date you entered.

Below that, two summaries — Revenue by medium, and Sales by artist with each artist’s total, how many pieces, and Artist owed and paid — and then the sales themselves, with Date, Item, SKU, Artist, Medium, Channel (Online or In store) and Amount. An online sale also says Pick up or Ship under its channel; the shipping address itself is on the sale alert, not in the report or the CSV.

What to do with it:

• Reconcile it against your Square activity for the same dates. They should agree; an unmatched payment you have not worked yet is the usual reason they do not.
• Hand the CSV to whoever keeps your books.
• Refunds are shown against their sale. A refunded sale stays in the list (it happened) with Refunded −$X under its amount, marked (to review) while nobody has decided it yet, and every total — by medium, by artist, and the net line under the table — is net of refunds. The CSV has three extra columns at the end: refund_amount, refund_status and net_amount.
• Look for a needs review badge. That marks a sale with a refund waiting in Refunds to review. Nothing is reversed until someone decides there.

The Square receipt of a sale

Every sale recorded from a Square payment keeps Square’s own receipt for that payment, so you can check what the buyer was charged without leaving CartonCrew. It applies to a sale matched by the webhook, a sale from the register, and a line you recorded by hand on Unmatched payments.

Who sees it: Owners, Admins and Treasurers only. Square’s receipt can show the buyer’s details, so CartonCrew never sends the receipt to anyone else: not to Editors (even with the Artwork Manager tick box), Viewers, the Front desk, board-only members or the artists. They see the same sales without the link.

Where to find it:

• On the piece. In the sidebar, open Artwork Catalog, then the Artworks tab. Find the Sold piece and click Buyer (or Sale, if your gallery does not use the Patrons module). Under the sale, click Open the receipt in Square.
• In the Sales list. In the sidebar, open Sales. A Square sale has Open the receipt in Square at the end of its row, and again under Square receipt when you click Open on the sale.
• In the Sales Report. In the sidebar, open Financial, then the Sales report tab. A Square sale has Open the receipt in Square under its item. The CSV download does not include it.

The receipt opens in a new browser tab, on Square’s own page.

Sales recorded before the link existed. They show the link too. The first time someone opens it, CartonCrew asks Square for that payment’s receipt (it only reads; nothing in Square changes) using your gallery’s own Square connection, and keeps it on the sale, so the next time it opens straight away. If Square is disconnected, the link says so: reconnect Square in Settings → Square Integration and try again.

When the buyer is erased. If the patron on a sale is erased (you press Erase on them in Patrons, or they use Remove my details on your website), the link to the receipt is removed with them, because Square’s receipt shows the buyer. The sale then reads Receipt not available - the buyer’s details were removed., and CartonCrew never asks Square for it again. Other patrons’ sales keep their receipts.

A sale with no Square payment (a sale recorded by hand, a past sale, or a layaway paid in full) has no Square receipt and shows no link. A layaway’s own payments keep their receipts on the layaway: see Layaway.

How an artist actually gets paid

Read this before you go looking for it, because the thing you will go looking for does not exist.

There is nowhere in CartonCrew to enter an artist’s bank details. Not on the artist’s record, not on a payout, not in settings. This is not a missing screen and it is not a feature waiting to be switched on.

Square takes the customer’s money; it does not pay the artist. Square cannot pay a third party through its interfaces: its payouts reporting is read-only — it reports money Square sends to your account — and Square Bill Pay has no interface at all. So an artist is paid in one of three ways, and in every one of them a person makes the payment:

• Through QuickBooks Bill Pay, when QuickBooks is connected. Pay Commission on a payout run checks the artist’s Bills and opens QuickBooks; you pay there, and CartonCrew notices by itself that the Bill was paid.
• By check, with Record check… on the run.
• Through Square Bill Pay, by hand in the Square Dashboard. You add the artist in Square using only their name and email; when you schedule their payment Square emails them, and they enter their own account details on Square’s own secure page. Afterwards you press Mark run paid on the run. That is a bookkeeping record that you have paid, in Square. It does not send anything to anybody, and CartonCrew cannot see the Square payment to check it.

What CartonCrew does is keep the books. Neither the gallery nor CartonCrew ever holds an artist’s bank details. The full cycle — runs, worksheets, each way of paying, statements to artists, and why none of it can be automated further — is Artist payouts.

If it goes wrong

Square connection failed — please try again. Nothing was stored, so nothing is half-connected. Press Connect Square again. If it keeps failing, check you are approving on the right Square account.

The badge says expired or error, and the card asks me to reauthorize. Press Reconnect Square and approve on Square’s consent screen. Until you do, nothing new flows in: no sales are recorded, no alerts are raised, and pushes fail. This is the failure worth checking for after a quiet week.

Everything says connected, but nothing has sold in Square for days. Look at the yellow warning about the online store needing new permissions. A connection made before those permissions existed cannot take web checkout at all. Reconnect Square fixes it.

The card says works are not in my Square catalog. Press Push catalog to Square and read all four counts afterwards — a run that pushed most of the catalog and dropped three works is not a success.

A work failed with “Picture could not be sent to Square - upload a JPEG or PNG”. The work is in Square without its picture: its picture was saved in a format Square does not take (usually WebP). Open the work, press Replace image and pick the picture again (the same file is fine; it is sent as a JPEG), then press Retry on the Square card.

Retry says the work needs a Label ID (SKU) first. That piece has no SKU, so it cannot be listed. Give it one and retry — see Artwork SKUs.

A piece sold at the register but there is no sale against it. Look in Financial → Unmatched payments. If the payment is there, the piece was almost certainly not in your Square catalog when it sold. Open its lines with Record line by line…, record the line to the work, then push the catalog so the next one matches by itself.

Somebody bought a piece online and it is still on the wall. That is exactly what Sale Alerts is for. Work the queue: Acknowledge, fetch the piece, Resolve.

I dismissed a payment and I should have linked it. It cannot be re-opened from that screen — a decision stays decided. Record the sale the ordinary way from the piece in the catalog, and note what happened in the payout so the two ends agree.

I disconnected Square by mistake. Nothing you have recorded is lost and nothing was deleted from Square. Press Connect Square, approve again, then Push catalog to Square. Anything that sold while you were disconnected will not have been recorded, so check your Square activity for the gap and record those sales by hand.

I cannot see the buttons. Connect Square, Reconnect Square, Disconnect, Push catalog to Square and Retry are admin-only. Everyone else sees the card and the counts.

I cannot see the Square tabs at all. Your gallery does not have the Square module switched on. An Owner can check under Settings → Extensions.

Related

• Artist payouts — what you owe each artist and how they are paid
• Artwork SKUs — the ID a work needs before it can reach Square