Methodology

Analytir separates your business into two views:

Register truth is what happened at the register. What you sold, what customers paid, what got refunded. It answers questions like "how much did I sell this week?" and "what was my average sale?"

Cash flow truth is what reached your bank. Square rings the sale on Monday, batches it into a payout on Tuesday, sends it to your bank Wednesday, and your bank posts it Thursday. Cash flow truth follows that money.

These two views are almost always slightly different, and that's normal. Register truth is instant. Cash flow truth arrives on Square's timing. The gap between them is not a mistake — it's real money in motion.

Every KPI on your dashboard is labeled with which truth it reflects, so you always know what you're looking at.

Gross Sales is the total value of what you sold, before any fees, refunds, or tips. It's the pure "what did I sell" number.

It comes from register truth. It only counts completed transactions — failed and canceled attempts are excluded, even if Square shows them in raw reports. This distinction matters: a customer who tapped their card twice because the first attempt timed out shouldn't count as two sales.

Tips are not included in Gross Sales. If a customer paid $50 for a service and tipped $10, your Gross Sales for that transaction is $50. The $10 tip is tracked separately.

Total Collected is the full amount of money customers gave you at the register. It includes tips, taxes, and every dollar the customer actually handed over.

Using the earlier example: if a customer paid $50 for a service and tipped $10, your Total Collected for that transaction is $60.

Total Collected is register truth. It's what you collected — not what will hit your bank, and not what will show up on your Square deposit report. It's the top of the cash flow waterfall.

Average Sale is Total Collected divided by the number of transactions.

We use Total Collected (tips-inclusive) instead of Gross Sales (tips-exclusive) because the real answer to "what's my average ticket?" reflects what actually rings at the register — including tips. A service business earning $50 in service plus $10 in tips has a $60 receipt, not a $50 one.

This choice matches how most operators think about their business. If you'd prefer to see average based on Gross Sales only, that view is available in the AI Analyst.

Deposited is what actually reached your bank account. It comes from cash flow truth.

This is where a lot of merchants get tripped up. When you look at your Square deposit reports, Square shows you when the payout arrived at your bank. But when you compare that to your register, the numbers don't line up — because your Monday sales don't hit the bank on Monday.

Analytir shows Deposited on the day Square initiated the payout, not the day your bank posted it. This makes weekly and monthly totals stay stable regardless of bank holidays, weekend timing quirks, or your bank's posting schedule.

If you need to know exactly when the money hit your bank, that arrival date is shown as a secondary detail on every payout row.

These are the deductions between what you collected and what reached your bank.

Processing Fees are what Square charges to process card payments — typically around 2.6% plus a small per-transaction fee. Analytir shows both the dollar amount and the percentage so you can spot if your effective rate is drifting up or down.

Refunds reduce your net sales in the period the refund was issued, not the period the original sale happened. If you sold something in March and refunded it in April, the sale stays in March's Gross Sales and the refund shows in April.

Loan Repayments appear if you're using Square Capital or a similar Square-financed loan. Square withholds a percentage of every payout to repay the loan. Analytir shows the withheld amount so it's clear where the gap between your sales and your deposits comes from.

Every KPI on your dashboard compares the current period against a prior baseline. Analytir uses three baselines:

Prior week — the seven days immediately before the current seven-day window. This is the default comparison and reflects short-term momentum.

Four-week trailing average — a moving average of the last four weeks. This smooths out day-to-day noise and shows your business's rhythm.

Same period prior year — the equivalent week or month from the prior year. This is the strongest signal for seasonal businesses, when available.

When historical data isn't available yet — because your connection is new, or you're in your first weeks of using Analytir — the KPI shows "First period" instead of a percentage. That's honest: you can't compare against data that doesn't exist yet.

Every date and window in Analytir is calculated in your merchant timezone, not UTC.

If you're in Las Vegas and you rung a sale at 11:30 PM Pacific on Sunday, that sale counts on Sunday — not Monday, not yesterday, not "before your week ended." Merchant time is the only time that matters for business decisions.

This is why Analytir's numbers may differ slightly from what you see in Square's dashboards — Square defaults to UTC bucketing in some places. Analytir doesn't.