Detects sudden channel-mix shifts (e.g. POS revenue dropped 25pp into online, likely tied to staffing / store-closure / promotion). Distinctive to multi-channel Square.
At a glance
A view of how the share of revenue across your Square channels (POS in-store, Square Online web, Square Invoices) has moved versus the prior period, in percentage points. Total revenue can look flat while the mix beneath it shifts dramatically, a store closure pushing sales online, a promotion pulling them onto the web, a wholesale month loading invoices. Because Square unifies all three channels on one merchant of record, this shift is uniquely visible and uniquely meaningful.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Square Online data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK bakery group on Square. Three shops, a Square Online storefront for nationwide gift boxes, and Square Invoices for corporate catering. One shop closed for two weeks of refurbishment in the current window. The comparison is the 30 days to 12 Apr 26 versus the prior 30 days.
Three things to notice:
- Total revenue barely moved, the mix moved a lot. Overall revenue was roughly flat because the lost in-store sales were largely recaptured online during the refurbishment. A revenue-only view would have shown a quiet, unremarkable month, while this card shows a 21pp swing into online, which is a structural event worth understanding.
- The +20pp threshold fired on the online channel. Online crossed the alert at +21pp, and POS came close at -19pp. The pairing tells the story: in-store demand did not vanish, it migrated to the web channel while a shop was closed. The action is to confirm the cause (the refurb) and decide whether to sustain the online push afterwards.
- Mix shifts often precede a revenue move. A channel migration that starts as displacement (refurb) can become permanent (customers prefer ordering online). Pair this card with Revenue by Channel and Total Revenue over the following weeks to see whether the new shape sticks.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Reconciling against Square
Where to look in the Square Dashboard: Square Dashboard, Reports, Sales summary. Run the report for the current window, then again for the prior window, and compare the breakdown by source or channel. Square can group sales by source, so you can read each channel’s revenue in both periods and compute the share yourself. The pp change you calculate should match this card. Other Square Dashboard views that look like the same thing but aren’t:- Sales summary, grouped by source, two periods compared: this is the right reconciliation. Compute share in each period and difference them.
- Sales by location: shows the location split, which is related but not identical. A channel shift and a location shift often coincide but are not the same axis.
- Reports, Sales trends: shows revenue over time, useful for confirming the timing of a shift, but does not compute the pp share change directly.
- Dashboard home, Today’s sales: single-day, single-snapshot. Too short to read a mix shift.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
Why this card is distinctive to Square: on platforms where POS is a separate product, in-store and online revenue live in different systems and a true channel mix shift is hard to compute. Square unifies POS, web, and invoices on one merchant of record in a single Orders API, so the share of revenue per channel is a clean, native measurement. That is why a sharp mix shift earns a hero slot here, it is a signal only Square can show this cleanly.
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
What is a percentage-point shift, exactly? It is the change in a channel’s share of total revenue, not the change in its revenue. If online went from 22% to 43% of revenue, that is a +21pp shift. The card uses pp rather than percent so the numbers are comparable across channels and not distorted by the size of the base. Why did the alert fire when my total revenue was flat? Because the mix moved even though the total did not. If POS falls and online rises by the same amount, total revenue is unchanged but the business has changed shape. This card exists precisely to catch that, since the headline revenue card cannot. What usually causes a big mix shift? The common drivers are a store closure or reduced hours (POS down, online up), a web promotion or campaign (online up), a wholesale or catering push (invoices up), staffing gaps that limit in-store throughput, and seasonality. The channel that moved tells you where to look. Is a mix shift a bad thing? Not inherently. A planned web promotion that pulls revenue online is a success, not a problem. The card flags the magnitude so you can confirm the cause. The risk is an unexplained shift, that is the one worth investigating before it becomes a trend. How are channels determined? From the Square Orderssource.name, which distinguishes Square Online Store (web), Square POS (in store), and Square Invoices. Because all three share one merchant of record, the split is native to Square’s Orders API rather than stitched together from separate systems.
Why is the window 30 days versus the prior 30 days?
A 30-day comparison smooths out daily and weekly noise so the shift reflects a real change in shape rather than a busy weekend. A shorter window would fire on routine variation; a longer one would be too slow to catch a developing migration.
Can I change the 20pp threshold?
The default is a 20pp move on any channel, which is large enough to be rare and meaningful. A merchant with naturally volatile channel mix may want a higher threshold, and one with very stable mix may want a tighter one. It can be configured per merchant in your Vortex IQ workspace.