Square's new Dashboard app.
Square has been expanding into the world of small-business financial services, and on Tuesday it continued that push with the launch of a new mobile app to help business owners track their sales.
The new Square Dashboard app aims to give small businesses fresh insight into sales at all of their locations, directly from an iOS device.
The app delivers real-time sales data, including both the number of items sold and the average sale amounts each day.
Weekly, monthly and yearly sales can also be compared, and users can sort by items or categories to see which are doing particularly well.
Alternatively, business owners can zero in and view sales data by location or by group of locations.
Equipped with such information, a coffee-shop owner could anticipate when to add an extra barista, for instance, or assess the success of a new promotion.
Sellers in Square's beta program for the app opened it 12 times a day on average, the company said.
"We’re excited to give Australian small business owners access to their real-time sales information on the go," Square's Australian country manager, Ben Pfisterer, said in a statement.
"The launch of the free Dashboard app provides them with the ability to run intelligently and grow by leveraging analytics tools that were previously made available only to large businesses."
The new Dashboard app, which is compatible with iOS 7 and iOS 8, is free with a Square account; no word so far about plans for an Android version. Meanwhile, the software can now be downloaded from Apple's App Store.
