Revenue / orders. AOV slipping while orders climb usually = overly aggressive coupon stack.
At a glance
Average value of an order placed in the period. The arithmetic mean of total_money.amount across every order, regardless of channel (POS, web, Invoices). For Square merchants, AOV is more sensitive to channel mix than to customer behaviour.
| What it counts | SUM(total_money.amount) / COUNT(orders) across every order in the window. Each order contributes equally weighted by the customer-paid total. |
| VAT / tax treatment | US sales tax is included when Square auto-calculated it (US merchants, Square’s automated tax engine adds tax on top of line items). For non-US merchants tax handling depends on the manual rate configuration in Square Dashboard. The card sums total_money blindly, no normalisation between US tax-on-top and EU VAT-inclusive setups. |
| Shipping | Included. Shipping fulfilment line items are added to total_money before payment. |
| Discounts | Already deducted, this is the post-discount, customer-paid figure. Loyalty point redemptions and Square gift card spend also net out. |
| Refunds | NOT deducted. A refunded 100 to AOV. To see AOV net of refunds, divide refund-adjusted revenue by Total Orders manually. |
| Cancelled / voided orders | CANCELED excluded, DRAFT excluded. Same denominator as Total Orders. |
| Currency | Multi-location AOV is meaningless without FX. A Square merchant with US (USD) and Canadian (CAD) locations gets a single arithmetic mean across currencies, treat it as a per-location number rather than a chain-wide one. |
| Channels / sources | POS, web, and Invoices all contribute. Each channel has very different typical AOV (POS ~60-120 for shipped products, Invoices $500+ for B2B). A channel mix shift moves AOV mechanically without any real customer-behaviour change. |
| Time window | 30D vsP (default 30D vs the prior 30D) |
| Alert trigger | drop >10% WoW, driven by sentiment_key: aov_trend |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
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 US-based homewares brand on Square with one retail showroom and a Square Online site. The 30-day window covers 14 Mar 26 to 12 Apr 26.| Channel | Orders | Channel revenue | Channel AOV |
|---|---|---|---|
| Square POS, retail showroom | 480 | $15,840 | $33 |
| Square Online Store, web | 218 | $19,620 | $90 |
| Square Invoices, designer trade accounts | 12 | $14,400 | $1,200 |
| Total (this card) | 710 | $49,860 | $70.23 |
- **The single AOV number (33, web orders 1,200. The chain-wide AOV is a weighted average that hides the real story. For a Square merchant this is the most common AOV pitfall, treat the headline as a directional indicator only and always check per-channel.
- A single 7. Small denominators (710 orders) make AOV jumpy when channel mix changes. The merchant should always look at AOV alongside Total Orders, not in isolation.
- The 30-day prior AOV was $76.40. AOV is down 8.1% vsP, just below the
drop >10% WoWalert threshold. If a Square Invoice (B2B) week didn’t repeat, the headline can drop without anything else changing. Vortex IQ Nerve Centre stays quiet, but the merchant can spot the channel-mix story by pinning per-channel AOV panels.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with AOV | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Total Revenue | AOV x Orders = Revenue. AOV without revenue context is misleading. | High AOV + low revenue means a small audience of premium buyers; low AOV + high revenue means mass-market volume. |
| Total Orders | The denominator. Rising AOV with falling orders means you’re selling more to fewer people. | If revenue is flat but orders dropped and AOV rose, you didn’t grow, you lost low-value transactions. |
| Conversion Rate | Trades off with AOV on the web side. Free-shipping thresholds raise web AOV but slightly hurt conversion. | The right balance is whichever moves total revenue. |
| Top Products by Revenue | Tells you which SKUs move AOV up or down. | If your top sellers are POS impulse items, AOV will be low; if shipped bundles, high. Mix-shift drives most AOV moves on Square. |
| Refund Rate | A high-AOV order being refunded has outsized impact on net AOV. | Watch together when you change pricing or sell higher-value bundles. |
shopify.aov | Same metric on Shopify, useful for agencies running clients on both. | Pure documentation cross-link, not a reconciliation. |
bigcommerce.aov | Same metric on BigCommerce. | The closest SMB / mid-market peer for Square Online. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in the Square Dashboard: Square doesn’t expose AOV as a standalone tile by default. The closest views are:- Reports, Sales summary, divide Gross sales by Order count for the same window. Should match this card to a few cents.
- Reports, Item sales, look at the Average sale column at the top.
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Refunds | Either | Square’s “Net sales / Order count” calculation can include or exclude refunded orders depending on the report. Vortex IQ uses gross revenue divided by gross order count; the Sales summary report typically gives the same number, but the Item sales report’s “Average sale” can use a different denominator. |
| Multi-currency | Vortex IQ wrong shape | If your Square account has locations in multiple currencies, our card produces an arithmetic mean across currencies with no FX conversion. Square Dashboard reports per location in that location’s currency. Use per-location filtering for accuracy. |
| Time zone | Boundary days | Square reports use location-local time; Vortex IQ uses UTC. For a 30-day window the gap averages out; for “today” or “yesterday” it can shift the number meaningfully. |
| Cancelled orders | Same | Both this card and Square’s Sales summary exclude CANCELED orders from the AOV calculation, so this should not be a divergence source. |
| Sync lag | Vortex IQ lower | Most recent ~5 minutes of orders may not be in our index yet; AOV stabilises within minutes. |
square_online.sq_aov = square_online.sq_total_revenue / square_online.sq_total_orders
These three cards are mathematical siblings; if they don’t match, it’s a sampling artefact or a refund-handling difference, not a real disagreement.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
If a Square merchant also has GA4 connected, google_analytics.ga_aov reads only the web slice (POS purchases never fire purchase events), so GA4’s AOV will look very different from this card unless you filter to web-only here. Treat Square Dashboard as the source of truth for AOV. Use GA4 for understanding which campaigns drove the higher-AOV orders, not for the AOV figure itself.
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Why is my AOV dropping? On Square, the three usual culprits are different from a typical web-only platform:- Channel mix shift. A great POS week (lots of $15 walk-ins) without a matching web week pulls AOV down sharply. Check per-channel AOV before reading anything else into the number.
- Discounting. A 20% sale or coupon-heavy week mechanically lowers AOV by ~20% even if customer behaviour is unchanged. Check loyalty / coupon redemptions in Square Dashboard.
- Lost wholesale invoice. If Square Invoices is part of the merchant’s revenue, a missing $3,000+ B2B invoice in the period drops AOV by several dollars on its own. Look at Total Orders by
source.name.
Refund record on the Refunds API; it only shows up on Refund Rate, not here.
Why is my Square AOV different from Google Analytics?
GA4 only sees web purchases (Square Online), not POS. So GA4’s AOV is calculated against ~10% of your transaction volume on a typical retail-heavy Square account. Add the 10, 25% GA4 tracking gap on top (ad blockers, cookie rejection) and the GA4 number is jumpy and unreliable for AOV. Use Square Dashboard for AOV. Use GA4 for understanding which marketing channels drove the higher-AOV orders.
How can I increase AOV?
Five practical levers, ranked by typical lift on Square Online (web side):
- Free-shipping threshold at $10-15 above your current web AOV. Easiest single change; usually adds 5-15% to web AOV.
- Bundle items in Square Item Catalog (a candle + a tray at 10% off lifts AOV by more than either alone).
- Cart upsells via Square Online’s Related Items setting on each product.
- Loyalty thresholds, “spend $75 get 200 points” pulls customers up to the next bracket. Square Loyalty has this built-in.
- Premium tier if you only sell single-units, add multi-packs or gift sets.
30D vsP and not 1D.
Does my POS AOV affect this card?
Yes. POS, web, and Invoices all contribute to a single AOV number. POS AOV is typically 30-60% of web AOV (smaller impulse baskets), so a heavier POS mix mechanically pulls the headline AOV down even if web behaviour is unchanged. Filter by source.name = SQUARE_ONLINE_STORE to see web-only AOV.
Should I optimise for AOV or conversion rate?
Both, but they trade off. Raising the free-shipping threshold lifts web AOV but slightly hurts web conversion (some shoppers won’t add a filler item). The right balance is whichever pushes total revenue highest. Always track AOV and CR side-by-side when you change anything in cart or checkout.