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Squirrel POS

Updated

Avero & Squirrel POS

Squirrel is supported for Sales data and Labor data.

Avero processes and presents data from your Squirrel POS for your analysis and insight. This article details how to handle POS changes, make updates to this data, and how to handle discrepancies or problems you might encounter. For some things, such as adding meal periods or revenue centers, you must complete the action on your side in order for it to be reflected in Avero (maybe with the help of your POS reseller or IT technician) and for some changes, such as global category associations, you'll need to reach out to our support team. 

In this article:

 

About Squirrel POS

POS Type: On-Premise

Avero is proud to offer Free Installation & Reinstallation for Squirrel, and most POS systems.

Squirrel is an on-premise system, meaning there is a server on-site at your restaurant that runs your point of sale. Avero's data extraction utility is installed on this server and each day runs the data from yesterday and transmits it to Avero to load into the platform that you can access via the web or in an app on your phone or tablet. 

Item Sales Time for Squirrel is determined by Check Open time, this may mean that your Sales by Hour Report does not exactly match the hours in which individual items were sold. 

Installation & Reinstallation on Squirrel

POS Code: squir14

Squirrel is a common POS system and is in use by many customers. We allow our customers to save on the wait time and cost of an assisted installation by providing a supported installation process instead. If you are moving to Squirrel from another POS, installing Avero on your system for the first time, or reinstalling after a server upgrade or change, you can simply and easily perform the installation! Or your POS reseller can install the Avero Data Extraction Utility at the time they perform your server change or upgrade. Avero installation takes only a few minutes and has 3 basic steps. 

  1. Prepare for the installation. This means following our Pre-Install Checklist which will make sure you have the access needed and that our interactions will be marked safe by your system security by whitelisting Avero in your firewall (IT or your POS reseller can assist with this!). 
  2. Retrieve your business information from our support team: Open a Reinstall Ticket
  3. Follow the Avero Installation Instructions (8-12 minutes)

Regular Maintenance: Making Updates and Changes for Squirrel

When changes or updates are needed who is responsible? If something appears incorrect or out-of-date, how should it be updated?

Change or Add a Meal Period in Squirrel

Whenever meal periods are changed in Squirrel they will be reflected in the next export we receive from Squirrel. Nothing needs to be done on the Avero side to approve/accept/map your meal periods. Feel free to make an update or add a meal period and see the data flow straight to Avero. Note that changes reflect data going forward. 

Important to note - Meal Period changes/additions will not automatically update your logbook or saved reports. 

Change or Add a Revenue Center in Squirrel

You can change or add revenue centers to your configuration and see them reflected in Avero as soon as the next day. Changing a revenue center's name will only affect the data moving forward. 

To add a revenue center, or move a revenue center from one outlet to another in Avero, use our Business Mapping Instructions

To add a new outlet for revenue centers to be routed to, open a ticket with Avero Support to create the new outlet. They will provide you then information to complete Business Mapping Instructions. 

To change an outlet name, open a ticket with Avero Support. Changing the name of a revenue center must be done in Squirrel, but the business it reports to ('Business' box in report generator, name on the logbook) will be changed by Avero. 

To remove an outlet, open a ticket with Avero Support to request it be removed from Avero. Doing so will remove access to the historical data which you may want for reports on previous years and cannot be undone, so be sure this is what you want before requesting. 

Categories & Items in Squirrel

Avero provides the following Global categories: Beverage, Food, Misc., Other, and Retail. The major and minor categories come from your POS. 

To make changes to items you'll need to update Squirrel - changing an item name, price, or moving it between categories.

To make changes to major/minor categories you'll need to update Squirrel - changing category names, updating which items are in a category, making categories more specific. 

To make changes to global categories, you'll need to open a ticket and request Avero makes the change. For example, if Appetizers are appearing under Beverage and need to be moved to Food. 

When creating new Categories, they may default to Other and require a ticket to update this mapping. 

To read more see: Categories

Common Problems 

It is very important to keep an active connection to your POS server should you ever need Avero Support to access the server and assist. Please visit our article on Remote Access to On-site Servers. 

Squirrel Missing Data

Missing data happens. We invest ourselves continuously into making this process faster and more reliable, but it is not, and will never be, error-proof. The internet goes down; equipment fails, bugs pop up, etc. Occasional delays are to be expected. For Squirrel systems, we provide you the ability to recover your own data on-demand, any time you notice it missing, in just a couple of clicks. This data is processed and loaded into the Avero platform automatically within 2 hours, so you don't have to wait for a support agent, have any back and forth, or wait an entire day to rerun your reports. You are able to select the date on a calendar and send it - which means you have your data when you need it. 

Simple instructions that take less than three minutes are found here, see On-Premise Data Recovery: Missing / Incorrect Data

Data Discrepancies - Avero's sales data is not matching Squirrel

If you notice your sales data is not matching up with your POS reports, there are three actions you need to complete:

  1. Make sure the data discrepancy exists in Avero by logging in and running a sales report. If you notice incorrect data in an emailed report, it may be related to email settings and not the data itself. See our troubleshooting guide: Troubleshooting Email Reports with Missing or Incomplete Data
  2. Review our article on Understand Gross Sales and Net Sales to make sure there is a discrepancy.
  3. Run a Daily Sales Report from Squirrel for the date in question, Open a Data Ticket, attach the report and explain the discrepancy. Make sure to include the report, the date, and revenue center or location if you have access to several, as well as any examples you can provide. 

Our team investigates all data discrepancies - due to the nature of our daily data extraction a single date and single-day sales report must be provided. We cannot investigate date ranges, but it is helpful to know if the issue is recurring and you can provide multiple dates. 

 

Frequently Asked Questions About Squirrel

Is there any information Squirrel doesn't export to Avero?

There are some data limitations you may notice based on what we receive from Squirrel. 

Squirrel does not provide:

  • Information on 'Order Type'
  • Information on transferred checks
  • Zero-Dollar modifications (such as 'No onions', read more about modifiers here: Modifiers)
  • Customer Name or last-4 of CC from payments
  • Item Transaction Time, so Check Open time is used for sales by hour

Why do I recover missing data myself?

We've invested in improvements to our data extraction capabilities and documentation so that it is easy for users to recover their data without relying on a back-and-forth with support. We believe this creates a better user experience. Now, when users on-site follow the instructions to recover data (it takes less than 1 minute) they get immediate results and the data is loaded into the Avero platform within 2 hours. You can also open a ticket to recover missing data, but it will not load until the next day.

Does Avero pull credit card information from my Squirrel system?

No. Avero pulls payment type information, such as what type of card is used and the amount of the payment from all systems. We do not have access to, collect or store, full or partial credit card numbers, customer names, or any such identifying information.

Can I pull back / historical data from my Squirrel server?

Yes! If you are a new customer, are missing recent data, or have just added a new profit center that already had sales that weren't loaded to Avero, you can run the data extraction for previous dates. The data that is available and extractable on Squirrel servers varies, but typically at least 90 days are available. 

Instructions on running the data extraction are here: Missing / Incorrect Data

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