The 8am spreadsheet
Every morning someone in head office opens six browser tabs, one per EPOS back office, and types yesterday's figures into the flash spreadsheet. Sales, covers, average spend, maybe the wet and dry split. Two sites never closed their day on the till, so their figures are incomplete, and a WhatsApp goes out to the GMs. By half nine the sheet is sent round. By then the ops director has already rung two area managers to ask how last night went.
When that person is on holiday, the flash does not happen, or it happens late and with mistakes. And because it only covers sales, the question that matters, whether the site made money yesterday, is still unanswered.
Why the flash never got automated
The group grew one site at a time. The first flash was a handful of numbers typed in by the owner, and it has been extended rather than rebuilt.
- Each EPOS back office shows the numbers, but nothing pulls them together.
- Sites acquired later run a different EPOS with different category names.
- Labour hours sit in the rota or clocking system, which nobody combines with sales daily.
- Last year and budget comparisons are typed in from another spreadsheet.
- Closed days, refurbishments and new openings break the like-for-like columns.
What the manual flash costs you
It costs a slice of someone's morning every working day, which adds up across a year, and it depends on that one person. More importantly, the flash is late and thin. Decisions that should be made at 8am, such as moving staff between sites for a busy evening or chasing a site whose sales dropped, wait until the sheet arrives. And because labour is missing, a site that traded well but ran heavy on staff looks like a success.
How we automate the morning flash
- We connect to each site's EPOS through its API or scheduled report, and read sales by revenue stream, covers, transactions, discounts and voids for the previous trading day.
- Categories from different EPOS systems are mapped to one group structure, so food, drink, delivery and retail mean the same thing everywhere.
- Labour hours and cost come from the clocking or rota system, so each site shows wage cost as a share of sales for the day.
- Last year and budget figures are held in the same place, with like-for-like rules for closures, refurbs and openings set once.
- The flash is sent by email and shown on a phone-friendly page at a set time, with sites that have not closed their day marked clearly rather than shown as zero.
- Anything outside your thresholds, such as a large void total or a sharp drop against last year, is highlighted at the top.
| Flash line | Source | Typical comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Net sales by stream | EPOS | Last year, budget |
| Covers and average spend | EPOS | Last week same day |
| Labour cost percentage | Clocking or rota system | Target by site |
| Voids and discounts | EPOS | Group threshold |
Mornings after the change
The flash is on the ops director's phone before they reach the office. Area managers see their sites ranked and know which GM to call first. The person who used to build the sheet spends that time on something else, and the flash no longer stops when they are away. Because labour sits beside sales, conversations about staffing happen the next morning instead of at month end.
It also becomes a better record. A year from now, the like-for-like comparison will be built from the same clean daily data rather than last year's hand-typed sheet.
Recognise this morning routine?
- Someone logs into several EPOS back offices every morning.
- The flash arrives after the first calls have already been made.
- Sites that did not cash up show as zero or are left blank.
- Labour is not in the daily report at all.
- The flash stops when one person is off.