Midnight, a calculator and three tablets
The last order has gone. The fryers are off and the floor is mopped. Now you print the till report, which covers counter sales and maybe phone orders. Then you pick up each delivery tablet and scroll through tonight's orders, adding them up, or looking for a daily total that may or may not include cancelled orders. Then you check the website ordering dashboard on your phone. You write the numbers on the back of the Z report and add them up.
The total feels about right, most nights. When it does not, you have no idea which channel is off. And the sheet goes into a drawer until the accountant asks for it.
Why the night's figures are so fragmented
Every channel has its own record of sales, and none of them talks to the others. The till knows counter sales. Each app knows its own orders and reports them in its own way, often with the total shown before or after refunds depending on where you look. Your ordering website has a dashboard. Cash from drivers is in an envelope.
So the end of night is a manual merge of four or five sources, done by a tired person at midnight. It is also the only time anyone looks at the numbers, which means patterns like a slow Tuesday on one app or a drop in phone orders are never spotted.
Owners with a second shop, or who are not on site every night, feel this most. The figures reach them as a photo of a scribbled Z report sent at half past twelve, if they arrive at all, and any question about them has to wait until the next day when the person who did the count is asleep.
What the manual cash-up costs
| Issue | Effect |
|---|---|
| Adding channels by hand | Late finishes and simple arithmetic mistakes |
| Different app totals | Unsure whether refunds and cancellations are included |
| Paper figures | Nothing to compare week on week |
| No breakdown by hour | Rotas and prep not based on when orders really come |
| Owner away from site | No view of the night without phoning in |
One report that builds itself
- We connect to each source: your till's reporting or export, each delivery app's order data through partner interfaces or an aggregator, and your ordering website.
- Orders are stored in one common format, with the channel, time, value, payment type and status, so cancelled and refunded orders are handled the same way for every channel.
- At closing time, or on a button press, the report is compiled: sales by channel, by payment type, by hour and by order type such as delivery or collection.
- The report compares tonight with the same night last week and the average for that day, so something unusual stands out.
- It is sent to you by email or message, and stored so the week and month are always to hand for your bookkeeper.
- Cash expected from the till and drivers is shown, so the cash count has a number to check against.
App sales in this report are the order values the apps give us. What actually lands in the bank after fees is a separate reconciliation, which we can also build, and we keep the two clearly labelled.
Closing up with the report
When the last order is done, the report arrives on your phone. It shows counter, phone, each app and the website, cash and card, and a line saying Friday was busier than usual on one app between eight and nine. You count the cash against the expected figure and go home. If you were not on site tonight, you still know how it went.
- Every channel in one set of figures
- No midnight arithmetic
- Comparisons that show when something changes
- The owner sees the night from anywhere
Is this how your nights end?
- You add up the till and each app by hand at close.
- You are not sure whether app totals include refunds.
- Figures are written on paper and filed in a drawer.
- You do not know which hour is busiest on each channel.
- You phone in to find out how a night went when you are off.