Working with till reports
What can your café’s till reports tell you?
The useful report is the one that helps answer your question. Start with a decision you need to make, then use the sales information you already have to investigate it.
Choose the report for the question.
For menu performance, start with item quantities and sales across the same dates. For opening hours or staffing, look at transactions and sales by day and time. For delivery, separate the channel so you can consider its different costs and way of operating.
If you want to understand which products were bought together, you need a report that keeps items linked to their transaction. A total for each product cannot show that relationship on its own.
A CSV or spreadsheet is usually easier to analyse than screenshots. The records checklist explains which fields can be useful. Customer names and payment-card details are not needed.
Check what the figures mean.
Before drawing a conclusion, check a few definitions:
- Are sales before or after discounts and refunds?
- Do totals include tax, tips or service charges?
- How does the system record voids and corrections?
- Have product names, prices, categories or till buttons changed?
- Are delivery orders included in more than one export?
- Do the dates, times and trading-day boundaries match?
Reconcile the report with a summary total you trust. A difference may be easy to explain, but it is better to understand it before recommending a change.
Make three useful comparisons.
Products. Read units sold and net sales alongside separate product-cost records. Keep variants and add-ons visible: a broad category total can hide a change in the mix of products sold.
Trading periods. Compare similar days and hours. Show transaction count and average spend alongside sales to distinguish more visits from larger orders. Make allowance for closures and changes in trading hours.
Changes over time. Note price changes, availability and any menu changes. An increase in revenue could come from higher prices, more sales, a different product mix or a combination of those factors.
Choose comparisons that can inform a decision. You do not need a separate chart for every figure the till can export.
Add what the till cannot see.
Sales records do not usually explain ingredient costs, waste, preparation time or why customers made a choice. Add cost information, staffing records and your team’s observations where they matter.
For example, few sales could mean an item is unpopular. It could also mean the item was frequently unavailable or recorded under a different button. A quieter hour might be when essential preparation happens.
These are reasons to investigate a pattern before acting on it. The strongest finding combines a checked comparison with a practical explanation of what was happening in the venue.
Turn the pattern into a decision.
“Tuesday is poor” is difficult to act on. A more useful question is: “Tuesday afternoon has fewer transactions than Wednesday afternoon. Does that happen consistently, and which costs could we actually influence?”
The next step might be checking availability, observing service, or testing a different offer within existing hours. Decide in advance what you will measure and when you will review it.
The fictional review example shows that progression from evidence to a possible test. If joining the records together is the difficult part, a performance review can focus on the question that matters most.