Report Videos and Transcripts

Cashup reports

Daily POS cashup

The Daily POS Cashup Report gives you a clear financial snapshot of the overall shop and each cashier’s shift within a selected period. It compares sales against payments to show whether everything balances or if there’s an overage or shortfall.

When running the report, select a date to view the report for. Note that this date refers to the date a shift was STARTED. So, if a shift runs from the first at 5 am and is posted on the second at 5am, you would run the report by selecting the FIRST.,

On the first page, you’ll see an overall Summary of SALES which pulls together all sales for the shifts in the period. Note that the report will show “PENDING FINALIZATION” in the header if any shifts are not yet posted and the report has been before the end of your trading period. To clarify, that means if your trading time is 5am day 1 to 5am day 2, the report will not be finalized until after the 5 am day 2 mark.

"Unpaid Sales" are detailed HERE. You’ll see any unpaid sales from today, any unpaid sales carried over from previous days, and any payments that have resolved unpaid sales from earlier shifts. This makes it easy to keep track of outstanding sales from other days.

The second page is the "Shop Cashup Summary" for the day, giving you an overview of all POS cashups. The information is organized into easy-to-read tables.

First is the "Cash Movement Summary." This shows the cash data captured during the cashup process in CounterPOS, like floats, cash used for stock, expenses, or wages.

Next is the "Cash Banking Slip." This tells you how much cash should actually be banked by subtracting the float from the cash on hand.

Then, we have the "Key Performance Indicators"—these highlight important metrics like the number of voids, discounts, and total sales, giving you a quick view of the day’s performance. Note that the KPI table only shows on the Shop cashup sheet.

The "Payment Reconciliation" table compares the control totals of each payment type received during the shift with the POS totals recorded in CounterPOS. Any differences show up in the over or under column.

The "Sales by Transaction Type" table summarizes the number and total amount of each type of transaction processed during the cashup period. You’ll find totals at the bottom, along with the percentage each transaction type contributes to overall turnover.

The "Sales by Sales Channel" table breaks down sales by the different channels used during the period, giving you more insight into where your revenue is coming from.

At the bottom, you’ll find "Cashup Notes." Any notes entered during the POS cashup process appear here. If a cashier’s totals don’t balance, the report automatically generates a note to flag the issue.

The following pages dive into individual POS cashups. Each cashier’s shift has its own page, with information grouped into the same tables for easy reference.

When you run the report, you can choose to "Show Detail." If you tick this option, the report gives you a more detailed breakdown of specific figures like "Cash on Hand" and "Payments." Payments are listed by invoice and grouped by payment type.

Driver / Waiter cashup

The Driver and Waiter cashup report displays a summary of the information captured during a Driver or Waiter's cashup.

Note that if there are orders which are eligible to be assigned in the report period but are not included in the report because they were not assigned to any employees will be displayed on the first page of the report.

The report groups the cashup information under the header bearing the employee's name, and is further grouped into several tables.

First all orders the employee was assigned to during their shift is displayed under "Orders Included".

The "Shifts" table details the time worked by the employee.

The "Wages" table calculates any wages owed to the employee based on the employee's hourly rate, which is set on the employee's user profile.

The Payments table breaks down each type of payment the employee received for their orders, including tips.

The final table is the "Employee cashup calculation", which calculates sales, less tips and wages, and indicates the total value of payments due, less non-cash payments. It then indicates that the payments were settled and the shift that the driver cashup was posted to.

POS cashup consolidated

The Consolidated POS Cashup Report combines important POS cashup totals over the period you select. This report provides a comprehensive view of floats issued and received, cash to be banked, petty cash, GRVs, and wages paid to employees.

The first section of the report is "POS floats and cash to be banked", which displays exactly that. For each day in the given period, you will see your POS shifts grouped by date, and which indicates the float for the day's shifts, the cash on hand for the shift, then subtracts the float to be carried forward to the next day, giving the final total of bankable cash.

It's important to note that the float carried forward is what the cashier has stated that they are leaving behind for the next shift's cash drawer.

So in this example, negative 500 for shift 29-103 will mean a start float of 500 for shift 29-104.

The next section of the report highlights Driver and Waiter floats, grouped by date, including who floats were issued to or received from, and what amounts.

Following that, we have details of tips owed to employees, per shift, over each date.

Next, the report shows any “Goods Receieved Vouchers”, also called "GRV's", that were paid using cash from a particular POS shift.

Next, we have detail on all petty cash entries that were recorded over the period, their description and amount. Like the other tables, they are grouped and sub-totaled by date.

Over/Under Report

The Over/Under Report shows the difference between expected and actual amounts for each payment type, which helps you track discrepancies in takings and identify issues in the cashup process.

Before running the report, you can set it to be viewed by day, week, or month, covering the last 14 days, 14 weeks, or 14 months. This allows you to review performance over different time periods and spot patterns.

Each section of the report is grouped by payment type. These include Cash Receipts, Account Sales, Coupons, and Manual Card entries. For each payment method, we have three columns: the Control Total, the POS Total, and the Over/Under amount.

The Control Total is the expected amount, usually based on manual recon or external systems. The POS Total shows what the system actually recorded. The Over/Under value reflects the difference between the two. A positive number means the POS shows more than expected. A negative number means there’s a shortfall. These are highlighted in red to make them easy to identify.

It's important to note that this report uses the posting date of the POS shift, not the date the sale or payment actually took place. So, if you cash up the following day, the amounts shown here might not match what you see in the recon report for that same date.

Use this report regularly to pick up on cash handling issues, missed entries, or over-reporting, and tighten up your reconciliation process.

Customer reports

Customer insights

The "Customer Insights Report" provides an analysis of customer history and purchase habits over a selected period.

The first page of the  report lists the top 25 customers based on the number of orders they placed within the selected date range. It includes customer names, contact details, and how many times they ordered.

Page 2 is similar, but the customers are instead ordered by the total value of sales placed during the period.

Page three ranks the fifty largest individual customer orders, based on the sale amount during the date range. Note that on this page, Phone and Invoice numbers can be clicked on to view more details about the customer or Invoice.

Finally, page 4 forecasts which customers are most likely to place orders in the coming week. The probability of each customer placing an order is based on their past behaviour, and the report specifies the day and time (morning, lunch, or evening) that they are likely to order.

It's important to note that these forecast probabilities are calculated based on sales history, and is ONLY intended as an insight, not a guarantee.

Customer list

The Customer List Report provides an overview of customer activity over the past year, with a focus on those who have placed their last order in the past 30, 60, 90, and 365 days.

It is “very” important to note that this report contains sensitive and confidential information about customers. As a result of regulations such as "General Data Protection Regulation" in Europe or the "Protection of Personal Information Act in South Africa", these reports should only be accessible to and printable by users that have permission to do so.

The report opens with a chart displaying the number of active customer over the past year, with each node on the graph representing the number of active customers in a given month, so you can see trends in growth or decline of your customer base. Note that an "Active customer" is a customer who has ordered within the last year.

The next page lists all NEW customers who placed orders within the last week. In this report, any of the listed phone numbers can be clicked on to launch the "individual customer" report for detail on that customer.

The list is sorted by "days since last order" at first, but you can click any of the report headers to re-order the list by that heading. Clicking the header again will sort in reverse order.

Next, we see customers who ordered in the last 30 days. By default, the list is collapsed, since it may have a lot of entries. Clicking on the "plus" icon to the left of the page will expand the list to show all customers in detail.

The next several pages of the report show further groups of customers in the same manner, who last ordered in the past 60, 90, and 365 days. These are customers who have begun to lapse, and that you may want to target for marketing to encourage them to return.

The final page shows another chart displaying the number of orders placed over the past year, with each node on the graph representing the number orders made in a given month, so you can see trends in growth or decline of your order volume.

Customer retention

The Customer Retention Report shows you how effectively your store is retaining customers over time. The report divides your universe of customers into newcomers and repeaters to give you specific feedback on how you are doing.

At the top of the report, you'll see a line chart that shows trends in new and regular customers for each month in the past year. A NEW customer is someone who places their first order within that month. A REGULAR customer is someone who places an order in a given month and then returns to order again within 90 days.

This graph shows you how many new customers you are attracting and how many return to order again. It highlights the strength of your customer loyalty.

On the next page, the “Customer Cohort Heatmap” focuses only on new customers and tracks how long it takes them to return, if they come back at all.

Each row shows customers who made their first purchase in a specific month. The columns show how many made a second purchase within 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, or later. The final column shows how many never returned, which is called customer ‘churn’.

In this example, in February 2025, one new customer made a purchase and returned within 30 days. That cohort achieved a 100 percent retention rate. In contrast, the June 2025 cohort had 12 new customers, but 11 never came back, resulting in a 92 percent churn rate.

At the bottom of the report, you will find summary statistics. These include your average customer retention rate, your best- and worst-performing cohorts, and labels that rate your results as excellent, good, fair, or poor.

The report does not use filters or parameters. It automatically pulls in all customer data from the past 12 months. The cohort heatmap focuses on the last 6 months of customer behavior.

Use this report to measure how well your store turns first-time buyers into repeat customers. Look for patterns or time periods where your retention improves or drops.

Deliveries by suburb

The "Deliveries by Suburb" report is designed to break down your customer's delivery order history over the given period and group  the customers by suburb.

When run, the report gives you detailed information on each customer, including Customer name and phone number, their delivery address, the distance to the customer in kilometers, the number of orders they've placed, and the value of their orders.

Note that any of the customer name and numbers can be clicked on to launch the "Individual customer" report for more detail on that customer.

At the end of each suburb group, you're given subtotals of the number of orders and net sales PLUS delivery charges, to give you a total turnover for that suburb.

Below this, you're given the "Average great-circle distance to the customer", which just means the average distance to the customer in a straight line from the store.

The next section for the report is a pie graph that visually represents the proportion of deliveries for each suburb.

The final page of the report generates a map of all deliveries with a marker for each customer's address for easy visual representation of your delivery customer base.

Individual customer

The Individual Customer report is a deep dive into the information on any single customer that has ordered from your store.

If you run the report from the portal report menu, you will need to indicate which customer you want further detail on by capturing the customer’s phone number. Alternatively, the report is launched when you click on an underscored customer name or number from another report - in this example, the customer list report. This opens the individual customer report for that particular customer.

At the top of the report, you will find essential customer information, including the customer’s name, contact details, and loyalty reference number. It also includes any customer notes, and the customer’s top five most frequently ordered items.

The "Orders by Transaction Type" section categorizes the customer’s orders into different types such as Counter, Collect, and Delivery.

The "Order Frequency Trend" line graph displays the customer’s order frequency over time.

"Order Performance Metrics" are summaries of total orders placed, total values, as well as average order value and frequency to expect from the customer.

Following this is detail about the customer’s addresses, including latitude and longitude coordinates.

At the bottom, the report gives a complete list of the customer’s order history with dates, times, transaction types, payment methods, and total amounts. This may run for several pages depending on the extent of history available.

Finally, the "Voided Orders" section provides information about any of this customer's orders that were voided, including the reasons and descriptions for each void.

Sales by Customer

The Sales by Customer report shows a breakdown of all sales linked to customers over a selected period.

This report is most useful when your store allows customers to buy on account. If the cashier selects Account as the payment type during a sale on the, and a customer is linked to that sale, the transaction will appear in this report.

It’s important to note that if you want customers to be able to place account sales, you will need to enable the ‘Has Account’ setting for the “Cashier Sales” sales channel. If you don’t have access to this setting, consult with a Cosoft representative.

To view only these account sales, make sure the Only show orders on account checkbox is ticked when running the report.

Each section of the report shows the customer’s name, followed by a split between “Not on account” and “On account” sales. You’ll see the date and time of the transaction, invoice and order numbers, order type, invoice total, and payment details.

At the bottom of each customer’s section, you’ll find their total spend, broken down by payment type.

Contact details and loyalty numbers for each customer are also displayed, if available.

Keep in mind that this report is purely for viewing and tracking. There is no mechanism in the POS to update a sale once a customer has settled their account externally, such as by EFT.

This means any transaction made on account will remain marked that way indefinitely.

However, you can still use this report to view the total value of outstanding account sales for any time period, and follow up with customers as needed.

Financial Reports

Discounts

The Discounts report is a detailed look at all discounts processed on the POS in the specified period.

The report starts by listing all invoices that have had discounts applied, and includes details such as the date, invoice and order numbers, the cashier who applied the discount, the "discount reason" and finally the amount that was discounted from the invoice.

Note that there may be cases where multiple discounts are applied to a single invoice. In this case, both discounts will be listed here with the same date, invoice and order number, but the reasons and the discount amounts differ to indicate what the different discounts were for.

The report ends with a grand total section and two pie charts. The “Grand Total” section lists the number of discounts that were applied followed by their value. Then it shows the gross sales including discounts for the selected date range and then the discounts as a percentage of the gross sales.

The first pie chart, “Discounts by Cashier”, simply indicates how many discounts were applied by which cashier.

Finally, the second pie chart, “Discounts by Reason”, shows the reasons for discounts applied as well as the total value per reason applied during the selected date range.

Integrated Payments

The Integrated Payments report gives details of all payments made via integrated payment systems. It shows information about each successful payment, as well as failed and refunded payments.

Results are grouped under a heading with the payment type name, and then futher subgrouped by status. The report displays the Date and time of the invoice, invoice number or device name, and then, if any messages were sent from the payment provider’s SERVER alongside this entry, such as an error message, it is display here under “System Message”.

Finally it will show the payment amount requested by the POS, and then the amount that was received.

Each status grouping will show a subtotal, to make it easier to recon successful payments against unssuccessful or still "in progress" payments.

KPI

The KPI report breaks down several key sales metrics and charts them over a predetermined period. 

Before running the report, you can select what period you want to see information over. Depending on the options, you will have larger periods of information. "Daily" displays the last 14 days of trading information, "Weekly" the last 14 weeks, and "Monthly" the last 14 months.

For this video, we'll run it as "Daily".

On the first page, key sales figures from each period are summarized and shown over the time period. Note that "Net Sales" is highlighted here, meaning that the "net sales" is the figure graphed out in the chart below.

On page two, we see sales grouped by "sales channel". Each channel is colour coded and represented as a stacked bar chart, which the size of the segment corresponds to the number of transactions in that channel.

Page three shows Transaction Types over the given period. Once again, it uses a stacked bar chart to represent the relative proportion of sales for each transaction type in each interval.

On page four, "Sit-Down" transactions versus "Take Away" are charted over the period. Once again using a stacked bar chart to represent the proportion of sales that are "sit-down" or "take away" in each interval.

Page 5 has two sections. "Customers" shows the sum of unique customers for each transaction type, and then gives you an average kilometer distance per customer that you have travelled in each interval.

"meal periods" shows you how different times of the day contributes towards your overall sales. First in number of transactions, then sales values, then as a percentage of your net sales.

Finally, we have "Potentially suspicious activites". Here the report highlights what we consider to be activity that requires the most scrutiny - staff attempting to defraud the store would likely perform these activities "very" frequently. First it details the number of times each activity was performed, then it represents the activity as a percentage of total invoices rung up.

It's very important to note that this is not the full activity report, and the activity report should be run to view more detail about who performed the activity and in what context.

Online Orders Report

The Online Orders Report gives you a detailed breakdown of orders placed via online sales channels over a selected time period.

Orders are grouped under the name of the Online Ordering service platform. They are then sub-grouped by success status.

First are “Successful Orders”. These orders were successfully automatically received and processed in CounterPOS. The report displays details for each order, including the invoice number and Sales Channel Reference number. It indicates if the order was paid or not and whether it was paid online. It will also indicate if the online order was processed manually as a special order.

Any of the invoice numbers can be clicked on to launch the “Invoice Audit” report for that invoice, and any of the sales channel reference numbers can be clicked to launch the Online Order Detail report, which gives you all available information for the order, including technical logs.

The main report then displays “Failed” orders, separated by different failure statuses,a dn the subtotals of each.

The final page shows pie graphs that display relative proportions of orders paid online, by transaction type, sales channel, and integration status.

Recon

The Recon report is designed to be used by your accountant to compare your bank account against all of your POS payment channels over the selected period.

Before running the report, there are a number of parameters that affect the information that is displayed.

By default, the report is grouped by “Payment Type”, but this grouping can be changed to chronological, by sales channel, or by transaction type. Let’s leave it on Payment Type for now. On the right we can filter by sales channel. Let’s leave them all in for now.

““Show details” will show individual transactions for the period. For this video, we will leave it unticked. “Hide cash orders” will also hide cash payments if we only want to recon other payment methods. We will set this for now.

The report begins by indicating your selected parameters. Below that, each payment type is grouped under its own heading. Totals for each sales channel are listed, beginning with “Amount outstanding”, which indicates if any payments in this period have been rung up but not yet paid off.

Next, you have “Sale Payment”, which is the amount paid for the sale ONLY, EXCLUDING any tips. The tip amount is indicated in the next column over. If any change was processed on these payments, it will be shown in the “Change” column. The total amount for the payment to be compared against bank statements is displayed in the “Total payment” column. This is repeated for all payment types you use.

The final page has a “Grand Total” section with the totals for all payments, and a pie graph displaying the relative proportion of sales coming from each payment type.

Now, let’s look at the report with some different parameters. Let’s set the report grouping to “Sales channel” and run the report again.

Now you can see that the main grouping is by Sales Channel. Each row within the group indicates how many orders were made using each payment type. For example, here we can recon what payments were used at the self-service terminals in this period.

Feel free to try different parameters and customise the data to your benefit.

Royalty Report

The “Royalty Report” is important for franchise stores as it calculates monthly royalty payments owed by franchisees to the franchisor based on your sales.

Before running the report, specify the year and month that you need to run.

The report for the report lists each day of the month and details gross sales subtracts discounts to give net sales and adds any delivery charges to provide a turnover total including vat from there.

The report subtracts the vat to give you a final less vat turnover total.

If your store has any items that are royalty exempt, the report deducts those giving you the total royalty sales. This is the figure on which your royalties are based.

The report then calculates the royalty fee by deducting the agreed upon advertising and royalty percentages.

After adding that the total royalty payable is shown here.

The report ends with a declaration that must be signed by the franchisee confirming that all figures are accurate.

As a final note, the report also indicates the value of any voids or discounts for the period. These figures can be clicked on to launch the detailed void or discount report to get more information about them.

Tax Report

The Tax report gives you a detailed, day-by-day breakdown of any taxes that are applicable to your sales over the given month.

Before you run the report, select the year and month to view data for.

For this example, we’re showing data for a store with multiple tax policies - note that yours may differ depending on your local tax laws.

The report details legal information at the beginning of the report, and then lists the days of the month in rows.

The first column notes the day’s turnover EXCLUDING taxes. After that, it shows any additional taxes that are applicable in additional columns, It then ends with the total turnover INCLUDING taxes.

The report concludes with totals for each column so that you can see total tax movement for the month.

Voids Report

The Voids Report is a detailed breakdown of Invoice and Item voids that were processed for unsaved invoices on CounterPOS over any period.

The first section of the report deals with “Voided Invoices”, which refers to voids applied to entire invoices. This section is then sub-divided into Invoices voided with “wastage” and WITHOUT wastage.

“Wastage” means that when the void was done it was indicated that stock was used, and the food was prepared before the invoice was voided. Therefore, the stock must be discarded.

“Without wastage” means that the Invoice was voided before any food was made and therefore NO stock was discarded.

The columns give you details of the invoice and the void - note that there are two rows per entry. It shows information such as the time the invoice was rung up and the time it was voided,

The Cashier assigned to the invoice and the person who authorised the void,

The customer details,

Then, the sales channel, the void reason, and a more detailed description of why the void was processed.

Finally, the value of the order and a subtotal for the section.

Note that in some cases, such as for online orders that fail to process, the void might be applied automatically. In these cases, the POS will generate a detailed reason for the failure and void under the “Void Description.”

The end of this section gives you a final total for all voided invoices, and indicates what percentage of your gross sales the voids represent.

Following this, we have some graphs that help easily visualise the data, showing you the voids grouped by “Cashier” and by “reason”

The next section of the report deals with “Voided Items”. This refers to cases in which individual items were voided from invoices BEFORE they were saved and sent to the kitchen.

The table here gives you details of the invoice the items belonged to, and then the description, PLU code, and value of the item that was voided.

The section ends with a total for voided items, and indicates what percentage of your gross sales the item voids represent.

Next, the data is graphed for visual reference, showing the proportion of voids by “Cashier”, “Transaction Type”, and “Sales Channel”.

The last page summarises the data in the report, showing you subtotals for Invoice voids with and without wastage, the totals for Invoice Voids and Voided menu items, and finally giving you a combined total for all voids in the period, again showing them as a percentage of your overall gross sales.

Forecast reports

Menu item sales forecast

The "Menu Item Sales Forecast" report is designed to help predict your menu item sales to know what to prepare for both today, tomorrow, and the following day.

Before you run the report, you will need to set a date as the ‘payday’ date. The algorithm uses payday to determine which dates to analyse.

The report opens with important information on the forecasting method. This is important to help you understand what can realistically be forecast with the data at hand, and inform you as to what data is taken into consideration and when.

Most important to note is that Forecasting relies on past data, so events like public holdiays, special events and so on, may differ from the forecast.

The report analyzes recent dates , matching the same day of the week, as well as dates that fall before or after payday. The weightings applied to each date give an idea of their influence on the forecast. Higher weightings imply greater influence from a particular date.

The report also includes a Confidence Rating bar which visually shows the confidence level of the forecast. Higher confidence (shown in green) means the forecast is based on strong, reliable patterns, while lower confidence (shown in red) may require more caution or manual adjustments based on expected variations.

The bulk of the report provides detailed sales forecasts for individual menu items. Menu items are grouped by category, with corresponding sales forecasts for Today, Tomorrow, and The Day After Tomorrow.

For each item, the number of expected sales is displayed for each of the three forecast days, which will help anticipate sales volumes. The backing color behind the number conveys the level of confidence in the prediction.

Sales Forecast

The Sales Forecast report is designed to predict your sales per day for this month and next month.

Before you can run your report, you will need to specify the ‘Payday’ date. The algorithm uses payday to determine which historical dates to analyse. It matches on both the day of week and the date before or after payday.

The report presents a table with projections for the upcoming month. On the left is the date, either passed or still ahead. Then, the Label indicates if there is a special consideration about that date, such as its proximity to pay day.

Next is the Original Forecast figure, which is the projected forecast before sales data has been recorded. Following this is the actual turnover, if it is available at the time the report is run.

Note that mousing over the Original Forecast figure will show you the days' figures used in the calculations.

Next, the report compares the Original forecast with the Turnover to give you a percentage difference from the projection. In the summary table, it shows an overall percentage difference.

The report will use this percentage difference to create an adjusted forecast figure for the remaining days. Note that days already passed are highlighted blue and adjusted to reflect the actual turnover for those days.

The bottom of the page shows the Month to Yesterday forecast, compared to the turnover total for the same period. It then shows the difference in value and as a percentage. Below that is a graph showing the difference between forecast and actual values over the month.

The final page gives you the forecast for the upcoming month, and the projected sales values for each day.

The report ends with an important note on the calculation considerations used in this report. Most important to note is that Forecasting relies on past data, so events like public holiday's, special events and so on, may differ from the forecast.

Operational Reports

Activity Log

The “Activity Log” report allows you to check who is authorising and performing controlled activities on CounterPOS.

Before you run the report, you can choose to group the report by chronological order, by Activity, or by Employee. For this video, we will leave the grouping on “Activity”.

You can also set a custom “Idle Minutes” time window, which allows you to report on a time frame in which the POS is not being used. So, in this example, if there are no activities for a period of time greater than 150 minutes DURING the store's trading hours, that period will be highlighted on the report.

The report opens with a chart summarising the number of different activities that have been performed in the period, from most frequently used to least.

Next, we have a summary of potentially suspicious activities. These are the Five MOST important activities that we suggest you monitor most closely, as frequent use may indicate fraudulent behaviour.

After this, there is a detailed list of all activities. Each activity is listed with the Date, Employee, and an expandable section to show instances by employee.

At the end of the report, we have extended periods with no activity for more than 150 minutes. Here we can see all cases where there were long breaks in use of the POS during our business hours that are longer than the time we specified.

Now, let’s look at the report grouped by employee. You still have the same graph at the top, and the same summary of potentially suspicious activities, but from that point onwards, it's grouped by Employee. Each activity is expandable to see instances when that activity was performed.

Finally, running the report by chronological order just lists all activities at the time that they happened, the user, and the device it occurred on.

Cashier Performance Report

The “Cashier Performance” report allows you to monitor and compare your cashiers and waiters' performances across many metrics such as sales, discounts, voids, and more over the period you specify.

The report opens with a table showing all cashiers active in the date range, and displays important performance metrics. The table cells are colour-coded so you can see at a glance which cashier is performing best or worst in a given area. Best performances are highlighted bright green, and worst in deep red. For example, note that the highest sales figure is shown in green "HERE", because it’s a positive metric, but the highest number of “voids” is shown in RED here, because it’s a NEGATIVE metric.

Below this we have “Menu category sales performance per cashier”, which indicates the volume of sales from each Menu Category that each cashier made. It shows the value of sales from the category, and the percentage contribution to the cashier’s total sales.

Note that non-cashier entities like Online Orders and Self-Service Terminals will also have their own entries in the report, so their performance in these areas can also be monitored.

Invoice Audit Report

The “Invoice Audit” report shows a detailed breakdown of an individual invoice. It is designed to help you analyze exactly what happened with any sale, and provide all the information that you need all in one place.

If you launch this report directly from the portal, you will need to input the invoice number of the particular invoice you wish to see. Otherwise, this report can be launched by clicking on any underscored Invoice number displayed in another report. In this example, we’re launching it from the “Sales Detail” report.

The report itself breaks down all available information for the invoice, including what POS it was rung up on, what sales channel, timestamps for different stages in the kitchen workflow, tax info, cashup details, customer details and much more.

The next page shows the detail of what items are included on this invoice, including details such as number of items, sit-down take-away status, and item cost.

Finally, if your store is using a kitchen display system, the report displays an analysis of the invoice’s time spent in each stage of the kitchen workflow process, compared in both a table and graph.

Kitchen Speed Report

The Kitchen Speed report is designed to monitor the times of invoices through the kitchen over the period you specify, and gives you an insight to the efficiency of your makelines. The report requires that you are using Aura's "Kitchen Display Screen" systems.

The report opens with groupings by display screen. If you have more than one screen, each screen will have its own group in the report.

Initially, we have a summary of average minutes for each order type. “Minutes until started” is how long on average the order takes from being received to the kitchen screen until it is flagged as started. Note that this is an optional setting, so if you do not use the option, this statistic may be blank. "Minutes until done" is the time from an order being started until it is marked as "DONE". "Total minutes" is the total average time it takes for an order to move through this step of the kitchen workflow.

Clicking on a row will expand it to show you a list of all orders that contribute to the time averages. When expanded, more details are shown for each invoice. It shows the ARRIVAL time, which is the time the order appears on the kitchen screen, the STARTED time - when the order was flagged as started, to the DONE time, which is the time at which the staff bumped the order from the screen. The intervals between these times are color-coded for easy visual reference, green for low times, and progressively more yellow or even red as the time increases.

Then, for each display you will have your BACKLOG chart per day, and per HOUR of the day. This is represented as a graph below so you can see your peak times throughout the day over the week.

The final page shows an overview of your total average make times per hour of the day over the week. It also shows how many orders were processed in different time intervals from under TWO to over THIRTY minutes, and graphs this out for visual reference.

Below this is an info block explaining the different terms used to help you better understand the DATA.

Offline Tills Report

The Offline Tills report is designed to help to make sure that your managers and staff are using ALL of the POS devices in the store, including counterPOS, mobile POS, and self-service terminal devices.

The report presents a simple table, grouped by POS device, that lists periods in which this device was offline.

“Opening Time” reports the store’s opening time.

The center columns indicate the point in time when the device went offline, the minutes spent offline, and the time at which it came back online.

“Closing Time” reports the store’s closing time.

The report then indicates the number of invoices processed while the device was offline. Note that Aura NextGen POS devices can still operate offline, though in a more limited capacity/ In this period the device will be unable to sync the orders to the cloud or the kitchen.

Hovering the mouse over the number will show you the Invoice Numbers of the orders that were processed during the offline period.

When the till comes online again, any orders that were processed while offline will be synced.

And if a device is currently offline when the report is run, the report will not be able to indicate how many invoices have been processed until it syncs again.

Time and Attendance Report

The Time and Attendance report is a simple display of hours worked for all employees in the period you choose. It also displays the totals for all hourly wages due to each employee.

By default, the report is grouped by Employee, but it can be grouped by Day, or ungrouped and formatted in CSV for easy exporting. For this example, let’s look at it by Employee.

For each employee, the report shows the Employee number and their hourly wage, followed by each day over the period you chose.

For each day, the employee’s clock-in time and clock-out time is shown, and the number of hours that elapsed between them.

It’s VERY important to note that any periods marked with asterisks are when the employee did not manually clock in and out using the clock function in CounterPOS. In these cases, the system will AUTOMATICALLY log the FIRST and LAST detected activity by the employee on the POS. This could mean an inaccurate time if the employee did not interact with the POS for long periods before or during their shift.

The last page of the report is a summary of the employee’s total hours, and any hourly wages that were earned.

If you use other payroll software and just want to import the data, you can run the report formatted for CSV.

When run, the report is formatted to a simple table sorted chronologically. Using the report toolbar, you can simply click “SAVE” and choose “Microsoft Excel” to export it to a spreadsheet file.

Sales Reports

Best Sellers Report

Let's take a look at the Best Sellers Report. This report shows which menu items are selling the most, both by quantity and by revenue, for a selected date range.

We start by choosing a Start Date and End Date, then selecting how many items we want to display. Once that’s done, we click Show Report.

The first page of the report groups your sales by Category. The information is split into two columns. On the left, under Most Popular, we see the top-selling items by quantity. On the right, under Money Spinners, we see the items that brought in the most money.

In this example, the most popular item is the Chicken Pizza Large, sold four times. It also appears at the top of the revenue list, generating R480.00.

The next section, Overall best sellers source of sales – drilldown, breaks down each item’s sales in more detail. This includes quantity and sales percentage per item, and allows us to expand each one for more insight.

Let’s expand an item – in this case, Bacon DoubleStack Burger. We can now see when it sold, how it was sold, and what kind of transaction it was.

For example, this burger was sold on a Monday, through the cashier sales channel, as a takeaway order during the breakfast period. The sale type was marked as a counter transaction.

This level of detail is designed to help you understand not just what is selling, but when and how those items are being sold.

The next page of the report shows a further breakdown by Category, giving you a big-picture view of which categories are driving volume and revenue.

The next pages sort the sales by Day of the week, Sales Channel, Take away/Sit down sales, Time of Day, and Finally by Transaction Type.

This report is helpful for understanding your strongest performers and spotting trends in item popularity, sales channels, and customer behaviour.

Menu Category Sales Analysis

The Menu Category Sales Analysis Report provides detailed insights into which menu categories are selling best or are underperforming across the period you specify.

Before running the report, you can choose by what metric you want to group the results. The default is "No Grouping", but you can change it to group by Date, by Cashier, by Hour, and much more.  We will leave it ungrouped for now.

When run, the report breaks down each menu category and provides a percentage of invoices that included items from that category. Note that the group heading is “ALL ORDERS”, because we did not set a grouping.

The Category Percentage figures indicates how frequently customers ordered an item from each category, which lets you see the popularity and sales contribution of each one. The result is measured on a bar graph that represents the percentages.

For example, the “Wraps” category here is 50 percent, which means that half of all orders in this period contained at least one item from the Wraps category.  The report is sorted from best performing to worst performing categories so you can see which areas of the menu may need more promotion.

Product Sales Report

The Product Sales Report allows you to track the sales of your menu items, and to group the sales by a variety of factors such as cashier, date, hour and more.

Before the report can be run, you will need to specify the date range and then set the grouping parameters that you want to use.

By default ,the report is not grouped, but you can set it by cashier, date, day of the week, or any of the options listed here. For this example, let’s set it to group by “hour of day”.

Next, we can choose how the report presents the information - either by grouping first, or by product and then grouping. We will look at both options, so for now, let’s choose GROUPING then PRODUCT.

When the report is run, we see that it indicates the primary grouping in the title, and below that it shows that we have chosen to run it by group and then product.

Below this we can see the main group is our first metric, hour of day, which contains a table of products rung up in that hour, sorted by product category.

Each group then has a subtotal that summarises the groups information. Note that any of the column headers can be clicked to sort the data by that heading.

Now, let's run the report to look at the same information with the grouping changed. On the report parameters, lets group our data by CASHIER. Then we will set it to run PRODUCT first, THEN grouping.

Now we can see that the report shows by menu category as the primary group. Below that we have each individual menu item and then that item by Cashier. Each menu item has a subtotal, and then we have a subtotal for the category grouping as well.

Feel free to experiment with the parameters of the Product Sales report to see the many ways it can present your data.

Sales Detail Report

The “Sales Detail Report” is a versatile, customizable report designed to display all of your sales information in whichever way suits you. 

Let's look at some examples of how this report can be run before you can generate the report. You will need to set the parameters first, we have the period that you want to see data for, then set the grouping. By default, the report groups sales by “Date”, but this can be changed to a number of different options such as by hour of day by cashier or even by till. For this example, let's leave it on date.

Next, we can add a custom column. This adds an extra column to further drill down your data. There are a number of different options including employee names, POS devices, shifts and so on. Let's select hour of day so we can see our daily sales by hour. Below this we have the “Show Detail” option. This will expand our sales from a summary to a detailed breakdown of each individual invoice for the period. Let's leave it unticked for now.

On the right, we have our filters. This lets us decide what information to include in our sales data by default, it allows all sales channels, all transaction types and all device types, but you can remove any of the tags if you want to be more specific. In this example, we just want to see our counter sales, so we will remove the other options from the “transaction type” filter.

The “Device Type” filter lets us choose which devices sales we want to see for. Now we'll include sales from all devices and then show the report.

When run, the report shows you which parameters were set. In order to get this data below that, we can see that the sales are grouped by date as we specified and then further broken down into by hour subtotals. 

At the end of the report, we have a grand total for sales presented in the report as well as a graph charting out the data over the time period. Finally, there's a note on the value of any voids for the period as well. 

Now let's take another look at the same report with some parameters changed. We'll run the report for the same period. This time we change our filters to show all transactions. We will group the report by cashier and set a custom column to show us the transaction type. We will also show details so we can see all invoices for this period as you can see the report now shows much more detail. 

It is grouped by the cashier and our custom column is showing us the transaction type as requested note that the invoice numbers that are shown here can be clicked on to run the invoice audit report for that particular invoice, so we can learn more about it if necessary. At the very end of the report, we once again have the totals and the data represented as a graph for easy visual reference.

Another feature of the sales report is that a summary table is generated for certain parameters. This table cross references the data to make identifying certain data trends easier. This table is only generated when the group report by parameter is set to transaction type and the custom column value is set to either hour of day, cashier name, sales channel shift number or any of the pause columns.

Feel free to experiment with this report and find the ways to show data that best suits you.

Sales Summary Report

The Sales Summary Report provides a broad overview of all of your key sales figures over a given period, so that you can find all important information in one place.

The report opens with your totals for the period, showing turnover, number of transactions and average transaction size.

It then shows these totals split by other metrics, including by Transaction Type, by Hour of Day, by Day of the Week, and more.

Payment methods are listed here too to show which are most used and your average transaction via each.

Then, it shows your “Average Sales Deviation” percentages.
This compares your overall average sale size against averages within different groupings — such as by cashier, by transaction type, or by hour of the day.

In other words, it measures how each grouping performs compared to the overall average.

For example, if your average sale size across all transactions is R112.70, and the average for John Smith is R109, then John’s deviation is about -2.7%, meaning his average sale size is 2.7% lower than the overall average.

A negative deviation indicates that sales in that group are performing below the overall average, while a positive deviation means sales are performing above average. This can help you spot which time periods, staff members, or transaction types are outperforming or underperforming compared to the general trend.

Transaction Type Cross-Tab Report

The Transaction-Type Cross-Tab report helps cross-reference important sales metrics across all transaction types over the period you specify.

Before you run the report, you will need to specify a CUSTOM COLUMN. There are a number of different options including employee names, POS devices, shifts and so on. For this example, we will select Day-of-the-Week.

The report displays a series of three tables, in which the columns represent the transaction types, and the rows are your custom metric - in this case, Day-of-the-Week.

Each group indicates what figure the table is displaying. First we have Turnover, so we can see turnover per transaction type for each day of the week, next is “Number of Transactions”.

Finally, we have “Average transaction size”.

Feel free to run this report with different options to find what information is most useful to YOU.

Upsells Report

The Upsells report is designed to show you how your sales are being increased by adding additional upsell options to menu items, such as pizza toppings, or adding drinks or sides to a meal.

The report presents a list of parent menu items, which are items on the menu which have upsell options. quantity of sales of the parent item as well as their gross sales value are shown in the header. Nested underneath these parent items are the different upsell items that have been processed on this parent item.

The report shows the quantity of their sales and the value of their sales as well. The totals of these upsize sales are summed up in the parent item header here, and then the value percentage increase that these upsizes have contributed is shown here.

This report is not only valuable in showing how much value was raised, but also in showing which upsells are the most popular for any given menu item, so you can know which items need to be incentivised for upselling or require extra preparation.

Stock and menu reports

Discards

The Discards Report is useful to help you track stock items that have been marked as Discarded, so you can see exactly how much stock is being lost, and what its value is, due to things like spoilage, accidents, or other reasons.

Before running the report, you will need to set the date range, and set the Wastage percentage option.

You can have the report calculate wastage based on the Model wastage percentages, which are the Brand defaults, or you can choose Store's wastage percentages, which are specific settings for your own store. Pick whichever option makes the most sense for your reporting needs.

For this example, we'll just leave it set to Model. Once you've set the dates and chosen your wastage percentage, click Show Report to generate the report.

Alright, let's take a look at the report itself and see what it shows us.

Right at the top, you'll see the date range that you selected, and the wastage percentage option that's being used in the calculations.

Moving down, the report is organized into sections, usually broken down by stock category. Within each of these sections, you'll see a list of all the discarded items in that category, along with the date it was recorded.

The Notes column will display any notes that were added when the discard was logged, which can give you some context for WHY the stock was wasted. The Discard details column simply describes the stock item itself. Then you have Bulk quantity, which tells you the quantity of the item that was discarded in its bulk or unprepared form. Prepped quantity shows the quantity that was discarded in its prepped or portioned form.

Now, let's move over to the Calculated values section. The Wastage percentage column shows the wastage percentage that was applied to that particular item – again, this will be either the store's or the model's percentage, depending on what you chose in the report parameters.

The Prepped Equivalent Quantityis figure that Aura POS calculates for you. It is calculated by taking your bulk quantity and removing the Wastage Percentage and then adding the prepped quantity. It can therefore be thought of as the quantity of stock that you would have discarded had it all been prepped already.

The Prepped Unit Cost is also a calculated figure that shows the real price you paid for usable product once the wastage has been removed during the process of cutting, preparing and draining the original item. The "Value" is the prepped equivalent quantity multiplied by the prepped unit cost.

At the end of each of these category sections, you'll find a subtotal, which gives you the total value of discards for that specific category.

And then, right at the bottom of the report, you'll see the Grand total. This is the total value of all discarded stock across all categories, for the entire date range you selected.

Goods Received Voucher

The Goods Received Voucher, or “GRV” Report gives you a detailed list of all the GRVs that have been entered into the system for the period you specified.

The report itself is laid out as a list of individual Goods Received Vouchers. For each GRV, you'll find several sections containing important information.

First, you have the Goods received voucher header details section. This part provides general information about the GRV itself, such as the GRV number, status, the date it was captured in the system, the date the stock was actually received, and if any stock was RETURNED. You'll also see the Supplier reference number, Purchase order number, and any GRV notes or Supplier notes that were added when the GRV was created.

Under “Supplier details”, you'll find any relevant supplier information, including the Supplier's account and tax numbers, contact info, and so on.

Moving down, you'll see the Amounts section, which displays the Invoice total, the amount, if any, that was paid from shift, and the Balance owing on the invoice if not balanced.

Next, we get to the really detailed part - the Stock item details section. This is where you see the specifics of each item on the GRV. For each item, you'll see the Category, the Item name and PLU code, and the Unit of Measure. The Bulk quantity column shows the quantity of the item received in its bulk form. Then, you'll see the Bulk UNIT  cost EXCLUSIVE of vat, and then the TOTAL cost of the stock excluding and including vatrespectively.

Moving further to the right, we come to the Calculated values section. This section is all about adjusting for wastage, so let’s take a look at a GRV for items that involve wastage.

The Store's wastage % column shows the wastage percentage that's set for that particular stock item in your store. “Prepped quantity” is the quantity of the item after wastage has been accounted for. We can see the store's adjusted “prepped unit cost”. And finally, the Model prepped unit cost shows the model or default prepped unit cost for comparison. The Prep cost drift percentage indicates the percentage difference between your store's prepped cost and the model prepped cost.

At the bottom of each GRV, you’ll see the Total amount for that GRV, and the Balanced status, which should ideally show 'Balanced' indicating that the GRV is correctly entered.

That’s it for this report - thanks for watching!

Gross Profit

The Gross Profit report is vital for tracking your profitability on food cost items. It compares your actual cost of sales against the theoretical cost, which are calculated from your recipes and sales data. This really helps you pinpoint potential profit issues.

When you run the Gross Profit report, you'll need to select an Opening and a Closing stocktake from available Stock Takes, since it needs data from two stock takes to run.

Choose your Opening stock take and Closing stock take to define the period for the report. You can also toggle ‘Expand all categories for a detailed view' if you want to see individual stock items. For this example, we’ll expand it.

At the top of the first page, you’ll see the selected stock takes and date range.

The report first breaks down your Cost of Sales by stock category. For each category, it shows: Opening Stock value, Purchases, Net manufacturing and transfers, Closing Stock value, Actual Cost of Sales, and Theoretical Cost of Sales, calculated from sales.

Note that any of the underlined headers can be clicked on to open the report relevant to that heading so that you can get more detail as to why a certain figure is represented that way.

Next, the “Stock Losses” column shows tyou the difference between your actual and theoretical costs, indicating if you are short - highlighted in red, balanced - in green, or over - indicated in yellow.

Ideally this column should always show as close to zero as POSsible. To get more detail on the figure, click the “Stock Losses” Column header to launch the Stock Loss Breakdown report which expands on the losses in more detail.

Finally, the losses are represented as a percentage of the theoretical cost.

On the last page, the Sales breakdown section, summarizes Gross sales, Discounts, Net sales, and Delivery charges to calculate the store’s overall Turnover.

The GP breakdown section then compares Actual and Theoretical figures: Net sales, Cost of sales, and Gross profit, showing both values and the Difference. It also presents Gross Profit and Net Sales percentages for both Actual and Theoretical figures, along with the GP %.

"Understanding your food cost percentage is key to managing profitability. Let’s break it down! Your Net Sales Food Cost Percentage is calculated by dividing your Cost of Sales by Net Sales (excluding taxes). Net Sales reflect your sales after discounts are applied, whereas Gross sales reflect sales before discounts are removed. While this method aligns with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, it can vary month to month due to promotions or discounts, which may skew the consistency of your numbers.

To give you a clearer, more stable view of your food cost—one that only shifts due to changes in food handling, not promotional activity—we also provide the Gross Sales Food Cost Percentage. This is simply your Cost of Sales divided by Gross Sales (excluding taxes). By focusing on gross sales, you get a reliable metric to track performance consistently over time."

The report also includes a Scoring section, grading your absolute variance as a percentage of theoretical cost of sales, giving a quick performance indicator.

Purchases and returns

The Purchases and Returns report provides a detailed breakdown of your stock purchases and returns, item by item. It’s useful for analyzing purchase history, understanding costs, and spotting price discrepancies.

This opens the parameters screen. For this report, you set the date range of data you want to see, and you also have a ‘Group report by’ option, which lets you group the report results either by Stock item or by Supplier. Let's start with 'Stock item' grouping, the default.

The report is organized by Food-cost and Non-food-cost sections, then further broken down by category, and finally by individual stock item.

For each stock item, the report lists all Goods Received Vouchers - GRVs - that include that item within your chosen date range.

Looking at the columns, you'll see: GRV Number, Stock received or returned date and time, and then under GRV details, you get Bulk quantity, Bulk unit cost excluding VAT, Total cost excluding VAT, Total cost including VAT, and Input taxes, giving a detailed breakdown of each purchase.

Moving to the right, the Calculated values section shows: Store's wastage percentage, Prepped quantity, Store's prepped unit cost excluding VAT, Model prepped unit cost excluding VAT, and Prep cost drift percentage.

Subtotals are provided for each stock item, for each category, and then for the overall Food cost and Non food cost sections.

Note that any underlined stock item can be clicked on to open the Stock Item Audit report, and the underlined GRV numbers can be clicked on to launch the GRV Report for that GRV.

Now, let's quickly run the report again, this time grouped by 'Supplier'. Go back to the parameters, change 'Group report by' to Supplier, and click Show Report again.

The supplier layout is simple, showing the Supplier name as the primary grouping, then each GRV listed underneath it.

Stock item audit

The Stock item audit report provides a complete overview of everything Aura knows about a chosen stock item. It's a detailed look at a single item's history - stock takes, transfers, wastage, and menu usage. Useful for troubleshooting or deep dives.

This report is accessed in one of two ways. You can run the report directly and use the Stock item field to search and select your stock item.

Alternatively, you can click an underlined stock item from another report, which will open the audit report.

The report is organized in sections, each detailing an aspect of the item’s properties and history.

First, Item details gives basic item info: Stock Code, Category, Unit of Measure, Description, Status, and Stock type.

Next, “Current item costs” shows current cost information, including Store's and Model Bulk cost unit price, Wastage percent, and Prep cost unit price, plus the Drift percentage difference between the two. Next you can see any Stock lists that contain this item, and then any Taxes that apply to the item.

The “History of Named recipes that contain this item” section lists any named recipes using our stock item, with its recipe name, number of menu items using the recipe, and quantity used. It also indicates if the recipe is in draft or if it’s currently live.

The” History of Menu Items that contain this item” section is a detailed list of all menu items using this item , broken down by Menu item category, Menu item name, Named recipe name, and indicates if it's used in Take away or Sit down recipes.

Finally, the report shows a list of recent stock takes that contain the item, and how much was recorded in each stocktake.

Stock item list

The Stock item list report provides a comprehensive list of all your stock items, showing key details like codes, wastage percentages, and cost prices. It's great for a general overview of your stock setup and for comparing your store's costs to model costs.

The report is organized by Food cost and Non food cost sections, and then further broken down by Stock Category.

For each Stock Item, the report shows: Stock item name and Stock code, Unit of Measure, and how many menu item recipes the item belongs to.

Then it shows item costs, comparing the Store's Bulk cost unit price, Wastage and Prepped unit cost to the Model bulk cost, wastage and prepped cost. Following this is the Prep cost drift percentage, which is the percentage difference between the model and the store's costs.

The report highlights in red any Prep cost drift percentages that are over one hundred percent, potentially indicating items where your store's prep cost is significantly higher than the model.

Menu item recipes

The Menu Items with Recipes Report shows the breakdown of recipe costs for a selected menu , helping you compare the model cost of items to your actual store cost.

Before running the report, you will need to choose which menu you want to run the report for - your Draft menu, your Live menu EXCLUDING previous recipes, or your live menu INCLUDING previous recipes.

On the report, you’ll see the menu items of the menu you’ve selected, grouped by menu item category. At the top of the report is a guide to what each color and section represents. Make sure to read it carefully.

The bar chart below shows gross profit percentages for both the active and draft recipe versions. Each version compares the model GP to your store’s calculated GP. This helps you quickly see whether your costs are in line with the model.

Below the chart, the recipe is split into two sections.

The Draft Recipe is shown first, in orange. This is your working version of a given recipe. You can make changes to your menu and the changes will be shown here without affecting the live menu. The base ingredients are listed, along with any “named recipes” These are automatically exploded to show their ingredients and costs.

The cost price is calculated at the bottom of the draft section, showing both the model recipe cost and the store's recipe cost.

Next is the Active Recipe, shown in green. This version is live and currently in use. It includes the exact same structure and breakdown as the draft, but it’s locked to any historical changes until a new recipe is published.

Both versions show ingredient quantities, units of measure, and calculated costs based on your local stock prices.

Use this screen to monitor recipe margins, validate selling prices, and ensure your menu items remain profitable.

When your draft is ready, it can be published to replace the active recipe. Until then, the active recipe continues to calculate your GP.

Menu item prices

The Menu item prices report is used for reviewing and verifying the pricing of your menu items across different sales channels.

Before you start, you will need to select which menu you want to review - the menu in Draft, the Live menu, or the previous menu release.

At the top of the first page, you'll see notifications about recent menu revisions. Items highlighted in Orange have been edited in the latest menu update, while Red indicates deleted items. It's important to check these notes to confirm that any recent menu changes you intended have been correctly applied.

Below this, a note explains the variance percentages shown later in the report. These variances compare prices on other sales channels, like delivery platforms, against your standard Cashier Sale price.

The main part of the report lists your Active categories and menu items. Items are grouped by their menu category for easy review. For each item, you see its name and code.

Crucially, the report then lists the prices for different Sales channels. You'll typically see the base Cashier Sale price, and then prices for other channels configured in your system, such as UberEats in this example. Reviewing these prices side-by-side is vital to ensure consistency or confirm intended price differences across your different sales platforms.

Next to the prices for other sales channels, you'll often see a Variance Percentage. This percentage shows how much that channel's price differs from the Cashier Sale price. This is important for quickly spotting significant price differences, verifying pricing strategies for delivery platforms, and identifying potential errors.

The second page of the report lists Archived categories and menu items. This section shows items no longer active on your menu but kept for historical reporting purposes. You won't typically need to focus on this section for current pricing checks.

Stock loss breakdown

The Stock loss breakdown report helps you understand why you have stock losses shown on your variance or gross profit reports. It breaks down losses into three main types: Spoilage, Operational wastage, and Unaccounted shrinkage.

This report requires you to select Stock Takes as parameters. Choose your Opening stock take and Closing stock take to define the reporting period. Click Show Report.

Let's review the Stock loss breakdown report output.

The report analyzes stock losses between the selected stock takes. At the top, the date range is shown.

The report is organized by Food cost items, then by Category, and shows individual stock items within those categories.

The key columns break down the losses: Spoilage shows losses from discards to wastage, displaying Units, Value, and Percentage of losses value. Operational wastage shows losses from voids with wastage, again with Units, Value, and Percentage. Unaccounted shrinkage shows losses from unaccounted-for stock, like theft or overtopping, with Units, Value, and Percentage. Finally, the equals Losses column summarizes the total losses, matching the figures on your variance and GP reports, showing total Units, Value, and the Percentage of turnover this loss represents.

At the end, the Total wastage of Food cost items line summarizes the totals for each loss category and the overall loss percentage of turnover. The Turnover (excl taxes) for the period is also shown for context.

The final page provides visual summaries: a Profile of total stock losses by value pie chart, showing the proportion of each loss type, and The 5 categories with highest wastage value pie chart, highlighting the categories contributing most to your losses.

Stock take

The Stock Take report reviews a specific stock take that has been counted and posted.

Before running the report, you need to Select a stock take to review.

Use the dropdown menu to choose the specific stock take you want to review. The list shows the date, time, and status, being posted, Draft, or Archived. Only posted stock takes can be used for variance or gross profit calculations. You can also choose to Show a sub-counts, if the selected stock take included sub-counts.

The report displays the details of the selected stock take. At the top, it confirms the date, time, and status of the stock take, along with who counted and posted it.

The report is organized by Food-cost and Non food-cost sections, then by Stock category.

For each stock item counted, the report shows its Item name, code, and Unit of Measure. It then displays the Bulk count and Prepped count quantities entered during the stock take.

Next, it shows the Store's wastage percentage, and the Model wastage percentage for comparison. Finally, the Total prepped equivalent Stock on Hand columns show the calculated stock on hand after accounting for wastage, based on your store’s and the model wastage factor .

Stock variance

The Stock variance report is your primary tool for stock control. It directly compares the actual amount of stock used against what theoretically should have been used based on sales and recipes. This comparison will highlight any stock losses, and helps you pinpoint if stock is getting lost or misused.

Before running the report, you will need to select the Opening stock take and Closing stock takes. The report will analyze all stock movement and sales between these stock takes.

At the top of the report, you'll see the status of both stock takes, who counted and posted them, and indicators for overall stock loss status - Over, Balanced, or Under - plus the variance percentage. Note the Wastage percentages and Stock costing method being used here.

Pay close attention to the note here: For an item to be included, it must be counted in both the opening and closing stock takes. Leaving an item blank means it wasn't counted and gets excluded. If you've run out of stock, you must enter zero to include it in the report and accurately reflect that you have none left.

Incorrect counting here is a primary cause of variance. Double-check counts, especially for items showing large losses or gains – remember, a closing miscount becomes the next day's opening count.

The main section is the Actual stock usage calculation, organized by Food cost items and then by Category.

For each Item, the Actual Stock figure usage is calculated by the Opening stock, PLUS any purchases, PLUS or MINUS any manufactures or transfers, and MINUS your Closing stock.

The Actual stock figure is worked out from figures that you have captured, so it’s important to make sure any Stock takes, GRVs and other stock events are captured accurately with the correct quantities and unit of measure, as errors here will directly impact variance.

Theoretical usage is calculated from menu item recipes of items sold over this period. The crucial column to focus on is Stock losses – the difference between your actual and theoretical usage in units. A large negative number, indicated in yellow - might indicate under-portioning, while a large positive number in red could mean incorrect counting, incorrect or missing GRV's, voids or discards with wastage were done, or over-portioning

Look at the Absolute stock deviation percentage shown for each category. This helps narrow down which categories have the biggest problems.

The final page summarizes the Food cost items, showing the overall Absolute stock deviation percentage. The data input score on the variance report takes into account accuracy of data capture. This means that if you capture more closing stock than your opening stock plus purchases, it would indicate an obvious data capture error, and it will affect your score. To get a high score, always count and weigh stock accurately.

Besides counting and purchase errors, consider over-portioning compared to recipes, ensure short deliveries aren't happening, verify manufactured stock procedures. Ensure wastage is correctly discarded and voids specify if stock was actually used. While recipes primarily affect theoretical figures, consistent checks are good practice. Only consider theft or shrinkage after exhausting all other possibilities.