What is a Z report?
A Z report is the end-of-day sales summary a POS produces when you close out, showing totals, taxes, tips, refunds and payments by method.
The name comes from old electronic cash registers. An X reading showed the running totals without clearing them; a Z reading printed the day's totals and reset the counters to zero for the next day. On a modern POS the Z report is the end-of-day summary you use to check the drawer and the card batch against what the system says you sold.
A useful Z report shows gross and net sales, discounts, returns and voids, tax collected by tax type, tips, service and delivery charges, cash pay-outs, and payments by method: cash, debit, credit and any custom tenders. Restaurants also want sales by order type (dine-in, takeout, delivery) and by category, so the manager can see where the money came from.
Reading it is a reconciliation exercise. Cash on the report should match the counted cash minus the float, adjusted for pay-outs. Card totals should match the terminal's batch report. Tax collected is what you will remit. Any gap is a variance to investigate the same night, while the shift is still fresh in everyone's memory.
In the SeroPOS app the Z report is the DSR (Daily Sale Report) in the side drawer. It covers Today, Yesterday, weeks, months or a custom range, and shows bills, gross and net sales, discounts, returns, payouts, tips, card surcharge, delivery charges, payments by method and orders by type. PRINT sends a 'Daily Sales Report / Z Report' to the receipt printer. The app has no separate X report; the DSR can be run at any time of day.
Friday's Z report shows net sales of $4,210.00, GST of $210.50, tips of $386.00, refunds of $24.00 and payouts of $60.00. Payments: cash $612.00, debit $1,450.50, credit $2,744.00. The manager counts $752.00 in the drawer and subtracts the $200.00 float, leaving $552.00. That matches $612.00 of cash taken less the $60.00 paid out, so cash balances. Then she checks that the terminal batch shows $4,194.50 in card sales.