End-of-day Z report on the till

What the Z report shows

The DSR screen starts with summary cards: bills, gross sales, net sales, sales excluding tax, discounts, returns, payouts, tips, card surcharge, delivery charges, rounding, payments collected and net collection. Read across them and you know how much the day brought in and how much of it should be sitting in the drawer or the card batch.

Below the cards, the report breaks the day into sections. Each one answers a question an owner or manager usually asks at close, from which items sold to how much tax was charged on them. Item Sales and Category show what sold, Category Return shows what came back, and Product Tax lists the tax charged on each product, which is handy when a provincial rate applies to only part of the menu.

• Sales Summary and Reconciliation
• Payments by method
• Orders by Type: Dine-in, Take Away, Delivery, with tips
• Item Sales, Category and Category Return
• Product Tax
• Add-ons (Modifiers) and Payout

Checking the drawer against the report

Most closing mistakes come from cash that left the drawer during the day. In SeroPOS a cash pay out is recorded on the till with an amount and a note, and it prints a slip. Those payouts show on the Z report as their own card and section, so the expected cash already accounts for the milk run or the delivery driver who was paid at the door.

The payments by method section then gives you a cash figure to count against and card totals to compare with the terminal. If you use an integrated card terminal, the terminal's own Close Batch and Print Day-End Report option closes the card side, and the two printouts can be kept together for the day.

Closing a shift on the till

A typical close in SeroPOS takes a few steps. Open DSR from the side drawer, pick Today or a custom range, look over the totals, then tap PRINT. Next, go to Open/Close Register, enter the counted amount and a closing note, and close the shift. Closing the register doesn't print a report of its own, which is why the DSR printout comes first.

The Z report needs an internet connection because it reads the day's sales from your SeroPOS account. That also means every till on the account feeds the same numbers, and the back office can show the same sales again later through the daily sales report and register report. If the connection drops at close, wait for the till to reconnect before printing.

Tips, surcharges and delivery charges

Tips are entered on the payment screen, on split payments, or come back from a card terminal that prompted for one. The Z report totals them on their own card and again under each order type, so you can see how much was earned on dine-in compared with delivery before you pay staff out.

Card surcharge and delivery charges also have their own cards. Keeping them out of the sales figure means the net sales line reflects what you sold, while net collection reflects what you actually took in. Rounding on cash sales is shown too, so a few cents of difference has an explanation.

What it doesn't do

SeroPOS has one end-of-day report on the till. There is no separate X report, so if you want a mid-shift look, open the DSR for Today and simply don't treat it as your close. The till also doesn't carry staff or item reports beyond what the DSR shows. Running it early in the day does no harm, since the report only reads sales.

For anything deeper, such as register sessions by user, profit, stock or tax for a quarter, use the web back office. Its reports read the same sales, so the Z report you printed at night lines up with what your bookkeeper sees there. Owners who want the numbers without opening the till can also have the daily sales report emailed as a PDF at closing time.