The numbers a restaurant owner actually checks

What it does

Reports in DineHarbor are made for one question: what should I do differently next week. The Reports hub has three parts: Sales, Till reports and Growth. Sales shows how you are trading against the previous period of the same length, which dishes sell, when the orders come in and how fast the kitchen works.

How it works

1. Open Reports in the Manager and choose a range: today, this week, this month or your own dates.
2. Read the headline numbers: gross sales, orders, average order, refunds, rejected and cancelled orders.
3. Rank your top items by units or by revenue.
4. Check the heatmap for your busiest days and hours.
5. Look at prep time, grouped by daypart, channel or hour, and at voids by employee and tips.

Read the numbers fairly

Prep time is shown as the usual time and the slow tail, because the slow tail is what guests complain about. Voids by employee come with a note that a high rate is a reason to look at the reasons, and not a conclusion on its own. Reports also flag orders at risk offline or still queued, and payments that are not yet reconciled.

Z-reports and tax

Each till shift ends with a Z-report that reconciles to your payments. Till reports reopens any past one. The tax report excludes cancelled and refunded orders, and discounts are apportioned to lines before VAT is worked out.

Ask instead of search

Ask answers questions in plain words, such as sales against last week or your top products. The Growth Advisor reads your sales, stock and reviews overnight and leaves suggestions on the Today screen.

What it replaces

It replaces end-of-day paper totals and exporting orders to a spreadsheet to work out your own averages. See the blog for five numbers worth checking each week.