Restaurant Daily Sales Report Template

The POS already knows what you sold. A daily sales report is the manager's sign-off on it: the few numbers worth looking at every night, written down in the same format so a bad day stands out. The core lines are covers, food and beverage sales, comps and discounts, voids, net sales and average check, split by daypart so you can see which part of the day carried the business.

Keep it short. A report that takes twenty minutes to fill out stops getting filled out. Payment reconciliation (cash in the drawer against cash sales, card batch against card sales) belongs on the same sheet as a yes/no line, with the detail in your cash-out procedure.

• Net sales: food and beverage after comps and discounts, before tax and tips. This is the number your labor percentage and food cost are measured against.
• Covers: guests served. Track them by daypart to set staffing and prep pars.
• Average check: net sales divided by covers. A falling average with steady covers points at upselling, menu mix or discounting.
• Comps and voids: a small, steady amount is normal. A spike on one shift or one server is a training issue or a control problem worth a conversation.

The sample Friday shows 307 covers and $9,977 in net sales, an average check of $32.50. Dinner carries most of the day. Lunch averages $23.12 a head, which is the line to work on if you want more from the same guests. Comps come to 1.6% of gross sales, under the sheet's 3% flag. Change the flag to whatever your comp policy allows.

1. Rename the dayparts to match how your POS splits the day.
2. At close, copy covers and sales from the end-of-day report.
3. Enter comps, discounts and voids from the same report.
4. Check the drawer and the card batch, tick the line, and sign.
5. Print or copy the table into your shared drive; a month of these is your sales history.