Which Reports Should a Restaurant or Café Owner Check Daily, Weekly and Monthly?

Check four things every day: sales against the same day last week, the cash count at close, voids and deletes, and anything that looks odd. Once a week, look at what sold, discounts, waste and the hourly and day-of-week pattern. Once a month, look at gross margin, items that stopped selling, delivery share and sales per staff member. That is about five minutes a day, twenty a week and an hour a month.

Most POS systems have dozens of reports. Owners who open all of them end up reading none. The aim is a short list you check at the same time, in the same order, so a problem stands out the day it starts.

Read yesterday, not today. Today is not finished, and a half-day number only makes you nervous. Do it at the same time every morning, with a coffee, before the shop gets busy.

1. 1Sales against the same day last week. Compare Tuesday with last Tuesday, not with Monday. A difference under about 10% is normal noise. A bigger gap needs a reason: weather, a holiday, a closed road, a staff change.
2. 2The cash count. Look at the end-of-shift (Z) report: cash the system expected, cash counted, and the difference. A few riyals either way happens. The same cashier short again and again is a pattern.
3. 3Voids and deletes. Look for orders cancelled after payment and items removed from a bill, and who did it. One a day is normal. A cluster on one cashier or one shift is not.
4. 4Anything unusual. A big refund, a discount you don't recognise, an item that suddenly sold zero, a shift that closed very late. You are looking for the one line that does not fit.

The daily check catches problems. The weekly one shows you how the business is actually behaving. Pick the same quiet day each week; for many cafés in Qatar that is a Sunday or Monday morning.

• Product mix: which items made most of the week's sales. In most cafés a handful of items bring in more than half the money. Those must never run out and never be made badly.
• Discounts: how much was given away, through which discount, how often. A staff or "friends" discount used forty times a week is a cost line, not a favour.
• Waste: what was thrown away and what it cost. If waste is not recorded, this number is zero on paper and real in the bin.
• The hourly and day-of-week pattern: when the money actually comes in. The next section shows how to read it.
• Cash over the week: whether the small daily differences add up, and whether they sit on the same person.

• Gross margin: sales minus the cost of what you sold, as money and as a percentage. If sales went up and margin went down, a supplier price moved or a cheap item is crowding out a profitable one.
• Slow movers: items on the menu that barely sold or did not sell at all. Each one ties up stock, shelf space and staff attention. Cut, fix or reprice.
• Delivery share: how much of the month came through Talabat, Snoonu and the rest, against dine-in and takeaway. Aggregators take a commission, so a rising delivery share can raise sales and lower profit at the same time.
• Sales per staff member: who rings up what. Use it to spot who sells well, not to punish a quiet shift.

A busy-looking hour is not always a profitable one, and a quiet hour is not always a loss. To know, put three numbers side by side: what the hour sells on average, what those sales cost you in ingredients, and what it costs to keep the shop open and staffed for that hour.

Use at least four weeks of data, and work in averages. One slow Tuesday means nothing. Four slow Tuesdays in a row is a decision.

At 120 QAR, that hour still pays for itself, barely. If the same hour averaged 70 QAR, gross profit would be about 48 QAR against 60 QAR of staff and running cost: a loss of about 12 QAR a night, or roughly 360 QAR a month, for an hour that feels "open for business".

• Close earlier, or open later, if the hour loses money every day of the week.
• Run that hour with one person instead of two, and move the second person's hours to your peak.
• Keep a weak hour on purpose if it brings regulars who spend more at other times. Make it a decision, not a habit.
• Read days the same way. If Sunday averages half of Friday, plan a lighter Sunday team, a smaller prep and a smaller order from suppliers.

• Always compare like with like: this Friday with last Friday, this month with the same month last year if you have it. A Friday will always beat a Monday; that tells you nothing.
• Look for patterns, not single days. Act on something that repeats three or four times, not on one bad evening.
• Start from the total, then go down one level. Sales fell? Which category? Which item? Which hour? Stop when you find the cause.
• Ask one question per report. "Did cash match?" is a question. "How is the business doing?" is not one a single report can answer.
• Write down what you changed and when. A month later, you will want to know whether closing at 11 actually helped.
• Watch for events. Ramadan, Eid, National Day, summer and school holidays move every number in Qatar. Compare them with the same season, not with the month before.

Outale's reports page groups reports by the question you bring: daily operations, products and menu, staff, customers and channels, money and reconciliation, and exceptions. The reports below match the routine above, by their exact names.

Every report page exports to PDF, and the row-by-row reports also export to CSV for Excel or your accountant. The Z-report is shown when a cashier closes a shift, with cash expected, cash counted and the difference, and can be printed.

Shops that have Intale, Outale's assistant, can also ask for a table in plain words, such as "sales by day with average order". Intale is an add-on granted per shop, not part of any plan, and it works in the back office only.