Smarter Week

How to automate it

How to automate “fill in daily sales and labour reports for head office”

Here are 2 ways to spend less time on this, best first. Each comes with steps you can follow today.

20 min
typically, every day
70%
of the time can be automated
Easy
to set up

Fix 1 of 2

AutomationBest fix

Let the POS send the end-of-day and sales reports automatically

Your POS already knows sales, payments and labour. Set it to email the daily summary to head office and only count cash by hand.

Typically saves about 60% of the time30 min to set up
  1. 1Find the end-of-day, sales and labour reports in your POS back office.
  2. 2Schedule them to email to you and head office every day.
  3. 3Use the POS cash-up screen so card totals fill in themselves.
  4. 4Ask head office to drop any spreadsheet that repeats these numbers.

Tools: Toast, Square, Lightspeed, Clover or Shopify POS

Fix 2 of 2

Automation

Build the report once so it refreshes itself

Connect the spreadsheet or dashboard straight to the source so next week's report is already done.

Typically saves about 80% of the time4 h to set up
  1. 1List where each number comes from.
  2. 2Use Power Query (Excel), a connected sheet, or a Google Data Studio or Power BI dashboard pulling from the source.
  3. 3Schedule the refresh and send the link instead of an attachment.

Tools: Excel Power Query · Power BI · Google Data Studio (formerly Looker Studio) · Google Sheets connectors

Who does this task

Roles in our library that list this as one of their common tasks. Each guide covers the rest of that role’s week.

Store / shift managerRestaurant / kitchen manager

HourLeak · the 8-minute work audit

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Other common tasks for Store / shift managers