How Daily Sales Report Software Can Boost Profits and Drive Restaurant Strategy

With supply chain issues persisting and a return to in-person restaurant dining continuing its stop-and-start journey, restaurant concepts need an up-to-date view of the conditions on the ground, in each location, at any given time.

If you wait for monthly or even weekly sales data to appear in your sales dashboard, the picture you have of your operations may be incomplete. By the time you take notice of a pattern, conditions may have already shifted, leading your future strategy to miss the mark because it’s not reliant on things as they happen.

That’s why daily sales report software is so crucial. This is software that’s connected to your restaurants and can tally accurate sales data on the fly, populating your dashboards with relevant, visually distinctive information that enables you to make cutting-edge insights and guide your brand to success.

Let’s explore why daily sales report software is so beneficial to restaurants.

See Trends as They Happen

As we hinted above, if you’re waiting on data to come in for your review, the picture of your brand may be out of date by the time you’re able to act on that information.

Daily sales dashboards let you act immediately when you notice something requiring your attention. If you experience an incongruous drop in sales, you can get in touch with your general managers to see what happened. Same if there’s a notable increase in sales that’s not consistent with historic trends, and you want to see what they’re doing right.

In addition to responding immediately, you also have a reservoir of data to draw from if you want to continue gauging the trend over time. This is particularly relevant when you encounter a fraud scenario within one of your locations, as it allows you to match the sales data with employee shift records, taking note of commonalities.

Regardless of the actions you take, getting a daily update on your sales information will be a crucial step in formulating actionable strategy based on the real-time conditions across your concept.

Monitor and Adjust Operating Days and Hours

It doesn’t take a fraud situation for the value of daily sales reporting to become clear. Daily sales reporting software also helps you optimize your operations and reduce the cost of labor.

It does so by helping you see when there might be a reduction in operating hours or, when sales are booming, an increase. Because you have a sense of when you’re making the most money, and what products are selling well during those times, you can take a holistic look at each individual location to see what’s working best. Rather than a one-size fits-all approach to operating hours, you can gauge sentiment over time and adjust as needed to boost profits.

There might be communities where Sundays are the slowest day of the week due to cultural and geographic reasons, while others might be at their busiest on Sundays. For some areas, it might make sense to open early for breakfast while others just can’t justify those increased hours with level of business currently coming in through the door.

Daily sales software can help you adjust these hours and even predict when your concept should be open, and the best part is, you can continue to adjust regularly based on the data at hand.

Intelligent Scheduling

Just as you might adjust operating hours based on what your daily sales reports tell you, so too might you tweak staffing levels based on sales information.

If you post your employees’ schedule for every week or two, you don’t want to wait for the end of the month or the quarter to make adjustments, because you’ll find yourself over- or under-staffed. Daily sales reports help you alter your schedules more regularly, adjusting to seasonal shifts in business and other factors.

Employees appreciate the insight and the added visibility into their schedules, and you appreciate the data-driven approach that helps you bring down your labor costs.

Limited Time Offers

Daily sales reports are also a boon for determining when to deploy limited time offers to bring customers in the door and get expiring ingredients out the door.

When you have insight into your ingredient levels at any given time, you should have a pretty good idea of what’s about to spoil. To avoid wasting the product, you can create limited time offers that take advantage of the item. Soups are obviously an industry go-to, but there’s no limit to what you could offer if you’re willing to get creative.

Because you know how long an ingredient will last on average, you can use your daily sales data to plot this information weeks and even months in advance. You can take note of a sales trend as it happens, so when a given product isn’t selling through to customers’ plates, you can work with your general managers and executive chefs to come up with the right items, preventing waste that can be a drag on your bottom line.

COGS in the Machine

It’s not just limited time offers. Daily sales reporting software can help you get a better handle on all your Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) and make the adjustments necessary to keep those costs down.

When sales surge, that’s a good sign that the demand is sufficient to absorb a price increase (this is especially important as supply chain concerns continue to inch up your COGS). When sales drop, you may need to look at using specials and promotional offers to get people in the door and move product before it goes to waste.

You might also use your daily sales information to get more creative with product that doesn’t waste as quickly. Fresh ingredients have a more limited shelf life than alcohol and various canned goods, so if you can optimize your costs for those types of things, you might be able to afford taking a hit on those pricier, wastier ingredients.

Daily Sales to the Rescue

At any given time, you deserve to see a snapshot of the health of your business. It’s the only way to be confident in your continued growth and status as a concept.

Daily sales reporting software helps you get there, with data you can rely on for your strategy today, next quarter, and next year. To learn more about daily sales reporting software and how it can integrate with your inventory and ordering platform to bring you more and better data than ever before, contact Decision Logic.