Finance closes the day against the card terminal, costs the food from your recipes, takes the hours from the clock and accrues the rent — so the number in front of you at midnight is what the night actually made, not what it took.
One night · six steps
One action at the end of service. Tender reconciled against the terminal, exceptions shown rather than absorbed.
| Friday · close 23:15 | Till | Terminal |
|---|---|---|
| Card84 transactions | £3,612.40 | £3,612.40 |
| Cash | £184.20 | — |
| Service charge12.5%, collected | £386.00 | — |
| Tip adjusted after settlementshown, not absorbed | — | £4.00 |
| Takings, net of tax and service | £4,182.60 | Matched |
The £4.00 discrepancy is a tip adjusted on the terminal after the bill closed. It is listed with its transaction rather than quietly rolled into a total — which is the difference between a reconciliation and a rounding.
Replaces: cashing up with a calculator and a spreadsheet
Staff clock in and out on the same system that records what they sold. Nothing is transcribed.
Replaces: a paper rota and a guess at hours
Every dish sold took its ingredients off the shelf at what you last paid for them.
| Friday · cost of goods, as sold | Covers | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Omakase, 8 course | 34 | £571.20 |
| Yakitori, à la carte | 41 | £312.85 |
| Sushi and sashimi | 21 | £198.44 |
| Drinks and sake | — | £88.64 |
| Cost of goods · 28.0% of revenue | 96 | £1,171.13 |
No estimate, no month-end reconciliation, no waiting for the stock take. The recipes did this as the orders were rung in.
Replaces: a food cost you find out about next month
Rent, rates, insurance, utilities and subscriptions, accrued across the days you actually trade.
Almost nobody does this, which is why almost nobody knows whether a Tuesday service pays for itself. A Friday taking £4,182 and a Tuesday taking £1,200 do not carry the same share of the rent.
Replaces: fixed costs nobody allocates to a day
Four numbers you had by midnight, arranged into the only one that matters.
Replaces: a takings figure mistaken for profit
Thirty of those, with nothing re-entered and nothing reconciled by hand.
Your accountant still files the accounts. What changes is that you stop finding out in September how August went, and the ledger arrives clean rather than as a carrier bag of invoices.
Replaces: six weeks of waiting, and a bill for the waiting
The problem
Ask a till how last night went and it will tell you what came in. That figure feels like performance and behaves like nothing of the sort — two nights with identical takings can differ by several hundred pounds of margin, and nothing on a Z-report will tell you which was which.
Takings. True, useful for banking, and silent on the only question that matters. It cannot see what the food cost, because it does not know the recipes. It cannot see what the labour cost, because it does not hold the clock. And it has never heard of your rent.
Margin, at 24.0%, with the three costs beneath it and every one traceable to a source event. Same night, same till, same £4,182.60 — but a number you can act on rather than one you can only bank.
The four layers, and where most operators stop
What came in. Every till does this, and a great many restaurants manage on it alone.
What you served, priced through the recipes. Needs a system that owns the menu and the stock, which is why it usually arrives monthly at best.
Hours × rate, to the minute. Needs the clock and the till to be the same system, or somebody spends Monday morning typing.
Rent, rates, insurance, utilities, subscriptions — accrued to the days you trade. Almost nobody does this, and it is the layer that decides whether a quiet service is worth opening for.
Prime cost — goods plus labour — is the number to watch, because it is the part you can change this week. The rent is fixed until the lease is renegotiated; the rota and the order are decisions you make every Sunday.
Where this stands today
Finance is the newest of the six and it is being built in layers. Here is what is running in live service and what isn't, so nothing on this page is a surprise on the demo call.
Z-report, tender breakdown, service charge, and automatic matching against the card terminal with exceptions listed. Running nightly since 2024.
Computed from recipes as dishes are sold, at the prices your last invoices set. Depends on your recipes being mapped, which is the one real piece of setup.
Clock in and out is working. Costing those hours at each person's rate is the layer being finished now, and it is the one that turns an hours report into a margin. Ask us where it is on the day you call rather than trusting a date on a website.
Rent, rates, insurance, utilities and subscriptions entered once and accrued across trading days. Straightforward, and not yet finished.
Hanna holds the hours and the service charge, which is most of what a payroll run needs. Feeding a payroll provider and operating a compliant tronc are on the roadmap and are not built. We will say so when they are.
The figures shown further up this page are what the finished picture looks like, drawn from a real trading week. Not all of the layers behind them are complete, and we would rather you saw the destination and knew where we were on the road than the other way round.
In detail
Z-report, tender breakdown, service charge and staff hours produced together at the end of the night rather than from four different screens.
Card payments matched transaction by transaction. Differences appear as exceptions with their transaction attached, never absorbed into a total.
What was applied, what was removed and by whom, and exactly what was collected — the figures a tronc needs, held properly from the start.
Every one carries a reason and the person who authorised it. Not to catch anybody out, but so the margin figure means something.
A night, a week, a month or last August, computed the same way every time, so comparisons are real comparisons.
Sales, tender, service, purchases and hours in a format your bookkeeper can import, with the daily close as the source document.
In service
Each name here will take your call, including about the parts that aren't finished.
Before you ask
Book a demo
Bring your own numbers if you like. We'll show you the close on a real venue, and be straight about which layers are finished and which aren't.
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