topic Re: Inaccurate Sales by Day Part in Restaurant Operations

Inaccurate Sales by Day Part

Cosmos — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 03:27:26 GMT

I do not believe Toast accurately reports sales per service / day part data. Recently I have started to look at our sales by time and do not agree with how Toast is reporting them.

Our service hours are the following:
Lunch 12pm-4pm
Happy Hour 4pm-8pm
Dinner 8pm-11pm
Late Night 11pm-2am

In an example-
Customer arrives and the check is started at 3:58pm
The first sales item is sent at 3:59pm for $3.75
The next items are not entered until 4:10pm and in total the check is open for 3 1/2 hours. The check total is $480.50 and Toast reports all $480.50 sales in the Lunch service day part. This is a complete inaccurate representation of sales by service day part AND also affects labor cost reporting.

To be accurate- the reporting should place $3.75 in Lunch and $476.75 in Happy Hour. Does anyone else have this issue? I have contacted support and was told they would "put in the feature request". I find it hard to believe requesting accurate sales data needs to be a "feature request".

Re: Inaccurate Sales by Day Part

josh212 — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 10:28:26 GMT

Checks are calculated based on when they open as that is the shift they end up I believe, however if you look at sales by the hour they will be reported correctly

Re: Inaccurate Sales by Day Part

Cosmos — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 16:45:43 GMT

Yes, that is correct- the sales end up in the time frame the check was opened. This is an inaccurate representation of sales as fully explained in my original post. The sales by hour are not reported correctly.

Re: Inaccurate Sales by Day Part

au79teahouse — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 22:28:23 GMT

Which report do are you referring to?

Re: Inaccurate Sales by Day Part

Cosmos — Wed, 10 Jan 2024 23:13:33 GMT

The most obvious is Sales Summary. Any report linking time and sales is not accurate.

Re: Inaccurate Sales by Day Part

au79teahouse — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 03:21:52 GMT

It took me awhile to verify on this at my location. It turns out the information in Service Hour section under Sales Summary is accurate (at least it is accurate at my location).

Couple things to keep in mind:
1) Net sales amount does not include tax
2) Gift card sales are not considered as part of the net sales. It is considered as "deferred amount"
3) Only orders that have a linked payment are considered as sales, meaning comp'ed orders are considered as discounts.
4) void orders are still considered as part of the sales.

If you are comparing the numbers you got from the service Hour section with numbers from "Payment" , this is where numbers seem not to add up because of the following reasons:
1) all the order amount under the Payment page includes tax
2) gift card sales show in this report
3) void orders are not shown in the report.

If you are still suspecting your report is not accurate, I would suggest that you check your service hour configuration first. Feel free to ask if you have questions!

Re: Inaccurate Sales by Day Part

Cosmos — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 06:44:33 GMT

While I appreciate your effort- but I hope you don’t think I don’t know the difference between sales, net sales, gift card sales, comps, voids, payments, configuration, etc.

I literally laid out and exact example of the discrepancy Toast reports as data.

Re: Inaccurate Sales by Day Part

au79teahouse — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 07:02:53 GMT

I re-read your post and my apology. I did misunderstand your original post. Josh212 is correct. Sales are tracked by the time check is opened but not by the time items are sent. I saw you also posted in the other thread for feature request. I will make sure I have it documented. Thanks again!

Re: Inaccurate Sales by Day Part

Rob — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 22:02:17 GMT

Thanks for your feedback! What you have described is the intended function. The agent was correct in explaining that this is a feature request. Hopefully, the community will be able to provide a valid workaround!

Re: Inaccurate Sales by Day Part

Cosmos — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 19:39:37 GMT

Accurate sales data shouldn't need to be a "feature request". I cannot believe I am the first person to notice this, all customers probably assume the reporting is correct as I have.

Re: Inaccurate Sales by Day Part

Cosmos — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 16:44:27 GMT

I took the time to go through the month of December and compared how Toast reports sales by period vs. the actual items ordered during said time frame. I used our Lunch 12pm-4pm and the difference is almost $3700! How Toast uses check start time and tracks all sales in that period is inaccurate and a false representation of actual sales.

Re: Inaccurate Sales by Day Part

Rob — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 21:45:25 GMT

Thanks for taking the time to explain this; I will pass this feedback on to my team.