Reading your numbers: the reports from your till and ordering site that matter

Why reading your numbers is more than looking back

Most owners know roughly how a service went. That instinct is often right, which is exactly why it deserves a check. Sometimes the numbers show that the dish you call your bestseller comes third, that the Tuesday you had written off is doing fine, or that you roster three people on a Thursday afternoon for two tables.

Collecting numbers costs next to nothing now. Your till does it with every bill, your ordering site with every order, and Google counts how often people look you up. The hard part is three other things: choosing what to read, reading it at a fixed moment and doing something with it.

In a venue, it comes down to four uses.

• Choosing better: you see what guests order, when they come and how often.
• Adjusting faster: an overfull rota or stock gathering dust shows up within a week, not at year end.
• Guarding your margin: you see which dishes earn money and which only bring a crowd.
• Serving guests better: you see who returns, who drifts away and what people write about you.

A review is a measurement too, and so is a guest who disappears after three orders. This article walks through everything you can read, from sales per hour to the wording of your latest reviews.

Five places your numbers live

The same sales appear in several places, and slightly differently in each. That is not a mistake.

Where do the places disagree? Almost always on the same points. The till shows prices including VAT and your bookkeeping excludes it. A platform pays out after deducting its commission, so your bank shows less than the guest paid.

So agree a few things with yourself.

• Read sales from the till, topped up with your ordering site and the platform statements. Read costs from bookkeeping and payroll. Read guests from your ordering site.
• Always calculate excluding VAT. Set an amount with VAT beside one without and you create differences that are not real.
• Compare like with like: the same weekday, the same number of weeks, the same part of the year.

What you must keep, and what the tax office expects of your till

Till data is not a convenience, it is part of your business records. The retention duty in article 52 of the General Act on State Taxes (AWR) applies. The standard period is seven years. For data on immovable property, such as business premises, it is ten. You may keep records digitally, but the files must still be usable during an audit. If you close the business, the period keeps running.

It is the detail that counts, not the total. In 2021 the Supreme Court (Hoge Raad) ruled that data on individual orders and settlements in a till system form part of the records, as far as they matter for tax. A daily total alone is therefore not enough.

The Belastingdienst has set out what it looks at in a guide to a reliable checkout system. It is written for suppliers of till software, but you stay responsible for what your till records, even when the system runs in the cloud. The main points:

• Everything is recorded from the start of the sale, including an order that is never paid.
• A correction stays visible. You fix a receipt with a counter-entry and never delete it without a trace.
• The system notes who did what and when. Actions such as giving a discount or reversing a sale can be reserved for certain staff.
• Data stays in detail for seven years, with a backup in another location. Condensing it to a daily total is not allowed.
• The reports are complete: end-of-day reports, sales by VAT category, payment method and period, and exception reports for discounts, returns, mistaken tickets, cash differences and training-mode sales.

There is also a quality mark for reliable checkout systems. The Belastingdienst has told the foundation behind it that suppliers with the mark meet its guide. The mark is not compulsory, but it is a quick way to vet a supplier.

More on choosing a till is in the article on till systems.

Guest data is a different matter. The GDPR, known in the Netherlands as the AVG, applies, and it sets no fixed period: you keep personal data no longer than the purpose you collected it for requires. So you keep a receipt for seven years, but you clear out the email address of a guest who has not ordered in four. How to set that up is in the article on restaurant CRM. For what exactly applies to your business, ask your bookkeeper or check belastingdienst.nl.

Sales per day, per hour and the spend per bill

Start with three numbers that belong together: sales, number of bills and the average spend per bill, which is sales divided by bills. Together they reveal what a sales total hides. Are fewer guests coming, or are they spending less? Those are two different problems with two different fixes.

Suppose last month you averaged 120 bills of €28 on a Friday, €3,360 in all. This month it is 108 bills of €31, €3,348. Sales look almost the same, so nothing seems wrong. But you have twelve fewer bills, and that is the number that will hurt in three months.

By day of the week

Put the same weekdays side by side over four to eight weeks. Which day is consistently weak, and which one keeps running at its limit? The weak day can get a promotion or shorter hours. The full day needs more hands or a menu that leaves the kitchen faster.

By hour

The hourly report in your till shows how a day unfolds, and it is the most useful report many owners never open.

• An hour where sales stall although you are fully staffed points to a bottleneck in the kitchen or at the pass. Guests wait, and some give up.
• An hour with hardly any bills and a full rota is money walking out. Schedule your prep there, move a shift or give guests a reason to come at that time.
• If bills still arrive in your last opening hour, staying open longer may pay. An hour with no bills is a reason to close earlier.
• Online orders have a curve of their own. Lay it beside the dining room before you decide when your kitchen takes collection and delivery orders.

With a few months of hourly figures you can plan ahead: how much to buy and how many people to roster for a Friday in the same period. If your till runs in the cloud, you can also watch live from home.

When the spend per bill moves

If it drops, check whether fewer drinks or sides are going on the bill and whether the share of discounts has risen. If it rises while the bill count falls, you may have raised a price that put some guests off. Thirteen ways to lift that figure are in the article on average order value.

Your menu in numbers: stars, hidden chances and dishes that sit

The sales report per dish is called the menu mix. It shows how many of each dish sold and what share of your sales that is. Read it by count and by euros, because your most-sold dish does not automatically earn the most. If you know the purchase cost, put the margin beside it. You then get four kinds of dish.

You can work the grid out properly in the article on menu engineering, and how to calculate margin per dish in the article on food cost. Three rules before you start:

• Do not judge a dish on two weeks. Season, weather and a local event distort so much that you need four to eight weeks.
• A dish that sells steadily can take a small rise, say €0.25 to €0.50. Watch for four weeks to see whether the count holds, and change one dish at a time.
• Do not drop a weak seller without looking at what is ordered with it, and read the reviews as well. Sometimes it is the very reason a guest comes.

Purchasing and stock: what left the kitchen against what you bought

Your till knows what you sold, your suppliers know what you bought. The gap sits in your stock and in your waste. You look at it once a month, with a count at a fixed moment, on the same day and in the same order.

Your cost of goods is opening stock plus everything you bought, minus closing stock. Suppose you started with €3,800 of stock, bought €9,600 and ended with €3,400. Then €10,000 of purchases went through your kitchen. If your food sales that month are €40,000 excluding VAT, your food cost is 25%.

Set that result against what the till sold. If the sales report says 600 pizzas and your use of dough and cheese adds up to 700, the difference is in portions, waste or dishes that left the building without a bill.

• What sits for weeks, you order in smaller amounts or less often. That cuts waste and frees cash tied up in the fridge.
• What is nearly gone every week gets a minimum stock level. A dish that sells out halfway through the evening costs you sales.
• Every quarter, ask a second supplier for a price on your five biggest purchases. Not to switch, but to know whether your price still holds.

Discounts, voids and payment methods: where mistakes show

These reports are rarely exciting, but this is where money leaks and mistakes surface. The Belastingdienst lists them in its guide as ordinary parts of a till: discounts and corrections, returns, mistaken tickets, drawer opened without a sale, cash differences and training-mode sales.

• Discounts: the amount and the share of your sales, by type and by member of staff. If the share rises without a promotion running, discounts are being handed out on instinct.
• Voids and mistaken tickets: lines removed after being rung in. A few per shift is normal, because guests change their minds. If a pattern shows with one person or one time of day, ask about it. Ask, do not accuse: often a screen or a menu layout is confusing.
• Drawer opened without a sale, and cash difference: small differences happen and there are good reasons to open the drawer. A difference that always points the same way calls for a fixed counting procedure.
• Staff meals, dishes given away and spoilage: book them separately. Otherwise your kitchen looks more expensive than it is.

Suppose your sales are €15,000 in a month, with €450 in discounts. That is 3%. The next month it is €900 on the same sales. Something changed: a promotion, a new colleague, a habit creeping in. The number points the way, and the question to your team gives the answer.

Payment methods

The payment report shows how guests pay: card, contactless with a card, phone or watch, cash, gift voucher, on account, and online via iDEAL or credit card. According to De Nederlandsche Bank and Betaalvereniging Nederland, in 2025 only 17% of payments at the checkout were in cash and 83% by card, phone or watch. That is a national average across all sectors, not a hospitality figure, but it gives you something to set your own mix against.

• A lot of cash means a lot of counting, change and banking runs. Measure the share per channel, because at the counter it differs from online.
• Each payment method costs something different per transaction. That is on your payment provider’s invoice rather than in your till, so lay it beside your payment report once.
• Abandoned card payments, repeated failed attempts or an unusually large payment from a stranger are a reason to check the receipt. It may be a mistake, but it may also be fraud.

The split by channel: dining room, collection, your own site and delivery platforms

The same dish earns something different in each channel. So look at four numbers per channel: sales, number of orders, spend per order and what is left after costs.

For a platform, the statement is the source. Your bank statement shows only what the platform pays out, after commission and corrections. Book the order at the full amount and the commission as a separate cost, as described in the article on bookkeeping. Once a month, set the number of orders on the statement against the number in your till. A difference usually means cancelled or refunded orders, and you want to be able to explain them.

All this comes with a second question, about your guests. A platform is good at reach and new guests, and that counts. Your own ordering site is where regulars order, where you know them by name and can invite them back. So also look at how many of your orders come from guests you know. That number only grows if you do something for it, and how is in the article on customer retention.

What your own ordering site shows you

• How many visitors come and where from: Google, Instagram, a link in an email. If hardly anyone arrives via Google, findability is your problem.
• Which pages they view and on which device. If most visitors are on a phone, judge your site on a phone.
• How many visitors actually order and where they drop out. If many leave after the first page, that page has to change. If they drop out at checkout, look at the number of steps.
• Whether they choose collection or delivery, at which hours, and which dishes are often ordered together.
• If you have your own app, you mostly see your regulars there: what they order, how often and on which days.

Whether you need a cookie notice to measure visitors is answered in the questions at the end of this article.

Labour cost against sales

After purchasing, labour is the biggest cost you can steer yourself. Your rent is fixed, your rota is not. The sum: your labour cost for a week divided by your sales excluding VAT for the same week. Count everything you pay as an employer: gross wages, holiday pay, pension, the employer’s share of contributions and agency staff. Ask your payroll provider for the add-on, because guessing gives a figure that is too low.

Suppose a week with €12,000 in sales excluding VAT and €3,600 in labour. That is 30%. The next week is quiet, sales are €9,000 and the rota is the same, so €3,600 again. Now it is 40%. Nobody made a mistake, the week was different. But you can see that your rota only fits a busy week.

Keep the weekly figures next to the hourly report from your till, because that is where you see what is shifting.

• Sales per hour worked, by part of the day. If Tuesday lunch is very low, there is room.
• Rostered against worked: if the two differ consistently, a shift runs over or starts too early.
• Overtime: who works it and when. It often points to a rota that does not quite fit.
• Hours worked: approve them before the payroll run, because a correction afterwards costs more time.

This is shifting, not cutting. Your rota is bound by employment contracts, rest periods and the Horeca collective agreement (cao Horeca), or by what you agreed with your team. Sometimes the report shows you are short-handed in the busiest hours.

Together with your cost of goods, labour makes up your prime cost. How to work it out is in the article on prime cost. Ranges from American articles do not fit Dutch wages, so use your own line from recent months as the norm.

New and returning guests, and what your reviews say

A sales figure does not say who paid it. Your ordering site and guest list do, and the difference is large: a new guest you have found, a returning guest you have kept. These are the numbers to check each month.

1. The number of new guests and the number who came back.
2. How many guests never place a second order.
3. How many guests have not ordered for a while. Pick your own limit, say six weeks for someone who used to order more often.
4. Who your best guests are: the ten or twenty who order most often and spend the most.

Every number has a next step. With new guests, look at how they found you. A first order calls for a reason to return. Guests who drift away get a message with a concrete reason to return, and your best guests a thank-you, a reward in your loyalty programme or an invitation to try something new on the menu. If you send an email or a text, count the orders in the days after and set that against an ordinary week. After three campaigns you have your own figures.

Reviews are numbers too

1. Note the average score and the number of reviews per platform. A score from fifteen reviews says less than the same score from three hundred.
2. Read the newest ten reviews and mark the words that keep coming back: wait, cold, portions, friendly.
3. Check whether the score rises or falls over three months, instead of letting one review weigh heavily.
4. Reply to every poor review within a few days, calmly and without defending yourself, and fix the cause if it holds.

Ask everyone for a review, not only the guests who are happy, or you distort your own figure. Read the platform’s rules before you give anything back. Your Google Business Profile shows, under Performance, how often people view your listing and how often they call, ask for directions or click through to your site. A drop there can be the first sign that you are being found less. If you have a business Instagram account, its free statistics show which posts reached people and on which day. A side issue, but handy for your planning.

Twenty minutes a week, an hour a month

Numbers only help if you read them often enough. Open them once a quarter and you see only what is already broken. Open them every week at the same time and you see a deviation while it is still small. Choose a quiet moment, such as Monday morning before prep.

Write the figures in one row of a spreadsheet each week: sales, bills, spend per bill, discounts and, if you have them, labour costs. After twelve weeks you have a line for your own business, and it is more useful than any average from a report. You need no separate software for it.

Once a month, take an hour for what moves more slowly.

Each quarter you sit down with your bookkeeper, around the VAT return. You set your sales by VAT rate against what your till gave and look at profit. Once a year, look at your prices again.

When a number moves: check first, then act

A number that moves is a question, not yet an answer. Check first whether there is an ordinary reason, and only then change something. That stops you rebuilding the menu after one rainy week.

Start on Monday at your till. Open last week’s hourly report and check one thing: the hour with the most bills and the hour with the fewest. You need to do no more in the first week.