04 · Reporting
Three systems, three answers, and your accountant asking which is right
The POS says one number. The delivery app says another. The bank says a third.
“My accountant asked me which figure was the real one. I genuinely didn’t know.”Composite of operator language found across review sites and forums
Why it happens
Every system counts a different thing at a different moment. Revenue recognition differs (gross or net of commission), trading-day cutoffs differ (does a 2am Saturday sale belong to Friday?), refunds and voids are handled differently, and delivery aggregators net their commission before remitting. Groups then re-key each venue into a head-office spreadsheet, so the consolidated number is a hand-built artefact nobody fully trusts.
What we'd do about it
One number, with the working shown
Click the consolidated figure, drill to the venue, to the shift, to the transaction. A dashboard isn’t the same as a number you’d bet on.
Cash-off that reconciles itself
Integrated terminals mean the amount is never typed twice, and the settlement is matched against the day automatically.
One database, not five that sync overnight
Every module writes to the same records. There’s no integration to break, because there’s no integration.
The objection this page has to beat
“A dashboard is not the same as a number I’d bet on.”
Correct, and the difference is the audit trail. Click the group figure, drill to the venue, to the shift, to the transaction. Show commission-netted delivery revenue handled explicitly. Show the trading-day cutoff being set. And let an accountant give this testimonial, not an operator.
What we can actually stand behind
Every claim below is labelled by how solid it is. The grey ones are where we looked and found nothing credible — those stay off the page rather than getting rounded up into a statistic.
- Independent
69% of operators say technology improved efficiency. Only 28% say it improved profitability. The gap is the measurement problem: efficiency you can feel, profit you have to be able to count.
National Restaurant Association, State of the Restaurant Industry 2025 - Vendor study
97% of multi-unit operators now run the same POS across all venues, up from 86% year on year.
TouchBistro, 2026 - Operator
“Reporting is eh and needs work… mostly data is there, just not obvious how to get what you need.”
Rob B., Owner, Food & Beverages — Capterra review, December 2023 - No data
No study quantifies reconciliation hours or error rates between systems.
Nobody has measured this.