End-of-Day Sales Reconciliation Checklist

Subtract the starting bank from the counted drawer total and compare to the cash sales line on the Z-report. Anything beyond +/- $5 is a flag in most concepts; log the actual variance regardless of size so the trend is visible at the weekly review.

Check the most common causes first: missed change drops, voided sales rung as cash, and tip-out cash pulled from the wrong till. Walk the shift back with the cashier and record the explanation in the variance log.

Bag the deposit, sign the slip, and witness-drop into the safe. Reset the starting bank for tomorrow's open per the standard bank amount.

Trigger the end-of-day batch in Toast / Square / Clover. Confirm the processor returns a successful settlement message — open batches roll into next-day funding and corrupt the reconciliation.

Compare the POS card sales line to the processor's batch report (Toast Payments, Square Dashboard, Stripe). Note the totals split by Visa/MC/Amex/Discover — Amex often batches separately and is a frequent mismatch source.

Pull the processor's transaction-level export and find the missing or extra auths. Common causes: a tip adjustment that didn't capture before settlement, a refund processed after batch cut-off, or an offline auth that never uploaded. Email the processor's merchant support if the gap exceeds $25.

Check the processor portal for new disputes posted today. Most processors give 7-10 days to respond with the signed receipt, itemized check, and (if available) the security camera timestamp — miss the window and the chargeback auto-loses.

Filter for voids, comps, and manager-discounts greater than $10. Confirm each has a manager-card swipe and a reason code attached — unauthorized comps are the most common back-of-house theft pattern.

Walk the comp report line by line with the GM or AGM. For each comp, confirm the reason code matches the situation (re-fire, allergen re-cook, manager promo) and that the comping manager is not the same person ringing the order.

Spot-check happy-hour, loyalty, and third-party promos (DoorDash promo codes, Resy credits) against the menu rules. A promo applied to an ineligible item is a sales-mix accuracy problem and inflates theoretical food cost.

Pull DoorDash, UberEats, and Grubhub tablets and confirm the order count and gross sales match what posted to the POS. Phantom tickets — orders that fired in the kitchen but never landed in POS — are a recurring tablet-integration failure.

Total card tips from the POS tip report. Apply the house tip-out rules: bar percentage of liquor sales, busser/runner percentage of food sales, host share if applicable. Document the formula used so the math is reproducible at payroll review.

Pay tipped employees from the tip pool per the posted tip-out sheet. Note that the FLSA bars employers from keeping any portion of tips, and several states (CA, OR, WA, NV) ban the tip credit entirely — confirm your tip-out is consistent with state rules before paying out.

Each tipped employee signs the tip-out sheet acknowledging the amount received. The signed sheet is the audit trail if a wage-and-hour claim arises later — without it, the employer carries the burden of proof.

Run the daily sales summary out of the POS or R365 / MarginEdge if integrated. Include net sales, tax, tips, comps, voids, guest count, and average check (PPA).

Split sales by dining room, bar, patio, private events, and off-premise. Revenue-center variance — bar trending down while dining room is flat — is what surfaces a problem (slow well, missing bartender) before the weekly P&L.

Send the consolidated packet — sales summary, cash variance, comp report, tip-out sheet — to the GM and ownership. This becomes the daily artifact bookkeeping pulls from at week-end.