That’s an important question. There isn’t enough reporting and record keeping in the restaurant business. Many chain restaurant can see by the end of the week whether they made money or not. Most independents have to wait until their accountant returns the monthly numbers anywhere from 4 days to 4 weeks after the end of the month. In my opinion, this is too late. If you don’t know how you did in the first week until the end of the month, you’re not managing proactively in my opinion. You need to be on top of a problem as close to when it happens as possible to solve it.

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Minimum reports I suggest for every restaurant owner:

Sales by item – day/week/period
Purchases & Expenses – week
Inventory – week
Ideal cost of sales – week
Prime cost – week
Budget – week/period
Preliminary P&L – week/period
Actual P&L – period/year
Guest counts – day/week/period
Gross profit per customer/item – week
Labor – day/week/period
Cash reconciliation report – server/shift/day

Each of these reports should include the necessary comparisons to sales, budgets, etc. Reports have to be designed properly, and include all the information needed. With just the budget, labor, purchases, inventory and sales reports, you can generate about anything you need, most importantly a preliminary P&L. If your reports aren’t enough to build a preliminary weekly P&L or cash flow statement out of, most POS software don’t, they aren’t enough in my opinion.

Of course there are other useful reports to have, but most I think can be ran on an “as needed” basis. There are also shift reports that are necessary to the operation of your business, but those aren’t included here.