Spot Trends Faster: The Performance Report 📈✨
Running a successful restaurant requires a clear understanding of how your business performs day by day and, if you are a multi-unit operator, location by location. The Performance Report is designed to answer one crucial question: "How did each day — and each location — stack up across the metrics that matter most?"
This report provides a compact, side-by-side comparison of your key performance indicators (KPIs) over any selected date range. Built for fast pattern recognition, it is the perfect tool to scan a week or a month of data and instantly identify which days outperformed, which fell short, and whether your staffing costs aligned with your sales volume!
📊 What You'll See on the Dashboard
The report cleanly structures your data into up to two dynamic tables, depending on how many restaurant locations you are managing.
1. Performance by Business Day 📅
(Always included in the report)
This section gives you one row per business date, laying out your core financial and operational metrics side-by-side. The summary row at the bottom automatically calculates your period totals and averages.
📝 Report Grid Example
2. Performance by Venue 🏢🏢
(Automatically displays for multi-location reporting)
If you operate multiple units, this table generates one row per venue using the exact same column set. It gives you an immediate cross-location comparison over your selected timeframe.
📖 Column Definitions: What the Numbers Mean
To ensure your data is easy to digest, here is what each column tracks:
Gross $: Total sales generated before any discounts are factored in (this is your subtotal and excludes tax).
Disc $: The cumulative dollar value of all discounts applied during the period.
Net $: Your actual recognized revenue after discounts and exclusive taxes are subtracted—what your venue genuinely earned.
Void $: The total financial value of all voided items, representing removed or canceled revenue.
Guest #: The total headcount of guests served during the tracking window.
Avg Guest: Average spend per person, calculated as $\text{Net Sales} \div \text{Guests}$.
Order #: The total number of separate orders (checks) processed.
Avg Order: Average check size, calculated as $\text{Net Sales} \div \text{Orders}$.
Labor $: Your total labor cost pulled straight from active employee time cards.
Labor %: Your core labor efficiency ratio, calculated as $\text{Labor Cost} \div \text{Net Sales}$.
💡 Smart Math Note: The averages in the final Total row (Avg Guest, Avg Order, Labor %) are computed as an average of each individual day's rate rather than just pulling from the grand totals. This provides a much more accurate period average because it accounts for day-to-day volume fluctuations!
🛠️ Strategic Ways to Use This Data
Execute an Easy Week-in-Review: Run this report for Monday through Sunday to instantly isolate your highest and lowest performing days. For example, if you spot a day with a high Order # but a low Avg Order, it may flag a shift with heavy guest discounting or a lower-value promotional menu mix.
Master Daily Labor Efficiency: The Labor % column is your best tool for evaluating whether your floor scheduling was cost-effective. Any specific business day running noticeably above your target percentage baseline deserves a quick look at that shift's schedule.
Keep an Eye on Discount Impacts: The Disc $ column makes it easy to spot which days carried the heaviest promotional burden. This allows you to evaluate whether your comps successfully drove volume growth, or if they simply represented unmonitored staff giveaways.
Monitor Void Activity: While a consistent trail of voids might suggest a systemic kitchen or training issue, a sudden spike on a single day tells you it is time to investigate what happened during that specific shift.
Cross-Location Benchmarking: The Performance by Venue matrix gives multi-unit operators the power to compare check averages, guest counts, and labor percentages across separate locations over the exact same date range. It is the absolute fastest way to see which store needs your support.
🎛️ Custom Filters and Layout Options
Configurable Columns ⚙️
You don't have to look at all ten columns if you don't want to! The columns displayed in your NX Portal are completely customizable. You can request any specific subset of metrics to build a clean view—for instance, pulling just Net $, Avg Order, and Labor % to create a quick executive summary.
📈 Charts Included
When you check the box to enable charts, the report generates a beautiful line chart that overlays your Net Sales and Labor Cost day by day. If you are running a multi-location report, the system plots one line per venue. This gives you an immediate visual cue to see if your revenue and labor costs moved together efficiently or drifted apart!
Need Help? 💡
Why is my "Labor $" or "Labor %" column showing up as blank or $0.00?
This typically means your employees' time card data hasn't synced for those dates, or you haven't assigned labor rates to your active jobs. Make sure your team is using the POS clock-in feature correctly, and double-check your back-office Staff > Job Titles settings to verify that hourly wages are entered. 🧑🍳
Can I export this data to use in my weekly management meetings?
Absolutely! You can download the Performance Report directly from the NX Portal dashboard as a clean CSV or PDF file, making it perfect to hand out to your managers or share with your accounting team.
Do you want to focus on a particular metric, or should we look at how to set up your multi-location filters next?