“Finish the drill” is the rallying cry of athletes and coaches to encourage their teammates to give it their all through the end of the game.
The same principle holds true in business. Successfully closing out the day is as important as a strong opening.
For McDonald’s owner/operators, making sure the point-of-sales systems are closed out each day can be a real game-changer.
Failing to close out at the end of the day results in incomplete data from the register being picked up in QSR. This can cause a ripple effect that impacts what is reported to McDonald’s, as well as what is reported for monthly e-sales receipts.
While it is possible to retroactively close out a day that was missed, this is not an ideal situation since every subsequent day will need to be closed out again.
At Antares Group, we have several automation projects in the works to help reduce the amount of time spent pulling QSR reports. For instance, our custom software, S.T.A.R. (Solution to Accounting Redundancy), pulls information directly from DataPass. The accuracy of the information in DataPass, though, is fully reliant on each POS system being properly closed out each day.
We are developing a notification system that can send an alert when data is missing so owner/operators can proactively address the issue. In the meantime, we stress the importance of including documented procedures for each of your restaurants to make sure your POS systems are properly closed each day.
We take our role as your trusted adviser seriously, so please let us know if we can help you develop these best practices.
Judy Hatch is an Accounting Manager with our Financial Accounting Services Team. She can be reached at jlh@antarescpas.com.