How often do you actually check your POS metrics?

[oscaar]

Hi everyone,

I run a bar and lately I’ve been wondering whether I should be paying a lot more attention to my POS numbers than I currently do.

I check the obvious stuff, like sales, but I’m definitely not someone who spends loads of time going through reports every day. Most of the time I’m focused on service, staff, stock, and solving whatever comes up. By the end of the day, sitting down and digging through the POS is not always something I feel like doing.

So I’m curious how other owners handle this.

How often do you actually check your metrics?
Which ones do you really pay attention to?
And what decisions do they genuinely help you make?

For example:

• staffing

• ordering/inventory

• scheduling

• promos/events

• menu changes

• figuring out whether a day was actually good or bad beyond just “it felt busy”

Also, do you feel like most owners underuse this side of the business a bit? Sometimes I feel like the data is there, but finding the useful bits and knowing what to do with them is another story.

Would love to hear how you approach it.

[TheRealChipA]

Hi there .. After 13+ years in my current business, here's what I do.

1. I installed the Square Dashboard app to allow me to peek into my business and see how things are going for the day.  There's a wealth of information there, including comparisons when needed.  And there are lots of drill-downs to get as specific as I usually need.
2. I don't use POS reporting at all.
3. On a daily basis, I download a few CSVs from my web dashboard to use in my analytics spreadsheet.  These are combined with CSVs from my accounting software to give me a complete picture, including a projected 30-day and 13-month cash flow forecast.
4. I limit menu changes to one or two a year, since I'm an ice cream shop.  When I'm ready to do that, I'll download reports about item and modifier performance to guide me in that process.
5. I also am using Square AI (now ManagerBot) much more.  I can ask it questions like "what were my busiest 60-minute periods over the past x days/weeks/months," for example.  I use it to help me rank my busiest days over longer periods than Square standard reports will allow.  I ask it to help me find patterns, confirm or deny suspicions I have about my business, etc.
6. We still do eyes-on inventory, since we don't have thousands of items.  As we restock, we decide when it is time to reorder without the need for anything to tell us to check an item for possible inventory.  
7. When we do promos, marketing gimmicks, etc, I don't really care much about the open rates and statistics.  I can almost always tell for myself whether or not something was a success.