Note: Before looking at an item’s sales on the Variance page, you need to confirm your consumption data is accurate.

Please see our article on Troubleshooting Consumption for more information.

In a perfect world, your sales and consumption should be equal, but in most cases, your consumption will be higher due to things such as overpouring, spillage, theft etc.

However, sometimes your sales value is much greater or less than the consumption value. This could be due to the following reasons:

When you click into the details of an item on the Variance page, it shows how many sales there were for each POS Item it's an ingredient in.

If you see no sales, or the sales are lower than expected, you can try refreshing your sales data.  

To refresh your sales data:

To learn more about refreshing your sales data, see:

You can then check to see if the missing data has appeared.

The Sales page displays the total sales of each item in the defined time period. Click into the details to see the timestamps of each sale.

If you have a real-time sales integration, you may notice a large gap of missing sales in an inventory period.

If your sales are being imported by a daily sales email, you may notice a whole day missing (there may have been an issue with the email or an error when uploading it).

If you refreshed your sales and data is still missing, please reach out to [email protected] or use the in-app chat to make sure your sales are uploaded.

When reviewing the sales for an item, you want to make sure that you have added recipes to all of your POS Items, and that the recipes are correct.

It's good to periodically check your POS Items because as you add new items to your menu, you'll need to add the recipe.

If you have unmapped POS Items, your variance data is incomplete.

When your unmapped POS Items represent less than 20% of your sales total, you'll see this message on the Variance page:

Note: If your unmapped items are more than 20% of the sales for the period, your view of the Variance page is blocked until you map items.

Click the message and you'll see each unmapped item, along with the quantity sold and the $ value of the sales. Click the "Details" button beside an item to map it.

To learn more about POS Item Mapping, see:

After mapping the items, the message disappears:

If you add the wrong amount of an ingredient to a POS Item, it can over or under-represent your sales for an item depending on the quantity entered.

For example, if you map a recipe to use 2 full units of an item by accident, instead of 2oz, you'll see a very large discrepancy between your amount sold, and what was consumed.

In the example below, we only consumed 2.30 units of Grey Goose, but sold 20.58 units. Looking below we can see that the mapping of "Grey Goose Double" is wrong. We sold 20 units or just over 500 fluid ounces, but we should've only sold 20 fluid ounces.

To fix a POS Items' recipe, please see:

If an item has sales greater than consumption, it's possible you're using less than what the recipe calls for (underpouring, etc). It's also possible that a different item than what's mapped to the POS Item is being used when the item is sold.

This could be because you ran out of the ingredient, or staff are using more expensive items in cheaper products (premium instead of bar rail, etc.)

If this is the case, you’ll be able to see the excess sales from one item reflected in the consumption of another. For example, if a Vodka Martini mapped to Smirnoff was punched in the POS, but Grey Goose was used.

In this example below, we see that Smirnoff has sales, but no consumption, and that Grey Goose has a higher consumption than expected.

Sometimes you'll see consumption on an item, but there are no sales. If this was an item that you stopped carrying at some point, it’s possible you archived the POS Item (either intentionally or by mistake).

To check for archived POS Items with sales, go to the POS Items page and either:

Search

If a search term finds an archived item, you’ll see text saying there are archived results. Click the message to view them.

Archived Filter

To see all archived POS Items with sales data:

To restore an archived item, click the checkbox beside it and click Restore. The sales will once again be factored into calculations. 

To learn more, see:

Keep in mind that if you have new menu items, it's always best to create a new button in your POS. This is for two reasons:

Note: If you know for sure an item was sold, but you don't see it in your archived POS Items, it's possible you permanently deleted it at some point. If an item has been deleted permanently by mistake, please contact [email protected] and the development team will be able to restore it for you.

If you have an "Open" buttons, you can’t add recipes to track everything that was sold.

Your buttons need to be as specific as possible to accurately track what is being used from your inventory every time the item is sold. 

If you have "Open" buttons, you'll always have a variance.

When taking your inventory, complete it during a time where there are no sales in your venue. 

If an inventory spans multiple days and there are sales in your venue, this impacts your overall sales number. 

For example, if you start an inventory on Monday, but don’t actually save and submit the inventory until Wednesday, that affects the sales for the next inventory period.

In this example above, if you actually finished the count on Monday, but didn't submit it until the Wednesday, you can edit the end time of the inventory.

Note: In most cases you should be starting and finishing an inventory count in the same day during a time there are no sales in your venue.