End-of-day reconciliation: sales, stock, and event costs

“How did we do?” is not only revenue. It is whether the stock you think you have matches what is in the crates, whether refunds and comps are captured, and whether tomorrow’s pick list will be wrong. A short end-of-day routine saves hours of detective work later.

Close the sales loop

Total payment provider payouts, cash in the tin, and any manual invoices. Match them to the sales log for the day and venue. Small gaps happen; repeating gaps are a process bug, not bad luck.

Close the inventory loop

Count high-value or high-theft items first. For everything else, use spot counts plus your recorded sales to infer closing stock. If inferred and counted diverge, note the delta as shrinkage or logging error-both are useful signals.

Costs and spoilage

Same day, log waste and staff costs in the same event context as sales. Otherwise your “profit after the fair” mixes last month’s pitch fee with today’s weather story, and you cannot learn which venues are worth the drive.

Turn the routine into insight

When sales, stock, and location-specific costs live together, analytics can answer margin questions without another spreadsheet. OpenInventory separates locations and days for that reason-see demo analytics and locations.