Nobody counts a flat white. What you can count is what came in the door from a supplier and what went into the till by the end of the shift — and in a business of two-hundred small sales a day, those two ends are where the control has to be.
A café loses money the way a bath loses water — slowly, from several places at once, in amounts too small for anyone to raise as an issue.
None of these are individually worth chasing, which is exactly why they persist. They only become visible when the close is per person and per shift rather than per day.
If you cannot count consumption, the till becomes your main instrument. That means it has to be recorded properly enough to compare one person and one shift against another.
The opening float goes in at the start of the shift, so the number the close is measured against is a real number rather than whatever was in the drawer.
The cashier and the shift are on the sale itself, so takings, discounts and voids can all be attributed rather than pooled.
At close you enter what was actually counted. Expected against counted, with the variance calculated for you and recorded against that shift.
One short close is noise. The same person short on eighteen closes out of twenty is a pattern, and it only appears if the close was per person all along.
Cash and card post as a journal and reconcile against the bank statement, so banking is a record rather than an act of faith.
No card, no setup call. Run three closes and see what the variance report tells you.
The second place a café can genuinely be controlled is what comes through the back door. Purchases are documents, and documents can be compared.
Purchase orders, goods receipts and supplier bills run as one flow, so a delivery updates stock and what you owe in the same movement. Beans, milk, syrups, cups and pastry are items you receive and hold.
Buying in dollars or euros uses dated exchange rates, and freight and duty land across the shipment for anything you import directly.
You can hold and count what arrives — kilos of beans, litres of milk, sleeves of cups — and issue it out of stock as it goes to the bar. Being straight about the limit: there is no recipe that reduces milk and beans when a latte is sold.
So the honest picture is stock control at the delivery and issue level, and cash control at the till. Between them they catch most of what a café loses.
Staff drinks, remakes and end-of-day pastry can be issued out of stock as their own movement, so the cost lands somewhere you can see rather than disappearing into a gap between purchases and sales.
That turns the most common café complaint into a figure you can decide about.
Stock, users and reporting work across branches on one set of books, and moving stock between them is a transfer that posts on both sides.
Which is what makes a second site an operational question rather than a second system.
Not a generic retail tool with a currency switch bolted on the side.
Invoices, credit notes and purchases carry VAT as you raise them, with the totals your return needs already summed. See VAT accounting software and what e-invoicing will require.
Barcode or a tapped item at the till, with 5% VAT on the receipt and a full tax invoice for the customer who needs one for an employer.
Basic covers a single branch from AED 115 a month. Multi-branch stock and transfers start on Professional at AED 215, which covers three — see pricing.
The till, the back door and the ledger are one platform. On a business made of very small transactions, that is the only way the month-end figure means anything.
See the full feature listBeans, milk, syrups, cups and retail bags sit in the same inventory, across every site you run.
Chart of accounts, journals, AR and AP, post-dated cheques, bank reconciliation and an audit trail — the ledger is here.
The people whose shifts you are closing sit in the same system as the payroll that pays them.
A stock adjustment or a write-off over a value you set can be routed for sign-off before it posts.
Retail bags and equipment are ordinary stocked items on the same counter — see the retail POS setup.
If you take table reservations and event deposits, that is a different shape — see restaurant software.
Still unsure? Send us a message — a person replies, usually the same day.
No. There is no recipe or bill-of-materials feature, so selling a latte does not reduce milk and beans automatically. Stock moves on receipts, issues and adjustments — you receive a delivery, issue stock to the bar, and count what is left. If per-cup consumption is essential to how you want to run, this will not do it and it is much better to know that now.
At the two ends. Purchases are documents, so what came in and what it cost are exact. Issues to the bar and waste are documents, so what left the store is exact. And the till end is controlled by closing per cashier and per shift with the variance calculated. That combination catches most of what a café actually loses, without pretending to measure a cup.
Yes. Issue them out of stock as their own movement so the cost lands in an account you chose. It is the same mechanism as any other goods issue, and it turns a permanent unexplained gap into a figure you can look at.
Yes. The opening float is recorded at the start of the shift, every sale carries the cashier and the shift, and at close you enter the counted cash and the variance against expected is calculated for you. Discounts and voids are logged against whoever processed them.
Yes. VAT is calculated on every sale as you raise it, in AED, with the totals your return needs already summed. A full tax invoice with your TRN is available for a customer who needs one.
Yes. Multi-branch stock, users and reporting sit on one set of books, and moving stock between sites is a transfer that posts on both sides. Multi-branch starts on the Professional plan, which covers 1 branches.
No. There is no table plan, no order routing to a kitchen screen and no course timing. This is a counter, a stockroom and a set of books. If you need front-of-house service management, that is a different kind of system.
No. It is browser-based and needs a connection, so there is no offline mode that queues sales and syncs afterwards. On a site with unreliable connectivity that is worth raising with us before you commit.
No. It runs in a browser on the machine you already have. A thermal receipt printer and the cash drawer that opens off it are the usual counter additions, and both are ordinary off-the-shelf devices.
Bring a supplier delivery and three shifts, and see both ends posted end to end — stock in at real cost, waste costed, takings closed against a named cashier. Fourteen days free, no card.