What a till extract actually needs to contain
A PDF of yesterday's Z-read is not enough. We need item lines, sitting times, and the voids the floor already knows about.
The shortest extract that still works is 13 weeks of item-level sales with a timestamp, a table or check number, and a void flag. Revenue-only daily totals hide the 86s. Category totals hide the dish that looks popular because it is the only vegetarian plate.
If your till exports in a proprietary layout, send it anyway. We would rather map columns once than ask a busy GM to rebuild a spreadsheet at midnight. What we cannot use is a photograph of the till screen from a single night, or a P&L that has already rolled food into one line.
Delivery notes matter for waste, not for covers. If the butcher's invoice shows two extra loins every Friday and the till never sold them, that belongs in the prep-list alignment, not in the covers forecast.
Name the person who can explain a sudden spike. A charity auction, a coach party, or a till training night can look like demand if nobody annotates them. A single column of notes beside the dates saves a week of wrong prep.