Sample result
Closing Checklist Builder for Restaurants
The owner asked this:"Every night I close differently and the next day's opening starts by asking what happened. We are 24 people across two sites and the last cover leaves around 9:40 p.m."
① The five-phase closing walk-through
Closing the Centro site takes 34 minutes when it is run in full, and today it takes 52 because nobody knows the order. The last cover leaves at 9:40 p.m. Tuesday to Friday, and at 4:20 p.m. on Sunday. The closing clock does not start when the last guest leaves: it starts when the last docket comes in.
| Phase | Starts | Minutes | Who signs | The box you cannot skip |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 · What spoils | Last docket | 12 | Head chef | Every container labelled with date, hour and owner |
| 2 · The money | 9:55 p.m. | 8 | Cashier and shift lead | Gap explained and signed that same night |
| 3 · The premises | 10:05 p.m. | 7 | Shift lead | Gas off and hood down, with people still inside |
| 4 · The station | In parallel with 1 | 12 | Each post | Fryer filtered and fridge logged at 4 degrees |
| 5 · The handover | 10:15 p.m. | 5 | Shift lead | Handover sheet read aloud to whoever opens |
The 9 operations people this site keeps at that hour cover all five phases, as long as phase 4 runs in parallel with phase 1: station cleaning depends neither on the till nor on the gas, and waiting for them to finish costs the night 12 minutes.
What was ruled out, and why: closing off a single list of 40 boxes in a row. With one list the money phase ends up last, near 10:40 p.m., and that is exactly the hour when the gaps nobody wants to count start showing up. The order is not decoration; it moves the hour at which cash gets counted. Illustrative figures, built from the data you gave.
② The night's waste, weighed
Whatever gets binned is weighed before it is binned. On Thursday 3.8 kilos went out the back door and nobody wrote them down; this is the same night with the scale sitting on the wash bench.
| Product | Kilos | Cost per kilo | Cost binned | Reason | Tomorrow's decision |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cooked beans from the Bandeja de la casa | 1.4 | 9,800 COP | 13,720 COP | Lunch overproduction | Cut the afternoon batch by 20 % |
| Broth from the Sancocho de tres carnes | 0.9 | 12,500 COP | 11,250 COP | Unlabelled, date in doubt | Label with date and hour from tonight |
| Portioned Trucha al ajillo | 0.4 | 38,000 COP | 15,200 COP | Over-portioned at 8:30 p.m. | Portion against bookings, not against a hunch |
| House rice | 0.6 | 6,500 COP | 3,900 COP | Bottom of the pan, overcooked | Last rice at 8:45 p.m., measured |
| Mise en place vegetables | 0.5 | 4,200 COP | 2,100 COP | Previous day's cut, unused | Cut for two services, not three |
| Night total | 3.8 | — | 46,170 COP |
46,170 COP in one night. At 26 nights per site and with both sites running, that is 2,400,840 COP a month, and against the 214,000,000 COP the house bills it weighs 1.1 points of food cost. The house reads the menu average at 34 %: those 1.1 points are the whole difference between arguing about the month's food cost and knowing it.
The Trucha al ajillo deserves its own look. With a kilo at 38,000 COP, 0.4 kilos binned are worth more than the beans and the broth together, and there the problem is not the close: it is last-hour portioning. Illustrative figures.
③ The till count and the signed gap
The till count is done with the point-of-sale report printed alongside, not from memory. Thursday night shift, Centro site, 38 covers.
| Item | Point-of-sale report | Counted | Gap | What happens tonight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shift cash | 640,000 COP | 631,000 COP | −9,000 COP | Written explanation signed by cashier and shift lead |
| Cards | 902,000 COP | 902,000 COP | 0 COP | Card terminal batch stapled to the report |
| Transfers | 210,000 COP | 210,000 COP | 0 COP | Screenshot of the movement with its hour |
| Own delivery, cash on arrival | 72,000 COP | 72,000 COP | 0 COP | Rider's signature on the sheet |
| Shift total | 1,824,000 COP | 1,815,000 COP | −9,000 COP |
The delivery platform stays out of the till count: its 14 orders that night, 216,000 COP, are settled by the platform and logged apart to be reconciled on Tuesday. Dropping that figure into the till is the most common way of inventing a surplus.
The gap rule. House tolerance is 5,000 COP per shift. The 9,000 COP go past it, so the night does not close without a written explanation: a 10,000 COP change handed back in excess at table 7 at 8:15 p.m., traced against the docket, with the 1,000 COP that did turn up in the drawer. It is signed and carried onto the handover sheet.
The withdrawal. The fixed till float is 200,000 COP and is left counted in the drawer. The remaining 631,000 COP go to the safe with two signatures and the hour written down. No till is put away with the day's takings inside. Illustrative figures.
The full example has 2 more part(s): you see them inside the library, with your account.