Understanding cash register Z reports

Cash register reports are grossly miss-understood. In this age of endless complex reporting and analytics from websites and computers people expect the same from a cash register.

So the first miss conceptions to tackle is that cash registers know the date. Cash registers do in fact print the date and time on receipts and reports but that is where it ends. Cash registers do not associate sales to dates and time, they simply print the date and time and know when to roll it over.

So with that in mind lets look at so called daily reports. The only reason they are daily reports is because you take them daily, should you forget a day it will be combined with the next day. All cash registers sales are really period to date. Most registers do have several report levels known as Z1 and Z2 or Daily and Monthly. However remember it is only daily or monthly if taken daily and monthly. Here is how they work. A Z1 or daily is the first level of report. Example lets say you use the machine Saturday and at the end of the day you take the report or reports (will get into type of reports later). When you take the Z1 it will print the info and reset it back to zero, as well as take that data and dump it into the Z2 totals. Yes that is correct sales do not count in Z2 until a Z1 has been taken! So now Sunday you take another Z1 at the end of the day, that will be the sales from after the Z1 Saturday to right then, again that data is then added to the Z2 totals. OK now you forget to take a report on Monday night and you realize it Tuesday night and you think OK I'll just take the Monday report and the Tuesday report! NOPE both days have been added together now. When you take the report Tuesday night it will now be all the sales from the time you Z'd out Sunday night to right then, and again it will add to the Z2 at that point.

OK so now you want the monthly report or Z2. First make sure you have taken the last Z1 of the month you want (remember days to not add to Z2 until the daily Z1 is taken. So now you take the Z2 and it will be the entire period of time's sales from the last time you took the report. So if you last took the report May 1st before you did a Z1 on May 1st and it is now June 1st before you have taken the Z1 for June 1 the report will contain all the sales of May. Make sense? If you take that report every two months then it will be a bi-monthly report, take it every three months it will be the quarterly reports, take it every six months it will be a bi annual report. Get it?

What you should take away from this.

• All cash register reports are period to date, they total from last report to present report.
• Cash registers print date and time but don't report or filter by it.

Also once a Z report is taken you CAN NEVER reprint it! Lose the paper report you lose the report forever!

I hope that helps you understand cash register reports. Both SAM4s cash registers and Sharp Cash Registers work the same, yes they have different reports available but the Z1 and Z2 works the same way!

Need help selecting a cash register? Call us at 1-800-863-2274