Said It Here

How to track daily sales without a POS system

New cafe and restaurant owners often try to manage daily sales manually using spreadsheets to avoid buying a POS system right away. Without a proper setup, it becomes confusing to keep track of daily figures and handle inventory reordering effectively.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    Using Excel
  2. 2
    Using Google Sheets
  3. 3
    Using other tracking tools
  4. 4
    Keeping records manually
  5. 5
    Using Excel or Google Sheets
  6. 6
    Keeping sales tracking manual
  7. 7
    Using cheap plug-in card readers like SumUp to track sales and cash
  8. 8
    Relying on employees to manually report what materials they use

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/smallbusiness2 people · September 2026

“One thing I’m particularly confused about is keeping track of daily sales. I don’t wanna get a POS right away, so for those of you who already run cafes/restaurants, how do you manage this?”source ↗

rajveeeeeeeer · r/smallbusiness · 3 upvotes

“I have hundreds of small fittings that I need to keep track of for reordering purposes. I am currently using the inventory program through QBO but would like to start scanning a bar code to help keep a better eye on things as employees aren't very good at telling me what they use.”source ↗

“I'm not interested in buying a whole new inventory program, so I need something that will work with QBO.”source ↗

Firm_Original691 · r/smallbusiness · 1 upvotes
r/restaurantowners1 person · September 2026

“One thing I’m particularly confused about is keeping track of daily sales. I don’t wanna get a POS right away, so for those of you who already run cafes/restaurants, how do you manage this?”source ↗

rajveeeeeeeer · r/restaurantowners · 1 upvotes

Where this came up

r/restaurantownersr/smallbusinessinventory managementpoint of salerestaurant managementsmall businesssoftware integration

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