Cash Register X & Z Reports

The Shopstuff technical team often field calls from bewildered retailers trying to retrieve the correct reports from their cash register. We’ve put together a basic guide to explain the differences between the various reports available. Each cash register will be different in terms of the level of reporting available, but there are basic rules which can be applied to all cash registers.

X Reports

Cash register X reports (also called ‘flash reads’) can be summed up as ‘read only’. X reports do not reset any totals. X reports can be used to check how much you have taken in the day so far without affecting the end of day report. Care should be taken not to run ‘read only’ X reports when you are meant to be running a reset Z report. The data will be correct for that day, but tomorrows Z report will be incorrect as it will include today’s figures.

Z Reports

Cash register Z reports can be summed up as ‘read and reset’. The data is printed and reset. For this reason Z reports are normally run at the end of a trading period. This is usually the end of the day, but this can vary depending on your business set up and when you do your cashing up. A common assumption is that a Z1 financial report is a daily report. The only factor that makes the report daily is that it is taken on a daily basis. Any Z report is a periodic report – the data is consolidated from the last time that Z report was run.

X2/Z2 Reports

Some, but not all cash registers, have periodic X2 and Z2 reporting. These reports can be used as weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly reports – very much depending on your internal house-keeping. The best way of thinking about X2/Z2 reports are that every time you run a normal Z1 report the figures are moved into the consolidated X2/Z2 file. The totals in the X2/Z2 files build up with every Z1 report until the next Z2 report is run. How often you run the Z2 report dictates whether it is weekly or monthly report. If you run it once a month then it is a monthly report. Some of the high end cash registers will enable more than two report period files, but this is something that would have to be specified before you order your cash register.

Other Reports

Confusion often arises when the cash register is used to pull different reports at different times. This needn’t be the case if a simple rule is understood – all report files are separate. So if you have a cash register that has the ability to run PLU, group, clerk and/or time reports in additional to the normal financial report, these will all run separately to each other. For example, you may run a pub and need to reconcile the till takings on a daily basis, but you also have a quarterly stock take. Providing you have the correct cash register set up in the correct way, you can run a normal Z report at the end of each day when cashing up. Then at the end of the quarter you could run a PLU Z report, which would show the quantity sold on each PLU since the last time the report was run. This system only works if you run the report every quarter and that you don’t run the X report by mistake – the X report will provide the correct data this time, but next quarters report will be incorrect as the figures will have consolidated.

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