Advanced Insights is currently available to Lightspeed Restaurant customers in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. To get access to this feature, contact your Sales Account Manager or Lightspeed Support.
Discover how your employees’ performance ranks across shifts, positions, and menu category types based on the average amount an employee has sold per cover. Identify opportunities for improvement in underperforming employees or find ways to recognize your top performers.
Accessing the Covers report
Advanced Insights organizes your cover data in a bar graph and table. To get started, choose your location and time frame.
- Sign in to your Advanced Insights dashboard.
- At the top of the navigation menu, click the Locations drop-down and select a location. This report can only be viewed for a single location at a time.
- In the main navigation menu, click Servers. On the Servers page, select the Covers tab.
- By default, the report displays the data for the last 28 days. To choose a different time frame, use the Calendar drop-down in the upper right corner.
You cannot select a custom time period for this report.
Filtering the report
After running the report, you can filter your results by Shifts, Menu Item Category, and Position.
For a description of each filter, view the table below.
Filter descriptions
| Filter | Description |
| Shifts | Shifts on your POS (breakfast, lunch, and dinner). |
| Menu Item Category | Your K-Series accounting groups. To learn more about adding or editing accounting groups in your K-Series Back Office, view our About accounting groups articles. |
| Position | Employee positions, such as Manager or Server, corresponding to your K-Series POS users. To learn more about adding or editing users in your K-Series Back Office, view our About POS users article. |
Understanding the Covers bar graph
After you filter your report, the bar graph displays a different color for each category. Hover over a bar to view a breakdown of Categories, Rank, Server Name, Average, and Variance for each server. You can also click on a server’s name to view their server scorecard.
For a description of each metric, view the table below.
Covers metrics
| Metrics | Description |
| Categories | Includes covers, checks, shift types, and the item categories on your POS. For the definitions of covers and checks, see the table below. |
| Rank | The server’s rank for each category, out of the total number of servers. |
| Server name | This column lists a server’s total number of checks and covers, as well as the server’s average sale per check for each shift and item category.
The average sale per check is calculated by dividing a server’s sales totals by checks issued. The result is then broken down by the total hours in each shift (such as Breakfast or Lunch). The average sale per check for item categories (such as Hot Food or Desserts) is calculated by dividing the average sum of all items sold in a category by the server’s total number of checks. |
| Average | The overall average count, cover, and sale per check for each category during the specified period of time. This average is calculated based on sales for all servers. |
| Variance | The percentage difference between the server’s average sale per check and the restaurant average sale per check. |
Understanding the Covers table
The Covers table displays the Checks, Covers, Covers per Check, Turn Time, Sales, Sales per Check, and Lost Sales for each server over the course of the specified period of time. You can also click on a server’s name to view their server scorecard.
After you select the date range for the report and filter your results, click the Export button to download the table as a CSV. The CSV does not include the server scorecard.
For a description of each column, view the table below.
Covers columns
| Column | Description |
| Server | The name of the server. You can also click on the server’s name to view their server scorecard. |
| Checks | The number of checks closed. |
| Covers | The total number of customers on a ticket (or check). For example, a table of five customers counts as five covers. |
| Covers per check | The total number of covers per check, rounded up or down to the nearest integer. |
| Turn time | The time it takes a server to process an order, calculated from the moment the server sends the ticket to the kitchen to the moment they take payment for the bill. |
| Sales | A server’s total sales in dollars. Does not include discounts. |
| Sales per cover | A server’s average sales per cover in dollars. This is calculated by dividing the total sales amount by the total number of checks. Does not include discounts. |
| Lost sales | Lost sales is another way to measure a server’s performance against the average performance for all servers. This is calculated by multiplying the difference between a server’s sales per cover average and the total sales per cover average by the number of covers the server had during the specified period of time. |