Use the Retail Daily Journal Entry Report to Book Your Daily Sales

Purpose: For bookkeepers, controllers, and store managers who need to answer one question each morning: what journal entry do I book for this store for yesterday? The report builds the entry for you from your retail sales, taxes, payments, refunds, and till variances, and shows you which days you can trust.

Before you start

You need a user role with View permission for the Reporting module under Analytics, and company-wide reporting turned on in your user profile. Without it, the Finance Reports folder will not be visible. See Set Up Flourish Analytics User Access and Permissions.
To export a table, you also need the Export and Share access level.
The report shows one day at a time. The business date is the date each order was completed, in the store's local time. Yesterday's entry is final once the overnight refresh finishes (5am ET, latest 8am ET).
Account names come from your items, where you have set them up. Lines that show (unmapped) have no account on the item, so choose the matching account in your accounting system.

Read the daily sales journal

In Flourish, go to Analytics > Company Admin > Finance Reports and open the Retail Daily Journal Entry Workbook.
Set Business Date at the top of the page. It defaults to yesterday.
Find the Retail Daily Sales Journal Entry table. Each store has one journal for the day. The Journal No is RET-, then the store's license number (or its facility ID if it has no license number), then the date.
Read the lines in order of Journal Line No. Debits come first, with cash at the top, then credits. Rounding and Unreconciled are always last.
Check the last line. If there is no Unreconciled (suspense) line, the entry is ready to book. If there is one, don't post the day. Go to When a day doesn't reconcile.
Book the entry in your accounting system using the Debit, Credit, and Account Name columns.
To export, hover over the top right corner of the table, click the three dots, and select Export. See Export Analytics Data in Flourish.

Tip: Save a bookmark with your store already selected so the report opens ready to use. See Flourish Analytics - Customize and Bookmark the Data.

What each line means

Line Label	Side	What it is
Tender	Debit	Money received, one line per payment method, for the orders completed that day. Amounts are net of change given, and include tips. Store credit issued reduces the Store Credit line. A refund paid out shows on the day it was paid, which can be a different day than the sale.
Discounts	Debit	Discounts applied to order lines.
Sales returns	Debit	The sale amount of refunds issued that day, before tax.
Tax refunded	Debit	The tax returned with those refunds, one line per tax.
Cash over/short and Cash variance offset	Debit and credit	The day's till variance, as a pair that always nets to zero.
Retail sales	Credit	Sales before discounts and before tax, by the income account on the item.
Sales tax	Credit	Tax collected, one line per tax, named as you have configured it in Flourish.
Tips, Price adjustment, Order charges	Credit	Appear only on days that have them.
Cash rounding	Credit or debit	The total cash rounding your point of sale applied, such as rounding to the nearest $0.05 or $0.10.
Rounding	Either	A difference of $0.05 or less between the day's debits and credits, usually tax rounding. Safe to post.
Unreconciled (suspense)	Either	A difference of more than $0.05. Never post it. See When a day doesn't reconcile.

Example

These are illustrative numbers. A store with $9,000.00 of sales, $800.00 of discounts, and one 20% tax on the discounted amount looks like this:

Journal Line No	Line Label	Account Name	Debit	Credit
1	Tender	Cash	5,540.00	0.00
2	Tender	Point of Banking (POB)	4,300.00	0.00
3	Discounts	Discounts	800.00	0.00
4	Cash over/short	Cash Over/Short	12.00	0.00
5	Retail sales	Retail Sales (unmapped)	0.00	9,000.00
6	Sales tax	Sales Tax	0.00	1,640.00
7	Cash variance offset	Cash Variance Offset	0.00	12.00
Total			10,652.00	10,652.00

When a day doesn't reconcile

The journal always balances, because the last line absorbs any difference. A day with an Unreconciled (suspense) line means the money received does not match the sales and tax on that day's orders. Don't post that day until you know why.

Find the Retail Order Exceptions table below the journal. It lists every order for the selected date that fails a check, and it uses the same Journal No as the journal.
Sort by Exception Amount from largest to smallest. The biggest orders explain most of the difference.
Read the Cause column and use the table below to decide what to do. An order can have more than one cause, and Causes lists them all.
Open the order in Flourish and review its Transaction History. [SCREENSHOT: the Retail Order Exceptions table sorted by Exception Amount]

Cause	What it means	What to do
STALE_LINE_TOTAL	A line's total doesn't equal its quantity times unit price, less the discount. The order total, tax, and payments are correct, so the day's sales are understated by Stale Line Gap.	Contact Flourish Support with the order ID. Hold the day until it's resolved. [VERIFY: confirm Support is the right instruction for this cause]
NO_PAYMENT	The order has a total but no successful payment.	Check the order's Transaction History for a failed or voided payment.
UNDERPAID	Payments, after refunds, are less than the order total.	Check for a partial payment or a payment recorded on another order.
OVERPAID	Payments, after refunds, are more than the order total.	Check for change that wasn't recorded or an extra payment.
REFUND_WITHOUT_PAYOUT	A refund is recorded, but no payment shows the money going back out as cash or store credit.	Check the refund and its payout in the order's Transaction History.
TAX_MISMATCH	The tax lines on the order don't add up to the order's tax.	Contact Flourish Support with the order ID.

Payment Gap is net payments minus the order total less refunds, so a positive number means more cash than the order supports. Tax Gap is the tax lines minus the order's tax.

Cents of difference: On a busy day, tax rounding across hundreds of orders can leave a difference of a few cents above $0.05 even when no order has an exception. If a day has an Unreconciled line but no rows in the exceptions table, check the amount. It's most likely rounding.

Read the cost of goods journal

The Retail Daily COGS Journal Entry table gives the matching cost entry for each store-day: a debit to cost of goods sold and a credit to inventory, using the cost of goods and inventory accounts on each item. Cost is the actual cost of the packages sold. It is not reduced for returned items.

The cost entry is only as good as the unit costs on your packages, so each journal shows how trustworthy the day is:

Cost Quality	What it means	Is Postable
OK	Cost is recorded for at least 90% of the day's sales and is no more than the sales.	True
LOW_COVERAGE	Less than 90% of the day's sales have a cost. Zero Cost Lines shows how many lines have none.	False
COST_EXCEEDS_REVENUE	The day's cost is more than 100% of its sales, which usually means a wrong unit cost.	False
NO_COST	The day has sales but no cost at all.	False

Post the cost entry only when Is Postable is True. Cost Pct shows cost as a percent of sales, and Cost Coverage shows the percent of sales that have a cost. To fix a day, make sure the packages you sold have the right unit cost. [VERIFY: where the unit cost is entered or corrected in Flourish]

Best Practices

Post only clean days. Book the sales entry when there is no Unreconciled line, and the cost entry when Is Postable is True.
Don't compare Retail sales to your point of sale total. Retail sales is before discounts and tax. Sales after discounts are Retail sales minus Discounts.
Expect refunds on a different day than the sale. A refund and its payout post on the day they happen.
Map your accounts. Set the income, cost of goods, and inventory accounts on your items so fewer lines show (unmapped).

Troubleshooting

If you see	Do this
No rows for yesterday	The report refreshes overnight. Check again later, and confirm the store had completed sales that day.
The Cash line is lower than your till count	Cash is net of change and cash back, and cash refunds paid out reduce it. The till variance appears in Cash over/short.
The Store Credit tender is smaller than the store credit redeemed	Store credit issued on refunds reduces the line.
Journal No shows a facility ID instead of a license number	The facility has no license number recorded in Flourish.
An excise tax appears under Sales tax	The line label follows how the tax type is configured. Each tax still has its own line by name.