The free retail daily close-out template.
Close the register and the question in one pass: today’s takings cash and card, refunds netted out, cost of goods estimated from your margin, and the day’s profit — plus the checklist so closing is the same eight steps every night, whoever locks up.
Direct .xlsx download · no email required · Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice & Numbers
Start here
Tax rate, card fee, average product margin, monthly fixed costs and open days. The margin setting lets the sheet estimate COGS from sales on nights you don’t line-count.
Daily close-out
Day-rows: cash takings, card takings, refunds, COGS (auto-estimated, overridable), other variable costs → net revenue and EBIT per day.
Close-out checklist
The eight-step closing routine — count, reconcile, log, lock — printable, so a stand-in can close the store exactly like you do.
Why the close-out is where retail profit hides
Retail leaks quietly: a refund here, a card fee there, markdowns that never made it into the books, a till that’s a few euro short again. The daily close-out is the one moment all of it is in your hands at once — the drawer, the terminal report, today’s invoices. Log it while it’s true and the month takes care of itself; leave it and you’re reconstructing it from memory a fortnight later.
The template estimates cost of goods from your average margin, so a nightly line-count isn’t required — and lets you override with the real number whenever you have it. An estimate tonight beats a perfect number in six weeks, because tonight you can still act on it.
How the COGS estimate keeps closing fast
The friction in most retail P&L attempts is cost of goods: nobody wants to line-count stock at closing. So this template does it the practical way. You set your average product margin once — say 52% — and the sheet estimates each day’s COGS as net sales × (1 − margin). Closing stays a two-minute job.
On the days it matters — a big single-item sale, a heavy-markdown day, a category that’s well off your average — you type the real cost straight over the estimate and the override wins for that row. The result is a daily profit number that’s honest enough to steer by, without turning every evening into a stocktake.
Why your card total never matches the bank
Every retailer notices it: the terminal says one number, the bank deposits another, a day or two later. Two things cause the gap — processing fees, and settlement timing. The terminal reports gross; the bank pays you net, on its own schedule. If you reconcile to the bank you’ll always feel behind and slightly poorer than you are.
This template keeps card revenue gross and deducts fees explicitly in their own column, so tonight’s profit is honest before the bank catches up. When the deposit lands short, you already know why, to the cent — it’s the fee line, not a mistake.
How to use it (one pass at closing)
Once: in Start here, set tax rate, card fee, your average product margin, monthly fixed costs and open days.
Every night: run the terminal’s end-of-day report, count the drawer, and fill the row: cash, card, refunds, and any variable costs that landed today. The sheet nets tax and fees, estimates COGS, subtracts the day’s fixed slice, and shows what today actually kept. Pin the checklist sheet by the register so closing is identical whoever locks up — and when you want the same close-out on your phone with the history kept for you, nouz for retail runs it; see the demo first, no account.
Common questions
Free? No email, no trial?
Correct — a direct .xlsx download that opens in Excel, Google Sheets, LibreOffice or Numbers. No form between you and the file.
How does the COGS estimate work?
You set your average product margin once (say 52%). The sheet estimates each day’s cost of goods as net sales × (1 − margin). Any day you know the real figure — a line-counted day, a big single-item sale — type it over the estimate; the override wins.
Do refunds reduce today’s revenue or the original day’s?
Today’s. In a daily P&L the refund hits the day it happens — that’s when the cash left. Your accountant may book it differently for the ledger; both are right, they answer different questions.
Card totals never quite match my bank — why?
Fees and settlement timing. The terminal reports gross; the bank deposits net, a day or two later. The template keeps card revenue gross and deducts fees explicitly, so tonight’s number is honest even before the bank catches up.
Who is the checklist sheet for?
Anyone who closes the store. A written eight-step close-out means a stand-in or new hire reconciles exactly the way you do — same count, same log, same lock-up — so the numbers stay trustworthy on the nights you’re not there.
Goes well with
Or skip the spreadsheet.
nouz runs the same daily P&L — formulas, fixed-cost slicing and history handled — for your retail store. See it working with sample data first; no account needed.
Open the live demo