Most owners arrive at nouz the same way: a quiet Tuesday afternoon, a spreadsheet open in another tab, a vague sense that something is off but no time to figure out what. The setup below is what the next twelve minutes look like — broken into three steps you can do behind the counter between rushes.
Before you start: have your last electricity bill, your rent figure, and your monthly staff cost in front of you. You don't need exact numbers, only approximate monthly amounts. We round to the nearest €10 and you can refine later.
01 Create your location
A location in nouz is one shop with one P&L. If you run a single café, one location is exactly right. If you run two cafés on different streets, create two — they each get their own daily numbers, their own fixed costs, and their own EBIT.
Click + New location on the home screen. Give it a name your staff will recognise (we recommend the street name, not the brand), pick your country, and set your currency. Defaults are fine: euros, comma decimal, week starting Monday.
02 Add your fixed costs
This is the setting that makes today's number honest. Fixed costs are the bills that don't change with how busy you are — rent, base salaries, insurance, software, the bookkeeper's monthly fee. We pro-rate them into a daily slice so your EBIT subtracts a fair share each day.
You don't need every line. Start with the four big ones — rent, staff, utilities, insurance. You can add more later. Enter them as monthly amounts; nouz divides by the days in the month.
Table 1 — a typical small café. Your daily slice subtracts before EBIT, so today's number tells the truth.
03 Log your first day
At close, on the home screen, tap Close today. You'll see six fields — revenue, tax, transaction fees, COGS, variable expenses, and a notes box. Most of these come straight from your Z-report (or your POS export). Type or paste, takes about 90 seconds.
Two patterns owners ask about on day one:
- Revenue is gross. The number on your Z-report, VAT included. nouz subtracts tax separately so it shows up as its own line — that's what your accountant wants.
- COGS is per-day, not per-unit. If you sold 80 coffees today and a coffee costs you €0,42 in beans + milk + cup, type
80 × 0,42=33,60. Or just type your best guess. You can refine after a week of data.
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1
Open Home
It's the first tab. You'll see today's tile, blank until you close out.
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2
Tap "Close today"
Bottom of the today card. Opens the six-field form.
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3
Fill the six fields
Revenue, tax, fees, COGS, variable expenses, optional notes. About 90 seconds.
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4
Tap "Save and close"
Your EBIT lands at the top of the home screen. Done.
After your first close-out
Tomorrow morning, before opening, glance at the home screen. You'll see yesterday's EBIT, your week-so-far, and a small chip comparing yesterday to the same day last week. That chip is the one to watch — same-day-of-week comparisons are how shops actually run.
Repeat the close-out for seven days. After a week, the Statistics tab unlocks day-of-week patterns, your break-even, and the SKU that's quietly drifting. Most owners say day eight is when nouz starts to feel useful — not day one.
If something looks off
The most common day-one confusion: "my EBIT is negative". That's almost always because the daily fixed-cost slice is bigger than today's gross margin — which is normal for slow days. EBIT is a daily number, not a monthly verdict. Watch the seven-day rolling line on the home screen instead.
If your numbers genuinely look wrong (a variance flag, a missing COGS column, a sync that didn't fire), the troubleshooting category covers the five most common causes. Or email us — a founder replies the same business day.
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