Written by: JJ Tan, Founder, Jelly | Last updated: 15 June 2026
Key Takeaways for UK Toast Users
- Manual CSV exports from Toast POS create a recurring cycle of pulling, reformatting, and cleaning data that quickly becomes stale for UK operators.
- Four specific Toast Web permissions (4.1, 4.2, 4.5, and 8.3) are required to access and export sales reports, menu data, and automated exports.
- Toast offers three main export routes: Sales Summary reports, Itemised Orders exports, and full Menu exports via the Items Database.
- Toast’s automated nightly exports are not self-service and still require manual cleaning, renaming, and importing for multi-site UK groups.
- Running Toast across one or more UK sites? See how Jelly pulls the same data automatically, and book a demo with our team.
Toast Permissions You Need Before Exporting
Four Toast Web permissions control full export access. Permission 4.1 Sales Reports is required to view and export any sales report. Permission 4.2 Menu Reports covers the Product Mix (PMIX) report and menu reporting. Permission 4.5 Edit Full Menu is required to access the Items Database for menu exports, while the separate 6.4 Publishing permission is needed to push any saved changes live. Permission 8.3 Data Export Config is required to configure or modify automated nightly data exports.
These four permissions form the foundation for every export workflow in this guide. In multi-location setups, check permission settings at both group and location levels because they can differ. After any permission change, the user should sign out and sign back in so the new access takes effect.
Three Main Toast Data Export Paths
Toast Web offers three primary export routes for UK operators:
- Sales Summary Report, which provides aggregate daily, weekly, or custom-period sales figures
- Itemised Orders Export, which provides line-level order data for a defined date range
- Menu Export via Items Database, which provides the full menu structure including modifiers and archived items
Exporting the Sales Summary Report
The Sales Summary report provides overall sales, revenue by category, tips, taxes, and other key metrics for any selected period. Navigate to Reports > Sales > Sales summary in Toast Web, or select Sales summary from the Quick Actions section on the homepage. Apply the date range using the date drop-down. Options include today, yesterday, this week, this month, or a custom period. Use More filters to narrow by revenue centre, service area, dining option, or time of day, then select Update.
To export, select the download icon (down arrow) or the email icon in the top-right corner and choose CSV or XLS format. The XLS export is delivered as a single file containing multiple sheets. Exported data reflects applied filters but does not include layout customisations made via the gear icon. The report provides historical sales data for the periods you select.
UK notes: Toast exports figures in the currency configured at account level. Before importing into Xero, confirm the currency symbol is formatted as £ rather than $ and that VAT columns map correctly to Xero’s Tax Rate fields. For multi-site UK groups, run a separate export per location and label each file with the site name before consolidating.
Exporting Itemised Orders
The Orders report displays every individual order in itemised form. Navigate to Reports > Sales > Orders in Toast Web. Columns include location, order number, date and time opened, number of guests, server, table, discount amount, amount, tax, tip, and gratuity. Select Show/hide columns to add Order Source if you need to filter by delivery platform.
Select a suitable date range for the Orders report. Then select the download icon near the top right to save as CSV. For UK groups operating across multiple sites, run one export per location and merge files later in your workflow.
Exporting the Toast Menu from the Items Database
The Items Database contains every menu, menu group, item, modifier group, and modifier option, including archived entities. Navigate to Menus > Bulk management > Items database in Toast Web, then click the download icon in the top-right corner to save the full database as a spreadsheet. Use Show/hide columns before exporting to include or exclude fields such as price level, sales category, or item tags.
One common issue with Items Database exports is the presence of archived menu items. These can appear in the downloaded file even if they are no longer active in your live menu. If the file will populate an inventory or costing tool, filter out archived rows before import to avoid phantom SKUs inflating ingredient counts. The 6.4 Publishing permission is separate from export access. A user can download the Items Database without it but cannot push menu changes live.
Fixing Common Toast Export Problems
Permission errors: Missing 4.1 Sales Reports permission is the most common cause of reports not appearing in the left-hand navigation. A restaurant admin must update the role, and the user should sign out and sign back in. For Items Database errors, check for 4.5 Edit Full Menu at the correct location level.
Large-file timeouts: Year-over-year comparisons in Sales Analytics can time out with wide date ranges or multiple locations. Reduce the date range or export by location to resolve this.
Missing tax columns: Tax columns are available in the Orders report via Show/hide columns. If they are absent after export, re-run with the tax column explicitly selected before downloading.
Date-range limits: Review Toast’s date range considerations when exporting data. Split large requests into sequential date-range exports and concatenate the resulting files.
Browser compatibility: Chrome is recommended for Sales Analytics.
Post-Export Checklist for Xero and Inventory Imports
Toast exports require manual cleaning before they can be imported into UK accounting or inventory systems. The raw CSV files often contain formatting inconsistencies, archived records, and currency symbols that trigger import errors or distort stock counts. Work through the following steps to prepare each export and avoid those issues.
- Confirm the currency column uses £ and that decimal separators are full stops, not commas. UK regional settings in Excel can invert these and cause Xero to reject the import.
- Once currency formatting is correct, map Toast’s tax fields to Xero’s Tax Rate column. Standard UK VAT (20%) should map to “20% (VAT on Income)” or the equivalent code in your Xero chart of accounts.
- If you are working with an Items Database export, remove archived menu items before uploading to inventory tools. These phantom SKUs inflate ingredient counts and create costing errors.
- For order-level exports, strip duplicate order rows that can appear when a single order spans a date-boundary closeout. These duplicates double-count revenue if they remain in the file.
- Finally, label each file with the site name and export date before saving to a shared drive, particularly for multi-site groups where files from different locations share identical column headers. Clear labels prevent accidental overwrites and make it obvious which data set you are using later.
Toast Automated Exports Compared with Manual Work
Toast offers automated nightly data exports covering Order Details, Payment Details, Item Selection Details, Modifier Selection Details, and Product Mix data, but enabling this feature requires contacting Toast Customer Care and is not self-service. Each nightly file covers the previous business day only, files are retained for seven days, and the data is static once generated, so subsequent corrections to prior-day sales are not reflected. The PMIX report cannot be automatically emailed on a recurring schedule, which means menu-level sales data still requires a manual pull every time.
For a UK operator running two or more sites, this setup creates a daily routine of logging in, selecting the right location, applying filters, downloading, renaming, cleaning, and importing before any GP figure is visible. Owners and Finance Managers at £500k+ operations typically absorb 10–20 hours of monthly admin in this loop alone.
Jelly removes that loop. By integrating directly with Toast POS, Jelly pulls sales data automatically and combines it with live ingredient costs from scanned invoices to produce a real-time GP margin for every dish. That real-time margin appears in the Flash Report, which delivers a daily view of gross profit without waiting for month-end. When supplier prices change, the Price Alert feature flags the movement the same week it happens, so you can adjust menu prices or portion sizes before the new cost erodes your margin. Invoices push directly to Xero with one click, cutting bookkeeping time by 90% and keeping your accounts aligned with the cost data driving your GP calculations. As a result, Jelly users report an average 2 percentage-point improvement in gross margins within the first three months.
“Our accountant said we’d be lucky to hit 60% gross profit. After using Jelly, we reached 80%! Now I sleep better knowing my costs are under control and can react instantly, not weeks later.” — Ruth Seggie, Owner, The Howard Arms
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I export data from Toast?
Log in to Toast Web and navigate to the relevant report under the Reports menu. For sales data, go to Reports > Sales > Sales summary or Reports > Sales > Orders. For menu data, go to Menus > Bulk management > Items database. On any supported report, select the download icon (down arrow) in the top-right corner and choose CSV or XLS. If the download icon is not present, that report does not support direct export and can instead be saved as a PDF via the browser print function. You must hold the appropriate permission (4.1 for sales reports, 4.5 for menu data) before the export option becomes available.
How do I download the Toast menu?
Navigate to Menus > Bulk management > Items database in Toast Web. This page lists every menu, menu group, item, modifier group, and modifier, including archived entities. Click the download icon in the top-right corner to save the full database as a spreadsheet. Use Show/hide columns before downloading to include or exclude specific fields such as price levels or item tags. The 4.5 Edit Full Menu permission is required. If access is denied, ask your account owner to verify permissions at the correct location level.
How do I see sales on Toast?
In Toast Web, select Reports in the left navigation menu to open the reporting dashboard. The Sales Summary report is accessible via Reports > Sales > Sales summary or directly from the Quick Actions section on the homepage. Apply a date range, such as today, yesterday, this week, this month, or a custom period, then select Update to refresh the figures. The report displays overall sales, revenue by category, tips, taxes, and other key metrics. For item-level sales, navigate to Reports > Menus > Product mix to view the PMIX report, which shows quantity sold, net sales, and sales percentage per menu item. The 4.1 Sales Reports permission is required for the Sales Summary, and the 4.2 Menu Reports permission is required for the PMIX.
Can Toast SFTP exports be set up without contacting Customer Care?
No. Enabling Toast’s automated nightly data exports, which deliver files via SFTP, requires contacting Toast Customer Care directly. The feature is not self-serviceable from within Toast Web. Once enabled, only users with the 8.3 Data Export Config permission can modify the export configuration. Files are generated within one hour of the configured closeout time, cover the previous business day only, and are retained for seven days. For multi-location groups, each location’s files are placed in a separate numbered folder within the shared group directory. Because the files are static once generated, any corrections made to prior-day sales in Toast are not reflected in already-processed export files.
Conclusion: From Manual Toast Exports to Real-Time Control
The export paths covered in this guide, including Sales Summary, Orders, Items Database, and automated nightly SFTP files, give UK operators access to the raw data Toast holds. The limitation is not the data itself but the manual effort required to extract, clean, and act on it repeatedly. For a growing restaurant, pub, or hotel group, that effort compounds quickly, and the GP picture is always days behind reality.
Jelly replaces that cycle with a direct POS integration that pulls sales data automatically, matches it against live invoice costs, and surfaces real-time dish-level GP margins without a single manual export. Amber restaurant in East London saves £3,000–£4,000 per month using Jelly. Social Pantry’s Operations Director describes it as the only tool on the market that does not require constant manual work to function.
The exports described above will always be available in Toast. Your team can keep running them, or you can shift that time into running the business instead.