Opening checklist
- Turn off the alarm and walk through for anything unusual
- Read the handover note from last night
- Check and write down fridge and freezer temperatures
- Count the opening drawer
- Turn on lights, music and equipment
- Check today's schedule and who's missing
- Check deliveries against the order
- Clean and stock the front
- Unlock the door on time
Closing checklist
- Lock the front door at closing time
- Count the drawer and write down the total
- Put cash in the safe and close it
- Straighten displays and restock supplies
- Take out trash and recycling
- Sweep and mop the floor
- Clean the bathroom
- Write a handover note: anything broken, low or odd
- Turn off lights and equipment
- Check the back door is locked
- Set the alarm and lock the front door
Make it yours
Walk through a real opening and a real closing with the person who does them best, and change the list as you go. Take out anything that doesn't apply, and add what's specific to your place. A few examples:
Restaurants and cafes. Temperature logs, sanitizer strength, date labels, grease traps, turning off the fryers and the hood.
Retail. Fitting rooms, price changes, security tags, returns put back on the floor.
Offices and clinics. Sign-in sheets, printers, sensitive papers locked away.
Warehouses and shops. Forklift charging, loading doors, tool counts.
Keep it short. If it's more than about 15 items, people stop reading it. The items most likely to cost you money or safety belong last, in bold, so they stay in mind as people walk out the door. For more on this, read how to write checklists people will actually follow.
Getting it used
Sign and date each one. That one small step changes how people treat it.
Look at them. Read one each morning, and mention it. "Thanks for the note about the tap." If nobody reads them, people will stop filling them in carefully.
Give enough time. If closing takes 45 minutes and you've scheduled 15, people will skip steps or work off the clock, and off-the-clock work is still paid time.
Keep them. Store a month or more, if only so you can look back when a question comes up. If you log food temperatures, your health department may have its own rules.
Paper or phone?
Paper's fine to start with. A phone gives you a few things paper can't: a time stamp showing when it was filled in, photos for proof, numbers you can look back on and a way to read it from anywhere.
In PinkLinq, you can start from a template, and add a photo, a number, a signature or a rating to any item. Your team fills it in on a phone, and each submission's saved with a name and a time. Forms are part of the Operations hub on every plan, free for up to 10 people.