Comp

A comp is recorded in the point of sale, so on the accounting side it is a line where revenue was given up on purpose. On the guest side it is something else: a record of what the restaurant chose to do for one person on one night. Those two readings sit in different systems and rarely meet.

Should a comp be recorded on the guest’s profile?

Yes, because a comp is the one thing on a check that the restaurant decided rather than the guest. Everything else is what somebody ordered. The comp is what the house gave, and the next team to serve that guest is the audience for it.

Recovery comps and recognition comps read very differently on a history, and confusing them is expensive. A guest whose last visit ended in a comped entrée and an apology should not get a cheerful “we miss you” email as their next contact from the restaurant. A guest comped a glass of champagne on their anniversary three years running should get the fourth without asking.

Whether the comp reaches the guest record on its own depends on the point of sale. Some POS platforms pass item-level detail with the check, including how a discount or a comp was applied, and others pass only a total. Where only the total arrives, somebody has to write the comp onto the guest by hand.

Why is a comp with no note attached unreadable later?

A reason code gives you the bucket and not the story. “Service recovery, $46” says the house gave something back. It does not say the entrée arrived twenty minutes after the rest of the table, or that the guest was gracious about it, or that a manager promised them a drink next time. Three months on, the code is all that survives.

Codes and notes serve different readers, which is why a restaurant wants both. Reason codes exist for the P&L and for the comp report a general manager reads weekly, so a short controlled list is the right shape there. The note exists for whoever greets that guest next, and it needs specifics: what happened, what was promised, who handled it.

What is the difference between a comp, a void, and a discount?

A void removes an item that should never have been on the check, usually a mis-ring caught before the food was made. A comp leaves the item on the check at zero: the food was cooked, the cost was incurred, the revenue was given away. A discount reduces a price the guest still pays.

The difference shows up in what a check total means afterwards. Voids cost a keystroke, comps cost food, discounts cost margin, so a venue coding all three the same way cannot say how much it gave away or why. It also skews per-guest spend. A regular who gets comped often looks like a lighter spender than they are, and a group ranking its best guests on check totals alone will misread the very people it has been looking after.