Restaurant owners will open their monthly P&L reports, examine sales, then go down to the bottom and close the report.
Does it sound familiar?
The report may be totally correct, but if they are the only two figures that are being examined, most of its value is being ignored.
A reliable bookkeeping system for restaurants won’t make it more dependent on owners on accountants. It should give them confidence in their own financials. It’s not required to sit all night entering invoices or know every accounting rule. However, you must understand how profit moved from costs for food and labor and which issues require consideration next week.
Bookkeeping Chef’s mission is to automate tasks in bookkeeping that do not require the attention of restaurant owners, while providing them with clearer financial data they can utilize.
Don’t stop at Month-End Numbers. Begin with the Weekly Numbers
Although restaurants do not operate according to a calendar, they do require a P&L. This week, managers plan their schedules. The chef ordered food today. Vendors change prices now.
Bookkeeping Chef offers weekly flash reports on top costs as well as monthly financial statements.
Prime cost includes price of the goods sold and labor. These are two main areas that can move quickly in restaurants. According to the data published by the Bookkeeping Chef prime costs account for around 60% of restaurant sales.
Let’s say sales have not changed at all however, the cost of prime increases. This percentage doesn’t provide an answer. It gives the owner a reason to investigate.
Did you notice an increase in the number of hours employed? Did overtime take place? Did the price of food increased? A vendor’s invoice appeared to be unusually large? Has the mix of sales changed?
It is better to discover the issue earlier rather than later.
Automate the repetitive Work
The DIY bookkeeping process doesn’t have to be limited to manually transferring POS figures into spreadsheets.
Automating the bookkeeping of restaurants can assist with the frequent movement of financial information. The service can connect to systems such as POS as well as QuickBooks, payroll vendors, vendor platforms inventory management, recipe and recipe management, as well as tools for AP/payment.
The aim is not to automate to achieve its own ends.
The objective is to stop manually entering data and to ensure that financial records are kept up-to date so that owners are able to spend more time reviewing the data instead of trying to assemble it.
It creates a completely different accounting model for restaurant establishments. Technology handles the mechanics and the restaurant owner remains engaged in the financial side.
Learn to Ask the P&L More Questions
When you stop treating a P&L like a test, it becomes less intimidating.
Begin with sales. Begin with sales. Compare food and beverage performance. Study the cost of labor. Take a look at the labor.
The importance of comparing periods.
If profit increased but sales rose, wasn’t, something else between those two lines occurred. What did happen when prices for food were rising? Compare the staffing levels and sales activities if the labor percentages have changed. If a figure appears to be odd examine it instead of thinking the restaurant simply had an awful month.
Bookkeeping Chef will send monthly P&Ls on five working days. This allows owners to review recent results without having to wait for financial statements, which often arrive months later than the close of an operating time.
For owners searching bookkeeping restaurant solutions, speed is useful but understanding is the bigger objective.
There’s no need to handle everything on your own when you make it DIY
There’s a compromise between handing the entire financial function to someone else and becoming your own bookkeeper full-time.
You could be a part of an owner of a business without having to perform every accounting task manually.
The process could be as simple as using automated system connections in order to keep the information flowing. Or it could be as intricate and complicated a study of the monthly P&L or a look at a weekly Prime-cost Report.
A specialist in restaurant bookkeeping can aid with this method by making sure that the books are organized and assisting the proprietor to know what they are.
There is a good chance to have an accountant who is able to perform all of the functions.
Owners who can take a seat and converse intelligently about their business and the P&L will be more successful.
The objective is financial freedom and not the need for more reports
Restaurants already generate huge quantities of data. The dashboards aren’t always making sense.
The real value comes when an operator looks at a weekly prime-cost report and see that something has changed, then open the P&L and determine what to do next.
Bookkeeping Chef’s method combines restaurant bookkeeping automation weekly reporting monthly P&Ls, as well as the financial support for specific restaurants to help you achieve this.
Automatize repetitive tasks. Check your top costs each week. Learn to speak the same language as your P&L.
There is no need to become an accountant.
It is crucial to know the finances of your restaurant before you can become a proprietor.