The restaurant’s owner will look at the sales before focusing on the bottom line, before closing the report.
Does this sound familiar to you?
If just those two numbers are examined the true value of the report is diminished.
A well-designed restaurant bookkeeping system will not put more owners on accountants. It should make them more comfortable with their own financials. It doesn’t require an accountant or stay up all in the dark completing invoices. You do need to understand how profit moved from food and labor costs and what issues need the attention of next week.
Bookkeeping Chef’s philosophy is to automate bookkeeping tasks that do not require the time of restaurant owners, while providing them with clearer financial data they can utilize.
Begin With the Weekly Numbers Instead of just the month-end
Restaurants don’t run on an annual basis. The managers plan the work for this week. Chefs order food right now. Vendors change prices now.
Bookkeeping Chef offers weekly flash reports on the top costs, together with monthly financial reports.
The prime cost comprises two important areas that can be swiftly moved in a food service establishment: the price of the food that are sold, as well as labor. The information provided by the Bookkeeping Chef shows that prime costs generally account for 60 percent of the sales in restaurants.
If sales haven’t changed much and the prime cost has increased. This percentage isn’t an answer. This gives the owner an excuse to do some investigation.
Have the hourly wages increased? Did you have an overtime? Was the cost of food fluctuating? An invoice from a vendor appeared unusually big? Did the mix of sales changed?
This is much more helpful than locating the same issue two weeks later.
Automate the repetitive work
DIY bookkeeping doesn’t have be a manual process of transferring POS totals into spreadsheets, after the service.
Automating the bookkeeping of restaurants can assist with the frequent movement of financial information. The service can connect to systems such as POS and QuickBooks, payroll vendor platforms inventory and recipe management, as well as payment and AP tools.
The goal is not automation to achieve its own ends.
It is to reduce manual data entry and ensure that the financial records up-to-date so that the owners are able to spend their time reviewing information instead of assembling it.
This creates a new model of bookkeeping in restaurants. The system handles more of the mechanics, while the owner remains involved in the financial aspects.
P&L Questions: Learn How to Ask Better Questions
Stop treating your P&L as like an accounting test.
Start with sales. Begin with sales. Compare the effectiveness of drinks and food. Take into consideration the labor. Look at labor.
It is vital to compare periods.
If profit increased but sales rose, was not, something between the two lines occurred. What changed when the cost of food increased? If labor percentage moved by a significant amount, you can compare sales and staffing activity. Look into any numbers that appear odd, instead of assuming that the restaurant experienced a poor week.
Bookkeeping Chef provides monthly P&Ls within five days. This lets the owners look at recent performance without waiting for financial statements, which usually arrive months after the conclusion of an operating period.
Understanding is more important than speed for owners looking for bookkeeping solutions in restaurants.
You don’t need to take on everything by yourself when you DIY
It’s not necessary to become your own full-time bookkeeper If you’d like to avoid handing over the whole financial responsibility over to another person.
Owners can be still involved in the process of accounting without being required to do every job by hand.
It could be as simple as the use of automated system connections in order to keep information flowing through, examining a weekly prime cost report, looking at the monthly P&L and posing queries whenever something happens unexpectedly.
Specialized restaurant bookkeeping services can support that approach by keeping the underlying books organized while helping the owner understand what the reports mean.
It is highly unlikely that you will find an accountant that can do all of the tasks.
The owner should be able to sit down with a P&L and engage in a thoughtful discussion on the business.
The Objective Is Financial Independence Not More Reports
Restaurants create a lot data. The other dashboards aren’t necessarily useful.
The real value comes the moment an operator opens an P&L report, be aware the change and then look at the prime-cost reports.
Bookkeeping Chef’s approach combines restaurant financial support, weekly reports and automated bookkeeping for restaurants to achieve this.
Automate repetitive tasks. Review your primary costs every week. Learn the language of your P&L.
You don’t have to be an accountant to be an.
It is best to be an owner who is aware of the financial story of your own restaurant.