The firm offers bookkeeping and accounting services for business and personal needs, as well as ERP consulting and audit assistance. Follow the steps in this guide and, when in doubt, contact professionals for advice as soon as a problem arises. Staying on top of your financial records and daily accounting allows you to grow and scale your business.
Generate a Sales Report
Depending on your sales volume and the tasks you need help with, your bookkeeper may only work on your records a couple of hours a day or week. Ideally, you’ll want a bookkeeper who is familiar with the restaurant industry. Typically, they’re happy to send their bookkeepers more work if they can accommodate it.
How to Handle Accounts Payable
- By comparing the transactions on your books with those on your bank statements, you can identify any missing or mismatched entries, errors, or fraudulent activities.
- Rounding up or down by a few cents or dollars can add up over the course of a week or month and begin to affect your bottom line.
- Restaurant accountants understand how to compile data accurately and meaningfully.
- Download our free playbook and learn how to build a more resilient business post-pandemic.
- Restaurant cost of goods sold (COGS), refers to the amount a restaurant spends on supplies and food ingredients to produce the menu items they sell.
- For example, you may want to reduce your food cost percentage by 2%, decrease your labor costs by 3% or increase your average order value by $5.
The best restaurant POS systems are all-in-one restaurant management solutions with employee management, staff scheduling, customer loyalty tools, reservations, and online ordering capabilities. The labor cost KPI helps restaurateurs track employee costs at the individual or group level, as well as measure labor cost trends during busy times of the year and compare those costs to sales. When it comes to restaurant accounting, the chart of accounts categorizes the money you spend and receive. The chart of accounts records high-level transactions like revenue, expenses, assets, liabilities, cost of goods sold, and equity. Each of these buckets is further categorized into smaller ones, such as meat costs, alcohol costs, staff wages, marketing, utilities, laundry, etc.
- Restaurant bookkeeping with Toast and QBO is by far our most preferred setup.
- Restaurants should be looking at sales vs. cost of goods sold ratios as well as labor ratios.
- We had no trouble creating custom reports to show sales and profit data.
- This statement is an effective tool for keeping track of your revenue, food costs, labor costs, and operating expenses.
easy steps to simplify bookkeeping in the restaurant industry
Simplifying your restaurant’s bookkeeping process means efficiently managing the daunting task of settling salary payments, especially if you’re running huge operations and managing many employees. However, in-house restaurant accounting has some drawbacks, including that they might not be an expert in the area, or you might have to look for someone who specializes in restaurants. You’ll also have to pay for benefits, training, and accounting software.
Factors Unique to Restaurant Bookkeeping
- Restaurant accounting involves accurately tracking employee hours, calculating wages, and managing payroll taxes and benefits.
- Use our receipt tracker + receipt scanner app (iPhone, iPad, and Android) to snap a picture while on the go—auto-import receipts from Gmail.
- Proper accounting practices allow you to analyze and optimize performance metrics, such as profitability and sales revenue.
- Turn your receipts into data and deductibles with our expense reports, including IRS-accepted receipt images.
- You’ll also have to pay for benefits, training, and accounting software.
- It takes a sound bookkeeping system to keep track of your restaurant's finances.
Errors of principle occur when the wrong accounting treatment is used for a transaction, resulting in a deviation from generally accepted accounting principles. One example is incorrectly categorizing an item as an asset when it should be categorized as a liability, raising a red flag to an auditor. While each accounting system is different, they often share a range of similar how to do bookkeeping for a restaurant features and benefits that are designed to streamline your accounting. Once you’ve identified areas to focus on, you’ll need to set specific and measurable goals, also known as SMART goals. Also known as “sales per seat” or “average ticket” or “average spend per head. You can use this metric to understand breakfast, lunch, and dinner time averages, and track trends over time.
