Restaurant owners open their monthly P&L reports, check sales, then scroll down to the bottom of the report and close the report.
Do these sound like familiar?
The report may be totally correct, but if they are the only two numbers that are being examined, the majority of its worth is being put to waste.
A well-designed restaurant bookkeeping system won’t make it more dependent on the owners on accountants. They should feel more confident of their financials. You don’t have to be an accounting expert or spend your entire night completing invoices. It’s important to understand why the profit changed as well as what happened to food and labor and what questions require to be addressed next week.
This is the concept behind Bookkeeping Chef: Automate the bookkeeping task that doesn’t require an owner’s time, while providing restaurant owners with more precise financial data they can actually use.
It is recommended to begin by looking at Weekly Numbers and Not Just Month-End
Restaurants don’t operate on a monthly basis. The managers schedule the labor for this week. Chef has ordered food. Vendors change prices now.
Bookkeeping Chef offers weekly flash reports on prime costs along with monthly financial statements.
Prime cost includes the cost of goods sold as well as labor. Both of these are major areas that can be swiftly moved in the restaurant. According to the data from Bookkeeping Chef, prime cost accounts for about 60% of sales in restaurants.
Think about a situation where sales aren’t changing much and the costs of primary production are rising. The percentage doesn’t give the answer. The owner has an excuse to do some study.
Has the hourly wage increased? Did there occur overtime? Food costs changed? A vendor invoice seemed unusually large? Has the mix of sales changed?
It is much better to find out about the problem now as opposed to later.
Automate the repetitive work
DIY bookkeeping doesn’t have to be a manual process of transferring POS totals into spreadsheets, after the service.
Automating restaurant bookkeeping can help with the frequent movement of financial information. The service integrates systems such as POS, QuickBooks payroll, vendor platforms, and inventory management.
Automation is not the objective.
The aim is to reduce the manual entry of data, and keep financial records up-to-date so that managers are able to spend more time analyzing the data rather than assembling it.
That creates a different model of bookkeeping for restaurants: technology handles more of the mechanics while the owner remains engaged with the financial meaning.
Learn to ask the P&L More Questions
When you stop treating the P&L as a test it becomes less intimidating.
Start by analyzing the sales. Begin with sales. Compare the food and drink performances. Consider labor. Make sure you reduce your operational costs.
Compare periods.
If the sales rise but the profits don’t, there is a difference between them. Consider what has changed in the operation if food costs increased. Compare staffing with sales to determine if the labor percentage has changed. Find any data that seems odd, instead of assuming that the restaurant experienced a poor week.
Bookkeeping Chef will send monthly P&Ls in five working days. This lets the owners look at recent performance without waiting for financial statements, which typically arrive months after the end of an operating time.
For those who are looking for bookkeeping restaurant solutions, speed is useful but understanding is the main purpose.
It’s not necessary to DIY everything.
There’s a middle-ground between outsourcing the entire financial function to someone else and establishing yourself as your own full-time bookkeeper.
A business owner can be in the loop without manually completing every accounting job.
It could be as simple as utilizing automated system connections in order to ensure that the information is flowing. Or it could be as extensive and intricate a study of the monthly P&L or even a review of a weekly Prime-cost report.
Specialized bookkeeping for restaurants can help in this manner by making sure that the books are organized as well as helping the owner comprehend what they mean.
This does not mean that the bookkeeper is in a position to complete all bookkeeping tasks.
An owner can engage in a dialogue with a P&L regarding the company.
Financial independence isn’t just to write more reports, but to reach financial freedom
Restaurants already generate huge quantities of data. Another dashboard may not be helpful.
Real value is when an operator can open the P&L report, and see the change and then look at the reports on the cost of prime.
Bookkeeping Chef’s method incorporates financial support for restaurants, daily reporting, and automated bookkeeping for restaurants to accomplish this.
Automate repetitive tasks. Examine the cost of your prime each week. Be aware of the language employed within your P&L.
It’s not necessary to become an accountant.
You should become a restaurant owner who is aware of the financial story of your restaurant.
