As the restaurant owner you require real time financial information, to operate your restaurant smoothly, to make effective, forward thinking business decisions.
Managing the bookkeeping is a tough task, as your knowledge is limited to managing the staff, tables, staff and ensuring a wonderful experience for your restaurant’s clients. Operating a busy restaurant is just a part of your responsibility to achieve your business goals, but you can move a step closer to achieve your full potential by following our restaurant bookkeeping tips.
Monitor cash flow
It requires lots of knowledge to balance your expenses and bookkeeping all balanced. However, regarding cash flow management, having cash to meet unexpected and urgent expenses is the essential rule. However, where do you obtain the cash for the event, buy requisite ingredients, and pay your staff when you accept to host a catering event one month and just accept a 10% deposit? This would be a nearly unmanageable task, for someone new in restaurant management. Monitoring your cash flow properly prevents borrowing money to pay your suppliers.
Here are the steps to manage your cash flow:
- Regularly review your cash flow statements
- Negotiate payment conditions with suppliers again… the later the better negotiate
- Invoice for catering or other events as regularly and upfront as possible
- Complete the banking process soonest possible
- Prepare regular budgets and cash projection.
- Contact outstanding debtors ever so often
Manage accounting records
As a restaurant owner regular financial reporting will help you make better informed decisions. Income tax, super, GST, payroll, expenses, and sales are among the main records that owners of restaurant owners should regularly update and reconcile. As the restaurant owner, your duty is to perform daily reconciliations of sales and process your accounts payable. In addition, keep your reconciliations and payroll processing updated on a daily basis.
Regular restaurant bookkeeping includes:
- Reconciling daily earnings
- Regularly entering accounts payable and bills
- Entering additional cash expenses
- Processing payroll and entering payment runs
- Bank reconciliations at the end of the month
- Monthly payroll reconciliations
- Quarterly end super settlements
- Quarter GST settlements
- Preparing and lodging quarterly BAS
Provide accurate business driven data and accounting step by step. This involves defining aspects of your sales such as what the customer’s ordered and the day and time your restaurant recorded the highest sales and expenditures. You require a bespoke bookkeeping system for tracking this important data. We can assist you with this.
Tracking inventory regularly
If you do not have a manager, it is important for you to manage the weekly inventory. Access the requirements of your inventory regularly to find out the actual usage of items plus determine if it fluctuates and by how much. Irregular assessing could result in wastage of hundreds, or even thousands of dollars.
You need a good point of sales (POS) system and an eye for detail to maintain track of your inventory. Make an actual weekly assessment of ingredients remaining in your stock room, and assess your food every month.
Steps involved in reviewing your inventory:
- Prepare your POS to count inventory
- Prepare yourself and your staff for inventory count
- Take a stock of your surroundings
- Prepare and follow a manual stock taking schedule
- Record waste and the reasons behind it
- Before taking deliveries ensure your inventory is updated
- Obsess over your data
Understand the profit and loss statement
To manage your restaurant, it is important to reviewing its profit and loss statements. Use it in combination with the statement of your cash flow. The difference is your profit & loss statement. It shows your incurred and unpaid expenses instead of on a cash basis shown by your cash flow statement.
Create a weekly statement of your sales and expenses including expenses and revenue sources to determine the weekly profit or loss of your restaurant. Extensively categorize your profit and loss statement to show sales and income from various sources. In addition, the profit and loss statement ought to include a categorical breakdown of the cost of goods sold to show the most profitable sources of income. The breakdown should include overheads like software, repairs, insurance, and rent. This report is vital indecision making such as removing unpopular items from the menu, when to roster employees, and improve efficiencies elsewhere. Your profit and loss should:
- Split various sources of income
- Divide various cost of goods accounts for showing profitability
- Several other overhead expenses
- Revenue minus expenses is the profit for the period
Depend on cloud accounting software
You cannot take quick and vital decisions without updated records and effective accounting software. Set up an efficient cloud based accounting software that seamlessly connects with your POS system, as it provides you with informative data, and helps you save on accounting fees by taking less time to complete your bookkeeping. Cloud software helps you streamline your restaurant’s payroll reports, inventory, and sales, permitting you to easily manage your restaurant more efficiently.
Top cloud based restaurant accounting software includes:
