A restaurant’s owner opens the monthly P&L and looks at the sales, then jumps to the bottom line, and closes the report.
Sounds familiar?
The report may be perfectly exact, but if those are the only two numbers reviewed the bulk of its value is ignored.
Good restaurant bookkeeping shouldn’t make owners more dependent on accountants. They should feel more confident of their financials. You don’t need to know every accounting rule and do a lot of work in the evenings completing invoices. It’s crucial to understand how the profit fluctuated as well as what happened to the labor and food items, and which questions need to be addressed next week.
Bookkeeping Chef’s ethos is to automate tasks in bookkeeping that do not require the attention of restaurant owners, while providing users with better financial information they can use.
Start with the Weekly Numbers, Not Just Month-End
Although restaurants do not operate according to a calendar, they still need to have an P&L. Managers schedule labor this week. The chef has ordered food for today. Vendors change prices now.
Bookkeeping Chef offers weekly flash reports on top costs as well as monthly financial statements.
The principal cost includes the labor and goods costs both of which are areas where restaurants can accelerate its progress. The Bookkeeping Chef’s information notes that prime costs typically represent about 60% of sales in restaurants.
Consider a situation where sales aren’t changing much however, the cost of prime services are increasing. This percentage alone isn’t enough to provide the answer. It provides the person with the reason to conduct an investigation.
Did you notice an increase in the amount of time worked? Did overtime occur? Food prices changed? Did vendor invoices seem excessively high? Changes in the sales mix?
This is much more valuable than finding the same problem several weeks later.
Automate the repetitive work
DIY bookkeeping doesn’t have to require manual transfer of POS totals to spreadsheets following the service.
Modern bookkeeping automation in restaurants can take care of a large portion of the repeated movement of financial data. The service is able to integrate systems such as POS and QuickBooks payroll vendor platforms, and inventory management.
Automatization is not the aim.
It’s to cut down on manual data entry, and keep financial records up-to-date so that owners can spend their time looking through information rather than assembling it.
It is a totally different bookkeeping process for restaurants. Technology takes care of the mechanics while the proprietor is involved in the financial side.
Learn to Ask the P&L Better Questions
Stop treating your P&L as something that could be an accounting test.
Begin with sales. Examine the costs needed to make those sales. Compare the food and beverage performances. Consider labor. Make sure you reduce your operational expenses.
Compare the different periods.
If profits increase, but sales do not, there is some variation between them. What changed when the cost of food went up? If labor percentage moved between staffing and sales activity. Examine if the number appears unusual, rather than believing that the restaurant experienced a bad period.
Bookkeeping Chef’s monthly P&Ls are finalized within five business days, giving owners the opportunity to look over the performance of their business, rather than getting financial statements after the operating time has passed.
Speed is essential, but the aim is to comprehend.
DIY Doesn’t Need to Mean Making Everything You Need
There is a happy compromise between hiring someone else to manage your financial needs and being your own full-time accountant.
An owner can stay in the loop without manually completing each accounting job.
It could be as simple as using automated systems to maintain information flow, reviewing a monthly P&L and weekly reports on prime costs or asking questions when something unexpected happens.
A specialist in restaurant bookkeeping can aid with this approach by maintaining the books in order and assisting the proprietor to know what they are.
It is unlikely to get a bookkeeper who can perform all of the functions.
The owner should be able to sit down with a P&L and engage in a thoughtful discussion on the business.
Financial freedom is not to generate more reports, but rather to reach financial freedom
Restaurants create a lot data. Another dashboard might not prove helpful.
The most valuable thing is when an employee can look at a weekly prime-cost report and see that something has changed, then open the P&L and figure out where to investigate further.
Bookkeeping Chef’s approach combines restaurant bookkeeping automation, weekly reporting, monthly P&Ls, and restaurant-specific financial support to make that possible.
Automate repetitive tasks. Review the prime cost each week. Learn the terminology employed in your P&L.
You do not have to be an accountant to be an.
It is essential to be aware of the financials of your restaurant prior to when you are able to become the proprietor.