Restaurant owners open the monthly P&L then looks over sales, then skips to the bottom line, and closes the report.
Do these sound like familiar to you?
The report might be 100% correct, but if they are the only two figures being reviewed the bulk of its value is left on the table.
A well-designed restaurant bookkeeping system should not increase the dependence of restaurant owners on accountants. They should be more confident about their numbers. It doesn’t require an expert in accounting or spend at night filling out invoices. You do need to understand how profit moved and what happened to the cost of food and labor and which issues require consideration next week.
That’s the idea behind Bookkeeping Chef: Automate the bookkeeping process that doesn’t need an owner’s time, while providing restaurant owners with better financial information that they can utilize.
Don’t stop at Month-End Numbers. Begin by calculating Weekly Numbers
Restaurants don’t run on the basis of a monthly. Managers schedule labor for the week. Chefs order food today. Vendors change prices now.
This is why Bookkeeping Chef provides weekly prime-cost flash reports in addition to monthly financial statements.
Prime cost combines the the cost of goods sold as well as labor. Both of these are major areas that can move quickly in the restaurant. According to information provided by Bookkeeping Chef, prime costs account for around 60% of restaurant sales.
Imagine that sales barely changed but the price of production grew. This number does not give an answer. It provides the owner with a reason to conduct an investigation.
Did the hourly wage get more expensive? Did you have an overtime? Costs of food changed? Was the invoice of a vendor abnormally high? What changes have occurred in the sales mix?
It is more beneficial to find out about the issue now rather as opposed to later.
Automate repetitive tasks
DIY bookkeeping isn’t limited to manually transferring POS numbers into spreadsheets.
Automating the bookkeeping process in restaurants can help eliminate repetitive data movements. The service can connect to systems such as POS Payroll, QuickBooks, POS, vendor platforms inventory management, recipe and recipe management, as well as AP/payment tools.
The goal isn’t to automate for its own sake.
It is to reduce manual data entry and keep the financial records current enough that the owners are able to spend their time reviewing data rather than making it.
It provides a completely new bookkeeping model for restaurant establishments. Technology takes care of the mechanics and the proprietor remains involved with the financial aspects.
Learn to ask the P&L Better Questions
A P&L can be a lot less intimidating when you stop treating it like an accounting test.
Start by analyzing the sales. Start with sales. Compare the performance of food and beverages. Examine labor. Keep working to cut down your operating expenses.
Compare periods.
Something that lies between these two lines has changed if sales have been increasing, but profits have not. What changed in the company as food prices increased. Examine the staffing levels and sales activities if labor percentages have changed. Examine if the number appears unusual, rather than believing that the restaurant had an unfavorable time.
Bookkeeping Chef gives monthly P&Ls, which are finished within five days. Owners can review the performance of their business without waiting months before receiving financial statements.
For those who are looking for bookkeeping restaurant solutions, speed is important but understanding is the bigger purpose.
DIY Doesn’t Need to Mean Self-Employing Everything
It is not necessary to be your own full time bookkeeper in order to avoid handing over the whole bookkeeping responsibility to a different person.
Owners can remain active without having to perform every accounting task.
This could mean automatizing systems to ensure information flow, reviewing an annual P&L and a weekly report regarding prime expenses, or asking questions if an unexpected event occurs.
The specialization in restaurant bookkeeping can assist in this way by keeping the books in order and assisting the proprietor to be aware of what they represent.
The result is not a bookkeeping owner who is skilled enough to complete every bookkeeping task.
Owners who can take a seat and converse intelligently about their company with the P&L are more likely to succeed.
The aim is financial independence and not More Reports
Restaurants already produce huge quantities of data. A dashboard doesn’t always make sense.
Real value occurs the moment an operator opens an P&L report, and see that there has been a change, and then go through the reports on the cost of prime.
Bookkeeping Chef’s approach combines restaurant bookkeeping automation, weekly reporting, monthly P&Ls, and restaurant-specific financial support to make that possible.
Automate repetitive work. Examine the cost of your prime each week. Be aware of the language used in your P&L.
You don’t have to be an accountant to be an.
It is crucial to know the financials of your establishment before you can become a proprietor.