The prospect of running a restaurant can be very exciting. However, as many managers tend to realize, it also comes with an endless to-do list. There are vital tasks you have to perform every day to ensure your business remains afloat. One of such tasks is bookkeeping and balancing sheets and other accounting duties. At the end of the week, these tasks can become quite overwhelming. Hence, restaurant accounting software exists to help you discharge such calculations easily and overcome human errors.
It is necessary to maintain a firm grip on your finances with you intend to remain successful in this competitive restaurant industry. A badly-managed account is perhaps one of the primary reasons why many restaurants go out of business. Hence, a restaurant accounting software exists to help with cash flow management due to the razor-thin margins in the restaurant industry. Also, you cannot adequately boost your revenue if you can’t manage cash flow and control operational costs.
Hence, you’ll definitely need a helping hand to discharge some of these complex tasks. Sure your restaurant POS system performs a sizable portion of these duties. However, it takes a truly robust accounting software for restaurants to make significant differences.
Therefore, we usually recommend that you think about your restaurant account system before opening your restaurant.
What You’ll Need in a Restaurant Accounting Software
Irrespective the specific accounting needs of your restaurant, we’ll need your software that is:
- Accurate - This gives you confidence as you make business decisions based on information derived from your restaurant accounting software.
- Online - Your access to the system isn’t restricted. Irrespective of your location, the time or which device you try to use to access the software.
- Easy to use - You don’t have to waste any time trying to familiarize yourself with the interface of your account software.
- Flexible - You can confidently deploy it knowing that it is capable of coping with the challenges faced in your restaurant.
Below we’ve outlined five tips to help our readers grasp the basics of restaurant accounts in an attempt to help you make the most of your restaurant accounting software.
Five tips for Your Restaurant Accounting Software
You can view the following as management tips to help you reach the highest potential of the accounting software for restaurant businesses. There are five in number and you can use each depending on the relevance to your software and the issues you’re facing in the accounting department of your business.
Get a Flexible Back-end System
If you’re in the restaurant business, you already know that you do a lot of your business outside the usual working hours. Hence, most restaurants find holidays, weekends, lunchtimes and evenings very busy. This irregularity has affected your payroll. Therefore, most restaurants require a solution that’s capable of handling.
Replacements and Open Shifts
How often do you have staff regularly canceling shifts? Or maybe it’s you find that you often need immediate help with staff replacement. You don’t have to repeat the ring around again. What you need is a system that provides your entire workforce or selected staff open shifts.
Employee Tips
Tipping serving staff a percentage of the total bill is a norm in many countries. At times, the tip is a discretionary payment added to the bill before customers receive it. Other times, the serving staff receives it in cash. It’s your responsibility to consider how you’ll handle tips in your restaurant. However, the laws in your country may determine how you address this topic.
Often, many restaurants share all tips among the entire staff so that everyone gets their fair share. You might also choose to implement this approach. However, you need to remember to first talk to your account about it.
Staff Turnover
It’s not every restaurant employee that has plans to build a career in the restaurant industry. Hence, you’ll find that a percentage of your staff will only work for some time before moving on to other pursuits. Typically, the restaurant business registers a high turnover of staff.
Therefore, it’s ideal to have a payroll system that you can use easily to set up new staff and eliminate old staff. It’s essential your payroll is always up-to-date. Thus, the need for a restaurant accounting software that can help you account for the fast-changing labor force landscape.
Maintain a Competitive Price
Many consider it a balancing act when pricing their menu. And we don’t disagree with this. Because you have to account for the cost of many contributing facts such as overheads and ingredients. Also, there is the local restaurant down the road that you have to compete with on price.
Generally, it’s acceptable to reduce the prices of some items on your menu purposefully to attract new guests and get older customers more excited about your restaurant. Such measures are necessary in business if you will attain the long term goal of customer retention and profitability.
However, this approach is entirely different for the case where you end up setting your pricing too low because you don’t know the actual costs of the individual ingredients. Hence, your restaurant accounting software should facilitate your access to the individual costs of items that make up your menu. You can estimate meal prices by creating reports daily or weekly.
With the necessary numbers, you can be more confident in your pricing decisions. Because you’ll compare these reports with the industry standards and check out your competitors too.
Use a POS System that Supports Your Restaurant Accounting System
Usually, restaurants receive pay from guests in two fundamental ways. These two ways are credit or debit card payments or cash. A good restaurant POS system access a robust system for accepting multiple types of payments. Hence, whether your diners choose to pay by mobile cashless methods such as Amazon Pay, Android Pay or Apple Pay, you should be in a position to accept these payments.
That’s why the right POS solution can be instrumental in order management and boosting revenue. Imagine all the revenue you’ll lose every time you reject payment because your system doesn’t support a particular mode of payment. You will be capable of daily updating the predictions of your cash flow. Also, your staff will have an easier time reconciling your finances if you can integrate the right POS system with your restaurant accounting software.
Employ Inventory Management to Prevent Waste
You won’t find a lot of businesses where all the inventory is consumed within the premises of the business. Typically, your customers don’t take with them anything they pay you for. Hence, to say it’s challenging managing the food and drink stock of your restaurant is an understatement. Most of the stock items are perishable and you don’t want to hold them too long.
On the other hand, you also don’t want to run into shortages, especially at peak hours. Therefore, you need a system that can take control of inventory management for your restaurant. This is another challenge that restaurant accounting software can help. Here you will get detailed reports of past revenue. Hence you know the peak hours and when to increase or decrease stock intake.
Account For All Receipts
Recording keeping is essential for success in business. Therefore you need to ensure you keep a record of all the things you buy and pay for when running your business. THerse business-related purchases and expenses can either be stored in the cloud or in a safe place with your business premises.
Nevertheless, your restaurant accounting exists to help you get easy access to these records. Therefore you want to ensure you keep your system in the loop and key in all expenses such as the extra bottles you drink you bought for closing-time coffees.
Final Thoughts
There is no denying that you need the right restaurant accounting software if your business has to flourish to the heights you envisioned. Therefore, you don’t just need to survive, rather, you have to thrive. ANd this is possible when you take full responsibility for the financial wellbeing of your business. You might have resolved your credit card processing with the right POS system but you can’t dispense of the right restaurant accounting system.
