Restaurant owners open their monthly P&L reports, and look at sales, then scroll down to the bottom and close the report.
Are you familiar with the situation?
If only those two numbers are scrutinized the report’s true worth is not realized.
They shouldn’t be more dependent on an accounting firm. They should be more confident about their numbers. You don’t have to know all accounting rules or do a lot of work in the evenings completing invoices. You must understand the way profit has fluctuated and what’s happened to food and labor costs and what questions should be addressed next week.
This is the premise Bookkeeping Chef’s mission: to automate the bookkeeping tasks that doesn’t require a proprietor’s time, while providing restaurant owners with greater financial transparency that they can actually utilize.
You Should Start By Looking at the Weekly Numbers and Not Only Month-End
Restaurants aren’t operating on a monthly basis. Managers plan their labor for this week. The chef orders food today. Vendors change prices now.
Bookkeeping Chef’s weekly Prime-cost reports are provided alongside the monthly financial statements.
Prime cost is the sum of costs of selling goods and labor. Both of these are major areas that are able to move quickly in restaurants. According to the data published by the Bookkeeping Chef prime costs account for around 60% of sales in restaurants.
Let’s say sales have not changed at all however, the cost of prime increases. The percentage alone does not provide the answer. The owner has an excuse to do some digging.
Did hourly labor rise? Was there overtime? Did the price of food changed? A vendor invoice seemed unusually big? Changes in the sales mix?
It is better to discover the issue sooner rather as opposed to later.
Automate the repetitive Work
Bookkeeping for your own needs doesn’t have to mean manually transferring POS totals into spreadsheets, after the service.
Automating restaurant bookkeeping can help with repetitive financial data movements. The service connects systems including POS as well as QuickBooks, payroll, vendor platforms inventory and recipe management and tools for AP/payment.
The goal is not automation for its own sake.
This is to decrease the time spent on manual data entry. Also, it keeps accounts of financial transactions up to date so that the owners can spend time on reading information rather than gathering it.
This is a completely new way of bookkeeping for restaurants. The software handles more of the mechanical aspects, but the proprietor is still involved in the financial aspects.
Learn to Ask the P&L Better Questions
If you stop thinking of the P&L like a test, it will become less daunting.
Start by looking at the numbers of sales. Look at the cost required to produce those sales. Compare the food and beverage efficiency. Study the cost of labor. Reduce your operating expenses.
The importance of comparing periods.
If profits increased but sales grew, but profit wasn’t, something else between those two lines was changed. What happened when food prices increased? Check sales and staffing to determine if the labor percent has changed. Examine any figures that appear strange, rather than assuming that a restaurant has had a bad week.
Bookkeeping Chef provides monthly P&Ls which are completed within five business days. The owners are able to look over the company’s performance without waiting months before receiving financial statements.
Understanding is more crucial than speed for owners who are looking for solutions to bookkeeping in restaurants.
It’s not required to make everything.
There’s a compromise between outsourcing the entire financial responsibility to another and having your own full-time bookkeeper.
Owners can remain active without having to perform every accounting task.
That might mean making use of automated system connections to keep information flowing through, examining a weekly prime cost report, or studying the monthly P&L and posing questions in the event of an unexpected change.
The specialization in restaurant bookkeeping can assist in this manner by keeping the books in order and helping the owner to comprehend what they mean.
It does not mean the bookkeeper will be in a position to complete all bookkeeping functions.
An owner is someone who can talk to the P&L regarding the company.
The objective is financial freedom, not more reports
Restaurants already generate enormous amounts of information. A different dashboard might not be efficient.
The real value is when an operator looks at a weekly report on the prime cost and notice that something changed, then open the P&L and determine what to do next.
Bookkeeping Chef’s approach combines restaurant bookkeeping automation, weekly reporting, monthly P&Ls, and restaurant-specific financial support to make that possible.
Automate the repetitive work. Review your primary costs every week. Learn to understand the language of your P&L.
There is no need to be an accountant to be an.
It is crucial to comprehend the finances of your restaurant before you can become a proprietor.
