Why Bookkeeping for Restaurants is Essential to a Restaurant’s Success

Restaurants operate on very thin margins. The ability to quickly identify trends and problems is the difference between a restaurant’s success or failure. The bookkeeping for restaurants, financial reports and financial systems and processes are the vehicle that delivers critical knowledge to monitor a restaurant’s trends.

Today, many restaurants suffer from a poor financial reporting and accounting system.  At the heart of a comprehensive well functioning financial reporting and accounting systems is bookkeeping for restaurants.

As an accounting firm that specializes in helping restaurants with their bookkeeping we have gained valuable insight into areas that restaurant proprietors should be concerned with and how to leverage your bookkeeping and financial reporting system to manage your restaurant effectively. When hiring a bookkeeper or bookkeeping service to assist with bookkeeping for restaurants here are key questions to consider:

What is the relevant bookkeeping and accounting experience working with restaurants?

• Does the bookkeeper and accountant understand how to create financial statements that are correct and accurate and includes non-cash expenses such as depreciation?
• Do they break down Prime Cost? Controllable Profit?
• Are the financial reports setup correctly and conform to the National Restaurant Association Uniform System of Accounts?
• What bookkeeping software will be used?
• What security measures are in place to prevent bookkeepers or others with access to the bookkeeping software to prevent individuals from changing and editing or adding entries?

If you are using a bookkeeper or internal staff do you have a system in place to perform monthly reconciliations, financial reports and check for embezzlement and fraud?

These are just a few questions you should consider when considering bookkeeping for restaurants.

Common Bookkeeping Mistakes for Restaurants

• Chart of Accounts are setup incorrectly
• Non-Cash expenses such as depreciation are not included
• Food and beverage inventories are not counted and costed at the end of each month
• Financial entries are posted to wrong accounts or posted inaccurately
• Food and beverage sales are not broken out so you can evaluate sales of categories
• Food and beverage expenses are not broken out and compared to each respectively to accurately determine prime cost

How We Help You with Restaurant Bookkeeping

For our restaurant clients we create a complete turnkey financial accounting and bookkeeping system. How you benefit.

• Comprehensive financial reports that conform to the Uniform System of Accounts for Restaurants provide detailed meaningful information presented in a format that allow you to quickly identify Key Performance Indicators (KPI). Knowing your KPIs allows you to gauge your restaurant’s performance against industry statistics and quickly identify trends. Identifying negative trends allows you to take immediate action and make corrections before becoming major problems.
• Using our system you minimize your risk of fraud and embezzlement. This could prevent your company from tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars from being stolen from you
• Compliance to all tax laws. This saves you money by avoiding late penalties and unnecessary interest charges
• Financial reports help you identify food and alcohol theft
• We provide you with easy to use bookkeeping software with automatic updates and remote access login. You no longer have to go out and purchase software, software upgrades and or worry about installation and compatibility.
• We provide all software training and support. This saves you hours of time trying to learn software on your own or waiting for a support person.
• All software and financial records are hosted on redundant secure services. This gives you 24/7 access to all records and your bookkeeping software with no risk of losing records to virus, malware or failed hardware components
• Team of professionals that include account manager, CPA and payroll person dedicated to managing and supporting your bookkeeping, accounting and payroll management

Our turn-key financial accounting and bookkeeping for restaurants delivers a comprehensive solution to owners and managers that allow them to manage their establishments more effectively and positions them for growth.