Timely and accurate restaurant accounting is crucial to ensure you’re always on top of your numbers, so you can remain profitable and invest in business growth. Bookkeepers have been preparing these financial packets for ages, but modern Restaurant Bookkeeping and Accounting Explained bookkeepers like Restaurant Accounting use automated systems. Restaurant Accounting bookkeepers will help your restaurant have accurate, up-to-date financial statements that you can use to manage your business’ growth and cash flow.

Partnering with an accountant can also help ensure your restaurant complies with regulatory requirements, such as taxation and minimize errors to improve the accuracy of your financial reporting. A cash flow statement tracks all the money that comes in and out of your restaurant during a specific period. Your cash flow statement dissects how well your venue generates cash to fund your expenses. Restaurant Accounting’s bookkeeping team strives to handle all the minutia so you can focus on growing your business, achieving your hospitality goals, innovating in the kitchen, hiring, etc. We understand the pressure of running a restaurant business and want to make your financials as easy as possible. Our team conducts multiple reviews on every client’s financials – every month.

Calculating Costs

Accounting is a broader activity that encompasses recording a company financial transaction through bookkeeping as well as other tasks such as preparing tax returns and offering financial planning advice. It’s great that a customer raved about a dish, but what are the numbers telling you? Your POS can give you deep insights on best and worst sellers, menu sales trends over time, and your inventory status. With the ability to slice, dice, and drill into that historical data, you can identify underlying trends in different datasets. For example, cross-reference sales by menu category to determine the best time to run a half-price appetizer promotion. These are considered employee income rather than wages and aren’t included in a restaurant’s revenue.

For restaurants to be profitable, most business operators look for the food costs to be between 28 and 35 percent of the revenue. While no defined average food cost percentage is defined, this range has been a well-known standard https://quickbooks-payroll.org/ for US-based food operators. Put simply, prime costs is the sum of your restaurant’s costs to sell its food, drinks and products—your COGS as mentioned above—plus the labor costs of your salaried and casual staff.

How NEXT helps restaurants thrive

You and your accountant will work on certain bookkeeping and accounting tasks together. You’ll also want to know enough about accounting to monitor financial KPIs that will help you make business decisions on the fly. Account reconciliation confirms that you’ve accounted for all transactions and that the amount of cash in your account is correct. Modern accounting software can easily automate the account reconciliation process.

• Understanding pricing for each category is essential when putting up reports.
• Accountants are more expensive, but they are qualified to do more things for your business, such as prepare financial statements and file taxes.
• Accounting software aggregates your chart of accounts for you and automatically populates reports with the correct information.
• This is because an accountant is both more trained and experienced in fieldwork than a bookkeeper.
• Liabilities are things like vendor bills and restaurant equipment loans.

Software can link to your business bank account, act as accounts payable or receivable, take care of payroll (and payroll taxes) and more. Your cash flow statement lists every dollar that your restaurant earns, such as from serving meals, and every dollar spent, such as on inventory. This financial reporting helps you manage your cash flow, understand problems, find efficiencies and keep an eye on your restaurant’s financial health.

Understand and Track Your Expenses

Outside bookkeeping partners can run regular reports to show how you are doing, where the money is going and if your efforts are paying off–or not. A restaurant profit and loss statement, or P&L, keeps all restaurant accounting information organized in one concise document. There are a few essential bookkeeping processes that are essential to restaurant accounting. While your accountant will likely handle the majority of these processes, it’s important to be aware of them so you can speak the same financial language.

• The cash method would make your restaurant seem profitable while it is actually suffering from losses.
• Bookkeepers are more task-based and manage accounts payable, payroll, and posting journal entries.
• Get in touch with Restaurant Accounting and find out why our accounting system for restaurants is the leading choice for many of America’ss most popular establishments.
• Along with your POS, accounting software helps you keep an eye on your financial performance in real-time.
• Between managing staff, inventory, guests, and your books, there are hardly enough hours in the day.

Bank reconciliation is essential to ensure your bookkeeping records match your bank accounts, payroll liabilities, lines of credit, loans, and credit cards. If you are not using financial reporting for your restaurant, then you are running your business blind. With such tight profit margins in the restaurant industry, it is important to analyze your financial reports on a regular basis.

Restaurant Bookkeeping and Accounting Explained

We are prepared to assist if you require a bookkeeper with comprehensive knowledge of the food industry. A smooth tax payment and proper documentation are ensured by competent restaurant bookkeeping. While accounting for restaurants can be arduous, it doesn’t have to be a daily struggle if you choose the right approaches. Use the accounting records on hand to show how much you earn from food sales, merchandise sales, or catering jobs. Find out how much revenue you make each day and ideally break them further into food and beverage categories. We empower businesses in the restaurant industry to make educated decisions while taking the financial work off their plate.

Accounting must be organized correctly if it is to be profitable as well as enjoyable. Understanding all the nuances of restaurant bookkeeping can help the business prosper and last for many years. Let’s discuss some challenges with bookkeeping in the restaurant industry. Accountants are more expensive, but they are qualified to do more things for your business, such as prepare financial statements and file taxes. They must also keep their certifications current, which means they will be up to date on the latest federal, state and local tax laws that can affect your business.

Handling Accounts Payable

Depending on the type of restaurant you run, though, costs may be higher or lower. To evaluate the costs, divide the staff into groups of kitchen staff or managers to see which group is costing you more. The cost of preparing the item on the menu is divided by the total revenue from the item. Whether running a small bakery or a fine dining restaurant, you need a POS system for cash management, sending or printing receipts, inventory management, order management, and back-office reporting. This is the money that you need to pay to suppliers for the goods and service they provide.