How To Master Restaurant Bookkeeping in Five Steps

New and experienced restaurant owners can use it, whether they’re beginners or experts at accounting and bookkeeping. It can also be integrated with payroll companies or QuickBooks for those who need more thorough accounting services. However, if you need in-depth accounting services, you will need to integrate with QuickBooks or choose another restaurant accounting software. With so many different moving parts, handling the bookkeeping for a restaurant can be complicated.

This information is valuable when it comes to making decisions about menu pricing, marketing campaigns, and more. As a small business owner, you’re required to pay quarterly employment taxes. This entails reporting what you’ve withheld from employees’ paychecks for federal income and Social Security / Medicare taxes, and then paying those amounts to the IRS.

How to Find an Accountant for Your Restaurant

You can now customize your FreshBooks experience with a range of business-friendly apps. Take control of your business accounting with the help of these integrations. By following the steps outlined above, you can develop an effective financial strategy for your restaurant and stay on top of your expenses. You can also find specialised hospitality POS systems with features designed to streamline restaurant operations.

• Food cost percentage shows how much of your overall sales are spent on ingredients and food supplies.
• Then you want subaccounts under each of those with the level of detail you desire.
• Some options to consider include the Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRA or Roth IRA.
• There are many software programs available that can make the process easier.
• FreshBooks stays in sync from your desktop to the app, so you can use any device you like and always have access to the latest data.

For example, if your restaurant has $3,000 worth of inventory on hand at the beginning of the week and purchases another $2,000 of food products, you have $5,000 worth of inventory. Bookkeeper requires only basic knowledge of commerce whereas an accountant is a specialized one. Sign up to receive more well-researched small business articles and topics in your inbox, personalized for you. Your breakeven point represents how much revenue you need to earn to cover your expenses. Using words like al dente or flambé comes naturally to you, but accounting terms? There are many resources available online and in your local community.

Master the art of payroll

Keeping track of your financial situation helps you make better financial decisions and future-proof your business. Although there are many options, most restaurant and retail businesses choose the calendar year accounting period. Restaurants usually run seven days a week and might have some days with more sales.

Assets are things you own, like equipment, inventory, and straight cash. Liabilities are things like vendor bills and restaurant equipment loans. Pricing for Restaurant365 is broken down into tiers and starts at $399 per location per month and goes up to $489 per location per month. Both the Core Operations Plan and the Core Accounting Plan are $289 per month and are primarily focused on operating or accounting aspects of the business. The number of accounting periods a restaurant has depends on the type of accounting period it follows. If your restaurant follows the accounting period, which is recommended, you’ll have 13 accounting periods in a year.

On-the-Go Expense Tracking for Restaurant Costs

These KPIs are controllable, but they can also easily get out of hand if not monitored. If you’re monitoring these figures on a weekly basis, you can patch any cost leaks without incurring too many damages. Bookkeepers are more task-based and manage accounts payable, payroll, and posting journal entries.

You should see the information for your QBO account and can change any information through settings. One of the reasons we love connecting to QBO and to any restaurant POS system from Shogo is the steps and amount of time it takes. QBO has worked very well for all Restaurant bookkeeping of our restaurant clients, so we recommend it 100% of the time. You’ll have to fill out a form with all your restaurant’s information including the name, location, and even a store code if you have multiple locations with the same name, like with a franchise.

Restaurant Staff Payroll Management

QuickBooks helps you record miles and get every dollar you deserve, with tips on how to choose the best deduction method for you. Understand how changes to your menu or operations impact your bottom line. Now you can type in profit and loss or find it under the business overview section. You can then upload your invoices to Bill.com to allow your accountant to code them properly. Now that you have Shogo connected to your POS, it’s time to plug it into QuickBooks Online, or your preferred accounting system. So, for this example, we’ll utilize Toast, although the setup process will more than likely be similar or the exact same for the rest of the systems.

Which provides a snapshot of your restaurant’s financial health so you can make informed decisions about pricing and budgeting. It’s an all-in-one accounting solution that manages all your bookkeeping needs, from creating professional invoices, to managing cash flow and tracking time for you and your employees. FreshBooks offers seamless integration options so you can merge your restaurant POS data with your accounting software. Not only will it help you monitor how much revenue is flowing in and out of your business, it could also help your restaurant survive should you ever face an IRS audit. If you aren’t experienced with managing the books, consider buying restaurant bookkeeping software. In addition to measuring cash flow, most software packages can also keep track of inventory, manage payroll, and run sales reports.

According to the National Restaurant Association, there are 14.7 million people in the restaurant industry. Ten percent of the workforce in the United States is made of restaurant employees, most of whom are hourly and part-time. 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. POS technology allows you to see your financial performance in real-time. At any given moment, you peek at your sales-to-labor ratio or determine if sales are meeting historical averages.

Compare the Best Accounting Software for Restaurants

You can also use your revenue reports to show you how to set realistic sales targets and evaluate operations. Accounting software aggregates your chart of accounts for you and automatically populates reports with the correct information. If you’re working with a firm, you can control accounting costs by ensuring that junior accountants handle the menial tasks, and your CPA completes the hard analysis. Pricing for Xero ranges from $12 to $65 per month, and you can try each one with unlimited users free for 30 days. The $12/month plan is called Early and includes 20 invoices and five bill entries; it also reconciles bank transactions and captures bills and receipts. TouchBistro offers multiple monthly plans, with pricing that starts at $50 per month and goes up to $229 per month.

Many restaurant owners now turn to specialized restaurant accounting software to streamline and automate bookkeeping tasks. Whether you handle restaurant bookkeeping yourself or rely on an accountant, adopting good restaurant bookkeeping practices will give you the insights to help your restaurants thrive. Plate IQ is our choice for the best-automated restaurant accounting software because it automates processes for the restaurant owner so they can focus on other tasks.

Restaurant Accounting clients use bill.com, which is a leading provider of accounts payable for companies of all sizes. An automated bill pay system also integrates directly into accounting software, minimizing the amount of data entry. Restaurant companies move quickly, and you need an experienced bookkeeper or accountant to review your books and financial records to make sure that the automated systems haven’t made any errors. There are particular moments when automated systems are likely to introduce mistakes, such as when employee benefits are changed.

It’s an easy-to-use platform that allows you to track invoices, pay bills on time, set up payment reminders and export data into other programs. Plus, the very best POS systems are now integrated with Quickbooks, allowing you to easily track your financials. If you’re not comfortable doing bookkeeping for your restaurant, you might want to hire an accountant that specializes in restaurant accounting services.

Using Bill.com for Restaurant Accounts Payable

“Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization” is used by restaurateurs, investors, and financiers as a proxy for cash flow. EBITDA represents earnings that are a result of operations only, while stripping away the effects of financing, accounting, and capital spending on your restaurant’s earnings. Cost of goods sold is a KPI that indicates how well you’re pricing your products and controlling your inventory.

Additionally, partners and investors expect accrual accounting and financials that are close to GAAP. Restaurant Accounting helps set up connected, automated systems that help do much of this work automatically. But, we go the next step and have our experienced team do several levels of reviews to help catch anything that the automated systems might miss. “Cost of goods sold” refers to the products you buy that make up your product.

When revenue or expenses happen, it’s your bookkeeper’s job to record these into your company’s accounting system. This probably involves categorizing the “transaction” in a way that makes sense, say a payment to your payroll provider as a payroll expense. Unless you’re lucky enough to own space and your own equipment outright, you’ll need to pay for your infrastructure. Utilities, cooking and cooling equipment, insurance and signage are common expenses, but you’ll also need to consider maintenance costs. Remember, servicing your commercial ovens and refrigerators will probably cost more than what you pay for your Frigidaire at home.

Ideally, your accounting software will integrate with your POS system, and you can track multiple locations, if needed, and update the cost of preparing recipes based on daily food prices. Employee scheduling, sales forecasting, and electronic data exchange (EDI) with vendors are also key functionalities. Other components include payroll, automated A/P, and inventory management. With restaurant accounting software, you can create financial statements, like income statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheets.

The next step is to set up your chart of accounts to categorize the money flowing in and out of your business. A standard chart of accounts includes assets, liabilities, expenses, revenue, and owner’s equity. Bookkeeping is only about recording financial transactions whereas accounting involves grouping, summarizing, evaluating and reporting of monetary transactions. Just as there is a right way to do restaurant accounting, there is definitely a wrong way.