By performing these tasks, restaurant accountants or bookkeepers should be able to offer advice on reducing food and overhead costs so that the restaurant can make the most out of its profit margin. Another benefit is that it allows you to make informed decisions about your business. Good bookkeeping gives you a clear picture of your restaurant’s finances, so you can see where you’re making money and where you’re spending too much.

• Now make sure to reconcile all bank accounts, merchant clearing accounts, credit cards, loans, lines of credit, and payroll liabilities every single month.
• A bookkeeping template can be a helpful tool for restaurant owners and managers who want to keep track of their accounting and stay on top of their restaurant’s financial performance.
• A locked down accounts payable process allows you to pay your bills on time and without error, so that your inventory shipments remain on schedule.
• It helps assess the overall dining experience and identify areas for improvement.
• 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.
• So know the rules, and create and distribute a process that is transparent and easy to understand and follow for all staff members.

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. Opting for four and five-week periods, totaling 13 restaurant bookkeeping accounting periods gives you a more accurate comparison. The next restaurant accounting area you’ll need to pay attention to is the expenses. Tracking expenses monthly and even weekly helps you understand how you can improve and cut down spending.

Low Time Commitment

Restaurant bookkeeping is the process of tracking your restaurant’s income and expenses. This includes recording sales, documenting purchases, tracking employee hours, and more. Understanding your restaurant’s financial performance with a P&L statement is essential when optimising your restaurant’s operating expenses, but this isn’t the only benefit of keeping an accurate P&L.

• Consider software that has specific functionality for your restaurants and integrates with your restaurant management system.
• For restaurants to be profitable, most business operators look for the food costs to be between 28 and 35 percent of the revenue.
• Every restaurant needs a set of reports for the daily, weekly, monthly, and annual monitoring of the financial health of the business.
• Paying your restaurant staff, including front-of-office staff and kitchen crew, is part of your labor costs.
• In this article, we will provide a comprehensive guide to mastering restaurant bookkeeping within an integrated, all-in-one restaurant management platform.
• It can also be helpful to set up a monthly or quarterly review schedule.

If you want to automate all the above steps to create a daily sales journal in QBO we highly recommend taking a look at Shogo. We have been using Shogo for years to automatically create the daily sales journal from various restaurant POS systems to QBO. Payroll covers everything from your staff’s salaries, through to their benefits like annual leave, insurance, and federal and state taxes. And importantly, it provides significant ratios analysis that tells you how the company is doing. Depending on the level of detail put into creating the P&L will determine the value obtained from it.