It seems useless.
You spend hours upon hours inputting cash sales and credit card payments.
Your books still aren’t accurate.
You have 25+ vendors, weekly payrolls, hourly work schedules, and you can’t track your results.
Should you hire a bookkeeper?
It doesn’t have to be this hard. Some restaurant owners have accurate books without hiring a bookkeeper and in less time than it takes to make a sandwich.
Restaurant Accounting Can Be a Hassle
Not many people enjoy keeping the books of a restaurant. This is no surprise considering the amount of information you need to aggregate to get accurate results.
Even with Quickbooks software, there are still missing pieces.
Should you use an electronic interface with your point of sale system (POS) or should you make a daily sales entry manually?
With Quickbooks you can track results and keep updated records from anywhere, but it doesn’t provide a chart of accounts specific to the restaurant industry, including such things as cost of goods sold for food, liquor, and non-alcoholic beverages.
What happens when some months have five weekends and others have four? How do you compare?
Should you take periodic inventories of food and beverage and report that in Quickbooks?
There is a simple answer to all these questions.
Take Charge
Instead of guessing how to make Quickbooks work for your restaurant business, get all the answers in one place: The Restaurant Operators Complete Guide to Quickbooks, 2nd Edition.
This 298 page book by John Nessel, President of Restaurant Resource Group, will give you the background to understand the purpose and benefits of maintaining accurate accounting.
You will get the specific chart of accounts and detailed entries you should be making for daily sales results, payroll, inventory and all the other complex things involved with running a restaurant.
Most importantly, it tells you what things you shouldn’t bother entering in Quickbooks, so you save time and have clear results.
Do you plan on selling your restaurant someday? Having accurate records may help you get a better price and help the buyer qualify for a larger loan.
Even if that’s not on the horizon, keeping accurate books will save you money on your tax preparer, most of whom interface with Quickbooks.
Give Quickbooks and Mr. Nessel’s guide a try. With these two resources, even a non-accountant should be able to keep accurate books and records in less than 30 minutes a day. Plus, you will have a more accurate picture of your results so you know what areas need improvement, and that’s good for your restaurant!
What accounting setup are you using? Do you already have the Restaurant Operators Complete Guide to Quickbooks? Let us know in the comments!
Disclaimer: At World Insurance Associates, we not only insure over 2,000 restaurant risks, we are also restaurant owner/operators and are currently partners in restaurants in NY, NJ, and CA. In an effort to provide our restaurant and bar owners and managers with the best service, from time to time we will highlight a service or product that has been of use in our restaurant operations. We do not accept any fees or other remuneration for these recommendations. Our only goal is to help you in your daily business responsibilities.
