3 Essential Accounting Practices Necessary For A Successful Restaurant
Posted on: 29 July 2019
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If you in the process of opening up your first restaurant or food stand, on top of figuring out all the food that you want to serve and creating the right ambiance, you need to make sure that you also take care of the financial side of your business. You need to stay on top of the financial side of running your restaurant if you want to have a successful venture.
When it comes to successfully running a restaurant from a financial viewpoint, the three most important accounting elements you need to learn about are the sales report, cash flow report, and payroll.
Sales Report
A sales report lets you see how many sales your restaurant make each day. A detailed sales report will do more than that. It will let you see what dishes you sold that day and the quantity of each dish sold. Your sales report may also let you see what times of the day were the busiest for you.
Taken on its own, a sales report is not that important. However, being able to take your daily sales report and turn them into weekly and monthly sales reports will allow you to see how your business is doing. You will be able to see which dishes are selling well and which ones to get off your menu. You will be able to see if you do better during certain days or weeks of each month, and over the long-term, you will be able to compare your year-to-year progress.
Cash Flow Reports
When you are running a restaurant, your cash flow is so important. Your cash flow lets you know what money you must pay your staff with, order food and supplies, and take care of your bills and other expenses. Your cash flow is about the money that you have and can use to make your payments. A cash flow forecast should be pulled at least once a week so you can make smart decisions about how you spend your money.
Payroll
Finally, you need to make sure that your staff is paid correctly and on-time. You are going to have a hard time retaining staff if you don't pay your staff on time, and you can find yourself in trouble with the IRS if you don't withhold the right amounts from your employee's paychecks.
It is extremely important to have a time card system in place for your employees, and to have a formal payroll system set-up.
In order to succeed as a new restaurant, from an accounting perspective, you need to generate daily sales reports. You need to generate at least weekly cash flow reports so you know how you can spend your money. You need to have a formal system set-up for payroll. A business accounting professional can help you with all these tasks and provide you with the information and analysis you need to run a financially successful restaurant.