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Simplifying Restaurant Accounting: A Guide to Cloud Kitchen Financial Management

Profit Jets offers superior quality accounting and bookkeeping services to restaurants and cloud kitchen businesses at an affordable rate.

Effective accounting for restaurants is an essential element for running your restaurant or cloud kitchen business successfully. You must incorporate a reliable bookkeeping method in place to maintain the records of all financial transactions to understand what is involved. Following solid accounting practices will allow you to go into the details of every financial transaction and keep a watchful eye on the financial aspect of your business and grow your profitability accordingly.

As an owner of a restaurant or a cloud kitchen, your ultimate goal must have been to serve delicious meals on the plate of your customers and create a great environment for food connoisseurs. And you may not be very keen on managing accounting all by yourself. After all, accounting and bookkeeping do not fall under your core capabilities. And managing all your finances and balancing your books may sometimes feel too overwhelming. In this case, the best thing you can do is outsource the accounting and bookkeeping jobs to a reliable partner who would do the job on your behalf while also offering you the best consultation. 

What is Accounting for Restaurants and Cloud Kitchen?

Accounting for restaurants refers to the systematic and comprehensive process of measuring, analyzing, and reporting financial information related to a restaurant’s operations. It involves the use of accounting principles and methods to record, classify, and summarize financial transactions to generate financial statements and reports. These reports provide information on the restaurant’s financial position, performance, and cash flow, and are used by the management to make informed business decisions, monitor financial health, and meet regulatory requirements. Accounting for restaurants is a broader term than bookkeeping, as it includes not only the recording of financial transactions but also the interpretation and analysis of financial data.

What Is Bookkeeping For Restaurants?

Bookkeeping for restaurants refers to the process of recording, classifying and organizing financial transactions related to a restaurant’s operations in an orderly manner. This includes tracking income, expenses, sales, purchases, and payments. The goal of bookkeeping is to accurately record financial data and provide up-to-date information to help the business make informed decisions, meet tax obligations and ensure financial stability.

How To Do Bookkeeping For A Restaurant?

Accounting for restaurants can be a complex practice. Effective accounting for restaurants is one of the most important aspects of running a restaurant successfully. Keeping a watchful eye on the bookkeeping process is important and unique. It is a time-consuming and accuracy-dependent task. Maintaining good books can reap the many benefits of finance-driven business decisions in this hospitality sector. Let us discuss the steps to follow while bookkeeping for restaurants and/or cloud kitchen.

Step 1
Record Sales

Recording sales day to day will manage your bookkeeping with precision. Looking at sales daily will help you to provide a clear picture of the credibility of your business. The daily sales should be entered into your accounting system. Every point-of-sale system has different capabilities, so you should familiarize yourself with your system to know what every number on the Report represents. 

It is easy to keep track of several items in your sales report separately. For instance, you can keep track of sales of beverages and food separately. It is important to know the total cash and total sales made by credit cards. 

Step 2
Pay Expenses

Restaurant businesses are a team effort between restaurants and various vendors. There are vendors from whom you buy your ingredients and those who wash all your linens. Paying the bills keeps your business and your vendors happy. Restaurant managers find it helpful to have a fixed day of the week when they clear their accounts payable so everything on their part gets completed on time. 

Your accounting system should be flexible so that you can enter bills and pay them systematically. Reconcile every bill before you put them up in your accounting system. Each purchase order should match the receiving order. Ensure that the amount you have been invoicing matches the items on the purchase and receiving the order. 

Step 3
Manage The Payroll

Paying them for their hard work is crucial to keeping a team happy. Payroll is the process of calculating & distributing paychecks to your employees. Every employee at the restaurant can have different pay and hours of service, depending on their experience & tenure, role, or whether they’re assigned at the front or back, at the management level. You may hire some who make an hourly wage and some who are on a salary. Moreover, when running the payroll, you need to pay attention to the taxes required for each employee. 

Many restaurant managers find this challenging and challenging, as various factors are involved, and a miscalculated paycheck can lead to happy employees, which is bad for business. Nowadays, many restaurants are opting to outsource their payroll. But if you want to do it all by yourself, pay attention to every little detail and invest in software that will make clearing pay more streamlined.

Step 4
Reconcile The Accounts

Reconciliation means looking at two sets of balances and ensuring they match. Reconciling accounts is important because it can help you see any errors such as lost checks, cash variances, incorrect entries or deposits, or any accounting errors you may have made during the entry. The accounts can be reconciled by looking at all the financial statements. Compare these with the receipts of credit cards, bank statements, and other financial transactions that you made. If the records match, that means your accounts are reconciled, but if not, then you may have to do some digging.

Step 5
Master Financial Reporting

Financial reports tell you where your business stands, and the records will tell you about your restaurant business.

Here are some key reports you should run weekly to understand the finances better. 

How Can You Do Bookkeeping For A Restaurant?

You must set up your books to run your restaurant smoothly. It is advised to choose an accounting system that can help you eliminate the difficulty with restaurant accounting and which can help you manage your food costs easily. The accounting systems include financial software and point-of-sale systems to aid you in organizing inventory counts & help you to execute transactions quickly & efficiently.

The Ideal bookkeeper

If you own a restaurant, you know the challenges of running a restaurant, such as staffing, inventory management, and controlling the cost of goods. So it is necessary to find a bookkeeper who understands the complexity of the food & beverage industry. A person who knows both front-of-the-house operations and back-of-the-house management will be suitable for maintaining the books.

Setting The Chart of Accounts

The Chart of Accounts will allow you to categorize the money flowing in and out of your hospitality business. A standard chart of accounts includes the proprietor's assets, liabilities, expenses, revenue, and equity. The chart can be further broken down into sub-accounts such as inventory, sales & marketing. It is important to decide the metrics you want to monitor while setting up your chart of Accounts.

An Accounting Software

Choosing Accounting Software to streamline the data entry, create customized invoices, track revenue, and review the cash flow is equally crucial. The bookkeeping software for restaurants should provide robust reporting features and be easy to use. The software should be flexible, allowing you to access data anytime, anywhere.

Choose a Point of Sale System

Whether running a small dining place or a fine restaurant, you would need the help of a POS system. The POS system is for cash management, sending or printing receipts, inventory management, and restaurant back-office reporting. You should consider a system that is easy to use for your employees and valued customers and seamlessly ties in with your software.

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