4 Restaurant Bookkeeping Templates to Keep on Top of Your Accounting

This financial reporting helps you manage your cash flow, understand problems, find efficiencies and keep an eye on your restaurant’s financial health. This period of time covers your financial statements and allows you to compare performance over time. Most businesses set up monthly accounting periods, but many restaurants prefer to set up weekly periods to account for the uneven number of weekend days each month. Caryl Ramsey has years of experience assisting in different aspects of bookkeeping, taxes, and customer service.

A chart of accounts makes it easier to locate specific accounts to identify trends, generate accurate financial statements, and make improvements. Restaurant accounting uses data to assess your restaurant’s financial situation and make business decisions. An accountant will create financial statements, build financial reports, and oversee the bookkeeper’s work. Restaurant accounting is the process of tracking and analyzing your restaurant’s financial data. This includes doing bookkeeping, creating financial statements, and recording transactions.

Step 1. Use accounting software

It’s crucial to have an effective accounting system in place for your restaurant to see the success you’re after. Keeping a watchful eye on the restaurant bookkeeping process is especially important for restaurants because of their slim profit margins. Use this step-by-step guide to restaurant accounting to make your bookkeeping tasks simple and accurate. It’s recommended that restaurants use accrual accounting since it provides a more accurate view of your financial situation and tracks accounts payable and accounts receivable.

• And if you hire full-time wait staff, you may also need to furnish benefits.
• Our financial forecasting professionals put the power of your past performance to work for your future analysis.
• Once you have a sales summary you should set up a daily sales journal entry and create a memorized transaction in QuickBooks.
• It’s imperative that your bookkeeper or firm maintain an accurate record of your restaurant’s sales tax obligations, and stay on top of actually paying the sales tax on time.
• This will give you an insight into how much your business costs to run.
• This can be a time-consuming process, but it’s worth doing to ensure that your bookkeeping is accurate.

As a client, you will simply pay a predetermined monthly fee depending on a decided plan that makes the most sense for your business. Cloud bookkeeping software with digital apps help you quickly turn random invoices and sales slips into digital documents ready for processing. Growing independent restaurant chains should be creating innovative cuisine and customer experiences, not building accounting departments. Your bookkeeper must handle and calculate FICA tips, payroll taxes, income tax withholding and the workers’ comp numbers in the restaurant’s general ledger.

Analyze your financial data

Account reconciliation proves that you’ve accounted for all transactions – and that the amount of cash in your checking account is actually correct. Note that modern accounting software can automate account reconciliation. Revenue reports display total expected revenue how to do bookkeeping for a restaurant for a period and how the  revenue is split between food and drink. You can use revenue reports as a financial projection tool to anticipate how much revenue you’ll generate in the future. Your cash flow report (or statement of cash flows) tracks the flow of cash.

Either way, you’ll want to account for your marketing efforts, so you determine how to allocate funds. Successful restaurants can attract and retain customers by developing a marketing plan. Business insurance is vital to your success when opening a restaurant. She has a degree in Journalism and now specialises in writing insightful content for businesses in the hospitality and retail industries. Our team is trained to look for specific errors based on your company’s type. Whether you like to watch, read, or connect, Restaurant365 has a growing menu of information to keep you up-to-date on restaurant news and best practices.