How to Make an Accounting Software Resourceful to your Restaurant Business?

Running a restaurant business is all about hard work. With good interior designs, mouthwatering food, well-trained, and friendly staff, it becomes fairly easy to run a profitable business. To improve profitability, opt for accounting software to stay on top of your restaurant books.

With the right accounting software, gain useful insights into the financial health of your restaurant business. It further helps you to make informed decisions.

However, choosing the right platform is not a cakewalk as there are a plethora of restaurant accounting software offering multiple features. Apparently, everything relies on your business needs; that’s the reason today we’ll talk about some common features that every restaurateur should look for in software:

Essential Features of a Restaurant Accounting Software

Ease of access to data

Data accessibility 24/7 is critical for every restaurant business so that they keep updating every piece of bill instantly. This will stop procrastination of adding bills to the books and you can stay on top of your accounting.

Comprehensive POS amalgamation

Point-of-sale software acts as a cash register, convey orders to the kitchen, monitors costs and tracks inventory. Therefore, the integration of POS with your existing accounting software is crucial to automate maximum tasks from day-to-day upgradation of data to summary of sales inventory and a lot more.

Business programs & bank account connections under one roof

This may sound relaxing to you, but it’s not necessary that every restaurant accounting software will provide you this, yet it should be your top priority. This feature will help you eliminate the manual input of financial information from several sources or transfer the data from one system to another. More so, you can also alleviate the burden of tracking down data entry errors, which is no one’s favorite job.

Managing taxes becomes a cakewalk

Taxes can be devastating as hell if you don’t keep your numbers organized. Accounting for restaurants is not easy at any cost, however, it is not beyond your control. You can manage your books well with the right software that can also help you generate tax forms during the tax season, making the process more simpler. You can save tons of time if you find the software that tracks payments and generates 1099s for the vendors.

Software with a cloud-based approach

It is important to choose the accounting platform that is cloud-based as it offers immense benefits like tracking your expenses, generating bills, accessing data anytime, monitoring sales reports, etc., with just an internet connection.

Different accounting software options available

Here’s a curated list of the leading restaurant accounting software that will help you pick the right accounting software for your restaurant business:

1. Restaurant 365
Restaurant 365 is the leading player in the market that offers a wide range of accounting services such as payroll and other operations. However, Restaurant 365 doesn’t has its own payroll system and seeks the help of third-party vendors like ADP.

2. QuickBooks Desktop
This is robust accounting software that integrates with its own POS system with additional charges applied. But, this platform doesn’t give you the accessibility of 24/7 from any other device.

3. QuickBooks Online
For this accounting software, you don’t have to be a pro in accounting; you can say it is created for non-accountants. This is for restaurateurs who want to manage their accounting books on their own. The unfortunate downside of this software is that it is not meant for the restaurant business specifically, so you have to spend some more time in setting the software.

Related: Comparison of Top 5 Restaurant Accounting Software  

4. Restaurant Solutions
RSI is an ideal restaurant accounting software for those who are not only looking for bookkeeping solutions but also need a company that will teach them how to manage their books. This platform connects the owner with industry-specific accountants and tax preparers. And there’s only one con of this platform that it integrates with only 14 POS systems, which comparatively is too less.

5. Xero
Though Xero entered the market very late as compared to its competitors but it’s a very good alternative to QuickBooks. You can utilize this restaurant accounting software if you have less than 10 employees. The downside of it is similar to QuickBooks online that you need to spend some time customizing it for your restaurant business.

How you can harness the value of the chosen software effectively?

Uninterrupted reporting and cash flow management

Cash flow is undoubtedly an integral part of any business and restaurants are not any exceptions in this regards. When you have full-featured accounting software, it is important that it monitors cash inflow and outflow in terms of accounts payable and receivable.

You should also utilize the platform for generating financial reports that will help you to make better decisions to drive growth in your restaurant business. You can also utilize the tool for doing payroll for restaurants, reconciling statements, manage assets, and a lot more.

Day-to-day sales report monitoring

A daily sales report is a great source to gather useful information about your restaurant business on a regular basis. These reports help you analyze the performance of your restaurant every day. You can utilize the accounting software to monitor your daily sales reports and match it with the POS system, leading to minimal errors in the numbers.

Perfect statement evaluation of profit and loss

Your chosen accounting software can help you generate profit and loss statement that reflects the sales and costs, and reconcile items like food costs, labor costs, operating costs, etc. The bottom line is that you can utilize this report to review your financial performance over a period of time. It is a tool for driving informed business decisions.

Valuable financial forecast practicing

As the name suggests, the financial forecast gives you an estimation of how much returns you’ll generate in the future and the restaurant accounting software can provide you this forecast by taking into account your gross profit, total revenue, and operating profit percentage. This will show you how much you’re spending on necessary or unnecessary things.

Generation of the worksheet for break-even analysis

Break-even point is one of the first numbers that your software should be able to calculate. This number highlights how many sales you must have in order to earn back an investment. The number can be further utilized to forecast how much time it will take to get the hard-earned money back. This is important for your restaurant if you’re looking for new investors in the initial phase of your business.

Managing schedules of employees

This task is as painful as entering an over-crowded and understaffed restaurant. Making schedules is a crucial restaurant management task that cannot be neglected under any circumstance. Your accounting software should be capable of integrating with different employee schedule apps, saving you time and money. And many of the apps like QuickBooks offer this advantage to restaurateurs.

Be at peace & serve the delicacies to the customers

Now that you’ve hand-picked from the choices of accounting software for your restaurant business, stay stress-free and feed your customers with great passion. Leave your accounting burden on the software and stay ahead of your competitors! Get in touch Cogneesol at [email protected] or give us a call at +1 833-313-31343.