Restaurant Bank Reconciliation: How to Find Missing Deposits, Duplicate Transactions & Accounting Errors
RESTAURANT ACCOUNTING + RECONCILIATION Restaurant Bank Reconciliation: How to Find Missing Deposits, Duplicate Transactions & Accounting Errors A restaurant bank reconciliation is more than checking whether the balance in QuickBooks matches the balance at the bank. Done correctly, it helps you find missing deposits, duplicate transactions, merchant settlement problems, accounting errors and money that simply […]
Restaurant Sales Tax: How to Record, Reconcile & Avoid Reporting Errors
RESTAURANT ACCOUNTING + TAX CONTROLS Restaurant Sales Tax: How to Record, Reconcile & Avoid Reporting Errors Restaurant sales tax can look simple at the register and become surprisingly messy by the time it reaches your accounting records. Your POS calculates tax. Customers pay it. Deposits hit the bank. QuickBooks records activity. Eventually, the restaurant files […]
Restaurant P&L: How to Read a Restaurant Profit and Loss Statement
RESTAURANT FINANCIAL REPORTING Restaurant Profit and Loss Statement: How to Read Your P&L A restaurant profit and loss statement should tell you much more than whether the business made money last month. A well-structured restaurant P&L can show you where revenue is coming from, what food and beverage are costing you, whether labor is under […]
Restaurant Chart of Accounts: How to Structure It Correctly
RESTAURANT ACCOUNTING + QUICKBOOKS Restaurant Chart of Accounts: How to Structure QuickBooks for a Restaurant A restaurant chart of accounts should do more than organize transactions for tax time. It should tell you where your money came from, where it went and whether the restaurant is actually making money. Unfortunately, many restaurant owners inherit a […]
Restaurant Internal Audit Report: What Should Be Included?
RESTAURANT FINANCIAL AUDITS + CONTROLS Restaurant Internal Audit Report: What It Should Include A restaurant internal audit report should answer one simple question: what is happening inside the business financially, where are the risks, and what should the owner fix first? A good audit is not just a collection of numbers or a long list […]
Restaurant Cash Flow Problems: 9 Reasons You Keep Running Out of Money
RESTAURANT CASH FLOW + FINANCIAL CONTROL Restaurant Cash Flow Problems: 9 Reasons You’re Running Out of Money Your restaurant can be busy, sales can be strong and your P&L can still show a profit while the bank account keeps getting tighter. That happens because profit and cash are not the same thing. Profit measures what […]
Restaurant Inventory Variance: How to Find Where Your Food Cost Is Going
RESTAURANT INVENTORY + COGS Restaurant Inventory Variance: How to Find Where Your Food Cost Is Going Most restaurant owners know their food-cost percentage. Far fewer know why it is what it is. You might look at your monthly numbers and discover that food cost jumped from 28% to 33%. That’s a problem—but the percentage alone […]
Restaurant Prime Cost: What It Is, How to Calculate It & What Your Target Should Be
RESTAURANT PRIME COST + PROFITABILITY Restaurant Prime Cost: Formula, Benchmarks & What It Means If you want to know whether your restaurant’s cost structure is under control, there is one number you should be watching closely: restaurant prime cost. Prime cost combines the two largest controllable operating costs in most restaurants: Cost of Goods Sold […]
Restaurant Profit Margin: What Should a Profitable Restaurant Make?
RESTAURANT PROFITABILITY + MARGINS Restaurant Profit Margin: What Is a Good Margin? A restaurant can be busy every night, have strong sales and still barely make any money. That’s because sales aren’t profit. After food, labor, rent, credit-card processing, insurance, utilities, repairs, software, taxes, marketing and everything else is paid, there may be surprisingly little […]
Restaurant Labor Cost Too High? How to Find Where Payroll Is Eating Your Profit
RESTAURANT LABOR + PAYROLL Restaurant Labor Cost Too High? How to Find Where Payroll Is Eating Your Profit If your restaurant labor cost is too high, cutting employee hours across the board isn’t necessarily the answer. Labor problems usually come from the relationship between staffing, sales and productivity—not simply from how much you’re paying employees. […]