Restaurants face complicated bookkeeping chores. They always have to consider what’s taxed, what’s not taxed, and how tips should be divided. Every day, restaurant owners face at least one minor crisis, even without the perils of bookkeeping. However, bookkeeping is essential to any business, especially one as unpredictable as a restaurant. With that in mind, here are a few bookkeeping tips to help you keep your books balanced with as little sweat as possible.
1. Automate
When you are handling deliveries, catering orders, a busy dining room, and all the corresponding mess behind the scenes, it’s easy to forget about a bill. But as a restaurant owner, you deal with a lot of different vendors, so it’s essential to have a good system in place. Almost all bookkeeping software provides some automated functions. The best, like QuickBooks, provide so many automated processes, all you have to do is double check the numbers. Imagine never having to send an invoice ever again!
Automated invoicing is just one function that QuickBooks offers. QuickBooks can provide reports for essentially any part of your business, which means you have more time to make money rather than track it. You can automate bill pay features, employee pay, and nearly every other time-consuming task that has ever interrupted your work day. If used properly, QuickBooks can perform nearly as many functions as a part-time bookkeeping employee. The designers update the program frequently, always automating new features and providing more time-saving solutions.
While it unnerves some business owners to trust so many tasks to a software program, you can easily see and adjust how QuickBooks handles your bookkeeping. Unlike a human employee, QuickBooks always keeps records of its actions. Once you adjust a command, you can rely on the system to follow the new protocol.
2. Break Up Your Schedule
Most business owners only examine their finances once a week, or even once a month. Checking twice as often can cut down on the bulk of projects you must face at a time. It’s a good idea to break up necessary bookkeeping jobs and assign them to different days, weeks, or even months, depending on the kind of tasks in question. It’s a good idea to balance your books every day. This is particularly true for restaurants with tip systems. Since that income changes from day to day, it’s crucial to record your employees’ income from tips before the information gets buried in the following days.
3. Ask for Help
No one is perfect, and sometimes we all need help. This is especially true when you’re working with new financial software or using software to perform a new function. Fortunately, there is plenty of help to go around! QuickBooks provides help for its users, but there is usually a fee. QuickBooks typically sells their assistance and training services in a package with other features you may or may not need. However, if you hire a QuickBooks-verified third-party company, you will have access to tutors who know QuickBooksbackwards and forward. They have the skills to help you manage software in real-world applications.
QuickBooks help from sources like Fourlane provides the best of both worlds, often at a cheaper rate than official QuickBooks aid. You will have access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Don’t hesitate to look for QuickBooks help or QuickBooks training. As helpful as the software can be, it’s only useful so long as you know how to use it.
By handing over as many responsibilities as you can to a trusted program, dividing bookkeeping into manageable bites, and asking for help when you need it, you can reclaim hours from your bookkeeping chores. Restaurants are busy places, after all, and you only have so many hours in a day.
