Bookkeeper Job Description: Templates for Hiring at Your Business

On the downside, outsourcing accounting for your restaurant could lead to communication lapses, especially if they’re in a different time zone or city. You’ll also give them your financial information, trust their financial decisions, and might have to pay a higher price upfront. Ensure that you keep all https://www.bookstime.com/ receipts and invoices organized and record your transactions accurately. For this step, it can be helpful to hire a bookkeeper to do this for you so you can focus on other parts of your business. Food costs refer to the cost of preparing a menu item divided by the total revenue earned from the item.

• Liabilities are things like vendor bills and restaurant equipment loans.
• If you are not using financial reporting for your restaurant, then you are running your business blind.
• Utilities, cooking and cooling equipment, insurance and signage are common expenses, but you’ll also need to consider maintenance costs.
• With everyone that goes into keeping your books up to speed, it might make sense to hire a qualified and accredited finance professional to help you.
• From sales tax audits to menu engineering to capital structure, Bookkeeping Chef is the ideal tax partner to outsource some of your core accounting and financial management duties.

The first step is to record and keep track of your restaurant’s financial transactions, including expenses, sales, and payments. Make a habit of tracking in real-time any transactions you make and spend time at the end of each day to document them. In summary, bookkeeping is the backbone of financial control and management in the restaurant industry.

Simplified tax accounting

Use this restaurant invoice template to create invoices with ease, saving you time and helping you get paid faster. You must record precise amounts of money for every expense and all revenue. Rounding up or down by a few cents or how to do bookkeeping for a restaurant dollars can add up over the course of a week or month and begin to affect your bottom line. Join over 1 million businesses scanning receipts, creating expense reports, and reclaiming multiple hours every week—with Shoeboxed.

In this guide, we will explore the steps involved in restaurant bookkeeping and highlight the importance of utilizing modern bookkeeping software to streamline the process. Effective bookkeeping is a fundamental aspect of running a successful restaurant. It enables you to maintain accurate financial records, make informed decisions, and ensure compliance with tax regulations. In this article, we will provide a comprehensive guide to mastering restaurant bookkeeping within an integrated, all-in-one restaurant management platform. By following these essential steps, you can optimize your financial management processes and drive long-term success and growth for your restaurants. Restaurant accounting is the organization of financial records so that the owner has a better understanding of the restaurant’s financial position at any given time.

Set up your accounts payable process

However, the 5 simple steps above will put down the foundation for a solid bookkeeping system. As you grow you will have to continually modify your bookkeeping system to meet your needs. When it comes to restaurant accounting, the chart of accounts categorizes the money you spend and receive. The chart of accounts records high-level transactions like revenue, expenses, assets, liabilities, cost of goods sold, and equity. Each of these buckets is further categorized into smaller ones, such as meat costs, alcohol costs, staff wages, marketing, utilities, laundry, etc.

• At first blush, cash-based accounting might seem like the best kind for restaurants.
• To calculate overhead rates, the total fixed costs are divided by total operating hours.
• Keeping on top of your bookkeeping is worth far more than avoiding tax season headaches.
• You can integrate your POS system with the restaurant management software.
• We know this is a lot to track, but once you make it a habit or have someone in charge of your restaurant accounting system, it will be like cooking your favorite recipe.

The same bottle that costs $15 in your local liquor store could cost $30 or $45 when you’re out. Record a separate daily sales entry for each day (not monthly or weekly). With this method, you are mimicking how the cash and credit card deposits hit the restaurant’s bank. Most restaurants accept credit cards and settle the batch on a daily basis. This will result in a credit card deposit or deposits hitting your bank account separately for each batch.

Restaurant accounting methods to choose from

Using a bookkeeping software system will help you categorize and automatically reconcile the transactions imported from your POS system and manage your payroll. Restaurant payroll and taxes are complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. Firstly, business owners are required to accurately report each employee‘s wages to the IRS and withhold an employee’s respective income and FICA taxes.

• If you need to customize the report to get more detailed information you will need to work through the customization with your POS system.
• Have you recently opened a restaurant and hope to make it a successful venture?
• With these restaurant accounting tips, you can begin to organize your accounting records and have a better understanding of your financial picture.
• If your accounts don’t reconcile, it may be a sign that funds are being misused, or worse being stolen.
• Let’s go over the steps you need to take to set up your restaurant accounting, as well as helpful software solutions that will make this job easier.
• Check out all of the available accounting software products available on FreshBooks.

Reconciliation will confirm that you’ve taken all transactions into account and that the balance of your account is accurate. It takes more than a passion for food to run a successful restaurant. Being a great bookkeeper takes an efficient bookkeeping system to keep track of your restaurant’s financial health. It’s important to understand the principles behind the food and beverage industry so that you know which bookkeeping method is most tailored to this particular industry. It’s one of the biggest pain points for restaurant owners, and perhaps one of the most often overlooked.