Some more advice for restaurants in Glasgow

Helping your restaurant business to cut costs and become more efficient through finance and bookkeeping tips.

While a passion for food may be your main reason for opening a restaurant, passion alone won’t keep your business afloat.

Effectively managing your books and keeping on top of your finances is a crucial part of any business, and restaurants are no different. While it may seem like a huge task, bookkeeping for your restaurant doesn’t have to be a pain point when running your business. There are many practices you can implement to make sure your books are kept in good shape, your finances in check and positive momentum in the growth of your company going in the right direction.

Understand your Expenses

The first and most important tip, is a reasonably obvious one. However, it is also one that is easily neglected. Understanding your expenses is essential. Knowing exactly where your money is going and what you have to show for it is crucial when it comes to bookkeeping for restaurants. This information will help you to determine what you need be turning over each month in order to break even or to make a profit. So if you want to get your company finances in order, you need to understand your expenses first and foremost.

Keeping Track of Petty Cash in your Restaurant

Petty cash is easy to lose track of. Especially on a busy Saturday night. Your customers are at the top of your priority list, which is good practice. However, it’s important that any money that leaves the till is noted down and accounted for even when you’re busy. Otherwise you’ll have the horrible task of trying to figure out why your reports don’t add up at the end of the night. And which would you rather be doing.  Spending a few extra seconds here and there during the night to take note or spend a lot longer at the end of the night before you finally get to go home?  Exactly.

Expensive Ingredients VS. Potential Profits

In the restaurant business, most of your profits will inevitably come from food sales. That’s a given. But it’s important to be aware what you’re spending vs what you’re earning back. Especially in this financial climate, with costs of most ingredients increasing continually, it’s easy to lose track of this. Make sure your choice of ingredients and suppliers are the perfect balance of high quality and at the same time profitable. A restaurant is a business after all. Keeping on top of your restaurants bookkeeping will make it far easier to analyse what’s working for you.

Payroll for your Restaurant

When it comes to payroll, its fundamentally important that it is done right. Even if you’ve decided to handle your own bookkeeping in house, it might be worth considering outsourcing your payroll. This way you have one less thing to stress about and you can focus on other areas of your business.

Be Accurate with your Bookkeeping

Most stress and uncertainty is a result of not really knowing what’s going on with your restaurants books. Running a restaurant comes with many important tasks, some more urgent than others. It’s easy to let your bookkeeping fall to the bottom of the to-do list. However, neglected books are the main source of stress when it comes to your finances. Keeping on top of your restaurants bookkeeping will ensure more accurate reports and less discrepancies. This will save you a lot of overwhelm in the long run.

If you do feel overwhelmed at the prospect of staying on top of the bookkeeping for your restaurant, you should consider outsourcing your restaurants bookkeeping. With Momentum Bookkeeping you can rest easy knowing that all your finances are taken care of. Giving you one less thing to worry about. While you may not love bookkeeping, we do. So whether you have a question about one of our bookkeeping services or you want to discuss a tailored service to suit what you need to get on with running your business, our door is always open.

We have over 17 years’ real experience of working with small and medium sized businesses across every industry sector. And while we may be based in Glasgow, we have clients across the country.  Thanks to the marvel of modern technology, we can keep up to date with our clients through zoom, phone, email and scheduled face to face meetings so that they are always being taken care of.

We have extensive experience in all major software platforms, be it Xero, Sage, Quickbooks etc. So if there is a particular piece of software you have used previously, we can continue to use that with you. It is not about us selling a particular package to you. It is finding out what your business needs and building some real momentum for you.

And if what you are using is not right for you, we can take it a step further with a bespoke bookkeeping system designed just for your business. Many of our clients are using our own, bespoke software package which can be completely customised to your needs. We don’t want you to have to work around package constraints.  We want your business to run smoothly so that you can focus on the growth of your company.

We may be based in Glasgow but we have clients across the UK who we keep in regular contact with through zoom, phone, email and scheduled face to face meetings throughout the year to ensure that we are constantly delivering what we promised them.

If that sounds like something you would be interested in then the first step is to get in touch.