You love cooking, managing your dining room, and building customer loyalty, but when it comes to accounting, it's a different story? Don't stress: when well structured, accounting can become a real asset for your restaurant. It not only helps you understand your margins, but also optimize your costs and manage your profitability on a daily basis.
With the right tools and a few simple habits, you can avoid costly mistakes and make the right decisions for your establishment, without spending your evenings juggling numbers. Here is a practical, concrete guide that can be directly applied to your restaurant.
Today, the restaurant market has undergone profound changes: according to Cerfrance, nearly two out of five establishments are now fast food outlets, and delivery accounts for €7 billion in revenue. In this context, a structured and tailored chart of accounts, capable of breaking down your sales and purchases by category and channel, is essential.
This gives you an accurate picture of your performance and allows you to react quickly if an expense item becomes too burdensome.
Your cash register is the heart of your accounting system. Start by using certified cash register software that can track all your transactions. Then get into the habit of closing your cash register every day by recording sales, cancellations, and discounts, while analyzing any discrepancies.
Finally, remember to reconcile your receipts regularly, whether they come from cash, cards, meal vouchers, or online orders. By combining these simple habits, you will not only have reliable accounting, but you will also reduce stress at the end of each month.
Beyond a structured accounting plan and a secure cash register, it is essential to track your performance on a daily basis. To do this, there is nothing better than dashboards. These allow you to view your sales by category, material costs, payroll, and even turnover by department.
Your accounting then becomes a real management tool, rather than a simple administrative obligation.
👉 To go further: NF525 or LNE: which certification for your cash register?
The first mistake to avoid in your restaurant is applying the wrong VAT rate ( dine-in, takeout, beverages). A simple mix-up can not only lead to a tax adjustment, but also reduce your margin.
The solution is simple: set the different rates correctly in your POS software so that they are automatically applied to each sale. This limits the risk of errors and saves you valuable time every day.
A small daily discrepancy can quickly add up: €10 unaccounted for per day = €300 per month. To avoid this type of error, it is essential to check and deal with any discrepancies as soon as you notice them. By being vigilant on a daily basis, you can keep your accounts under control and work with peace of mind, without any unpleasant surprises at the end of the month.
If your purchases are not properly broken down, i.e., clearly and thoroughly categorized and classified, you will quickly lose visibility on your margins and costs.
To calculate accurate material costs, it is essential to keep your technical data sheets up to date, track losses, andanalyze discounts granted or applied. Without this rigorous breakdown, a simple overdose of a few grams per dish can result in thousands of dollars in losses over the course of a year.
The figures collected via your dashboards are not only useful once the financial year has ended. On the contrary. Thanks to regular monitoring, you can quickly detect signs such as an increase in material costs, a rise in payroll costs, or a drop in the margin on a popular dish, and thus react in time to correct your management and protect the profitability of your restaurant.
Food cost, or material cost, corresponds to the portion of revenue spent on purchasing the ingredients needed to prepare dishes.
Ideally, it should be between 28% and 32%. To control it:
The profit margin is a key indicator for measuring the profitability of your restaurant. It represents the portion of revenue that remains after covering the cost of raw materials. To calculate it:
Margin rate (%) = ([Revenue−Cost of materials]/Revenue)*100
The conversion rate measures the proportion of visitors or contacts who make a purchase. This is particularly useful if you offer a delivery service, click-and-collect, or even if you want to analyze foot traffic in your store. It is calculated as follows:
Conversion rate (%) = (Number of customers who made a purchase/Total number of visitors or contacts)*100
By regularly monitoring these two ratios, you can identify which dishes are the most profitable and adjust your menus, promotions, and services accordingly.
👉 To go further: Fast food: 7 mistakes to avoid in order to remain profitable
The break-even point is the point at which your restaurant covers all of its fixed costs. In other words, it is the number of covers or orders that must be achieved in order to break even.
Many restaurant owners neglect this calculation and navigate "by sight," when this figure allows you to quickly see whether your business is profitable and adjust schedules, prices, or promotions.
To effectively manage your restaurant on a daily basis, certain key performance indicators (KPIs) deserve special attention. These include:
The sector has never been under so much pressure: according to the Groupement des Hôtelleries et Restaurations de France (GHR), restaurant businesses are facing declining profitability and constantly rising costs. Keeping track of your financial ratios is therefore no longer just a good habit, it has become essential in order to stay on course, anticipate margin declines, and react quickly.
Not all establishments operate in the same way, and your needs will vary depending on your model.
Automation means ensuring that your sales, receipts, and purchases are automatically transferred between your various systems, without manual entry.
Ideally, your sales, receipts, and purchases should be synchronized directly with your accounting system. This saves time on administrative tasks, allows you to react quickly in the event of discrepancies, and provides you with reliable data to manage your restaurant at all times.
Between GDPR obligations and tax audits, it is essential tosecure your data. To do so, consider:
You can choose to manage your accounting internally or outsource certain tasks, such as auditing, annual financial statements, or tax returns.
Outsourcing can save you time and ensure regulatory compliance, while in-house management gives you direct control over every operation. The important thing is to stay on top of your figures and always know exactly where your money is going.
👉 To go further: Why integrating a 360 ecosystem improves restaurant profitability
In the restaurant industry, accounting is not only a legal requirement, but also a valuable management tool. Structuring your accounts, identifying and correcting discrepancies, controlling your costs, and automating your cash flow are all initiatives that will enable you to make quick and effective decisions to protect your margins and secure the future of your business.
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Want to simplify your restaurant's accounting? Innovorder's digital solutions automate your cash flow, synchronize your sales, receipts, and purchases, and provide you with clear dashboards so you can manage your business with complete peace of mind.
