Do you have questions about your restaurant's accounting? It's normal: this aspect of management is often intimidating at first sight... Here we've put together the essential points you need to know to understand your accounting, the entries in the chart of accounts and your year-end balance sheet!
Index :
Restaurant accounting at a glance
Do I need an accountant for my restaurant?
Day-to-day restaurant accounting
Accounting for restaurant revenues
Accounting for restaurant expenses
How can accounting help you calculate your restaurant's profitability?
The answer is yes! A restaurant legally exists as a commercial enterprise. Like all companies, it must keep general accounts. These involve complex entries... Be careful not to make a mistake, or you could be held liable!
Only a professional can keep your accounts during the year and at year-end. At the end of the year, he or she will have to produce the various "year-end" documents (see below) with the utmost rigor. It is therefore necessary to call on the services of an accountant to manage your restaurant. This service provider can take a number of forms, some more expensive than others: an accounting firm specializing in the restaurant business, an independent chartered accountant, or an online accounting solution.
When it comes to accounting, a restaurant is required to record all asset movements chronologically. This concerns, on the one hand, expenses (purchases, salaries, rent, licenses, etc.) and, on the other, sales (i.e. revenues, recorded in your cash register software).
Expenditure and income are therefore recorded as they occur. These entries (in the daybook, or rather in a restaurant restaurant accounting) must comply with the restaurant's chart of accounts. This is a long list of virtual accounts that allow you to list your purchases and expenses in the right boxes, in accordance with the general chart of accounts.
In B2B accounting, revenues are broken down by customer. In the restaurant business (and other B2C sectors), this is impossible. Revenues are therefore broken down in the restaurant's chart of accounts by payment method.
To do this, the cash register (or cash register software) has a function that allows you to output the total takings at the end of each service. This is known as the Z-ticket: it generates a note with the total takings by payment method.
Credit card, cash, cheques, luncheon vouchers, dematerialized luncheon vouchers... Each subtotal can be the subject of a separate accounting entry in the right accounting software box. In general, these receipts are recorded in a sub-account of account 7011 (sale of finished products).
Similarly, restaurants are required to keep chronological accounts of their expenses. Periodic accounting entries must be made for food purchases, maintenance products, furniture, uniforms, rent, insurance, salaries, etc...
For food purchases, entries are made in account 601. In general, these accounting entries are quite time-consuming! It takes a lot of self-training to avoid making mistakes. But errors made in good faith are penalized! That's why restaurants often call in a specialized chartered accountant to do their bookkeeping for them.
Another point to bear in mind: for all purchases and expenses, it's important to keep a record! Paper or digital invoices must be filed in order of arrival, to serve as proof in the event of an audit. All these documents must be kept for 10 years. To make the task easier, restaurateurs can use an automated payment management solution, such as Libeo.
The Z ticket is a sort of summary of your cash register activity. It is issued at the end of the shift or day. It is a closing ticket, unlike the X ticket, which can be issued during a shift.
Useful for restaurant accounting, the Z ticket summarizes all your incoming transactions. Your invoicing is broken down by VAT rate, by payment method, by product family... It has an official value: after a concordance check, it is used by the accountant to enter your receipts into your accounting software or platform.
Accounting is not just a legal obligation. It also produces first-rate financial and economic indicators for managing your restaurant. In particular, it shows you how profitable your restaurant is, in relation to certain performance indicators.
These indicators should be monitored regularly to see if all the lights are green. Their evolution over time can help you detect a malfunction and remedy it before it's too late. Among your restaurant's key performance indicators are the following:
One of the most important indicators for a restaurant is the break-even point.
This is the sales figure he absolutely must reach to break even.
If it exceeds this break-even point, it can make a profit.
The break-even point is easy to calculate: all you need are the following values:
Its formula is as follows:
[.is--yellow-highlight]Break-even point = fixed costs / margin on variable costs[.is--yellow-highlight]
Enter the values below to immediately display your break-even point:
Let's take the example of a restaurant with the following values each month:
As it stands, the restaurant is loss-making, but it can know exactly when it will be profitable, thanks to the break-even point.
To do this, we perform an intermediate calculation of the contribution margin:
(Sales - variable costs)/Sales, i.e. :
(50000-35000)/50000 = 0.30 (or 30%)
The break-even point can be calculated:
Fixed costs / contribution margin, i.e. :
18000 / 0,30 = 60000€
The break-even point is €60,000: this is the sales figure the restaurant needs to exceed in order to make a profit.
Every 12 months marks the end of thefinancial year. If it's based on the calendar year, it ends at the end of December. Restaurants, like all companies, must meet certain annual accounting obligations.
At the end of each financial year, each restaurant must take inventory of its non-perishable stock. This enables the tax authorities to detect concealed sales. The inventory can be carried out in-house or by a specialized firm.
Next, the restaurant will draw up its annual accounts based on accounting data for the past year. The documents to be produced may include the following:
Finally, in addition to being mandatory, accounting is a valuable source of information for a restaurant. It enables you to compile the most important indicators for boosting your restaurant's profitability and and make it more profitable !
