The Best Accounting Software Services for Restaurants in 2025

This way, you properly time your inventory purchases and buy the ingredients likeliest to lead to higher profits. Profitjets utilizes cutting-edge cloud-based accounting software specifically designed for the restaurant industry. These tools automate many tasks, such as data entry and bank feeds, minimizing errors and saving you valuable time. Additionally, the cloud-based nature of these systems allows for real-time access to your financial data from anywhere, anytime. Restaurant-specific payroll processing software offers a range of features designed to streamline payroll operations and ensure compliance with industry-specific regulations. These platforms are equipped to handle the unique aspects of restaurant payroll, including tip reporting and distribution, overtime calculations for non-exempt employees, and adherence to labor laws.

What Is Restaurant Accounting?

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. Although some people may use it interchangeably, restaurant accounting and bookkeeping are different. So it’s understandable if ‘the other stuff’ in the business—like accounting and bookkeeping—doesn’t get you as motivated as your big passion. When your chart of accounts is set up in this manner all you have to do is modify your profit and loss with the correct settings.

This way, you get a full picture of your business costs right after you incur them. It helps assess the efficiency of food purchasing, inventory management, portion control, and pricing strategies. By tracking food cost percentages regularly, restaurants can identify potential wastage restaurant bookkeeping or overpricing issues affecting profitability.

Restaurants use accounting software’s automatic expense tracking features to collect and store expense information. Restaurant team members can also snap photos of receipts, bills and other documents to automatically capture and upload key expense data. Using employee time-tracking tools and delegating expense review and approval to one team member also helps restaurants track expenses. When you’re assessing your financial picture, it’s important to see all your incoming and outgoing cash.

Food sales

We’re going to assume you’re not an accountant (if you are, you’re probably not reading this article), and so we’re going to tell you some common mistakes to avoid, too. Your profit is the money that’s left over after you’ve accounted for your COGs, labor, rent, equipment, utilities and all other operating expenses. Prime costs account for all the costs required to produce and distribute your product. For every dollar that comes in, your prime cost is the amount of that dollar that goes to people (your staff) and product (your menu items).

So, for this example, we’ll utilize Toast, although the setup process will more than likely be similar or the exact same for the rest of the systems. With Shogo, if there are any errors, it will hold back the journal entry until you update the accounting mapping. One of the first things you must figure out is how to record your sales properly. For example, if your restaurant has $3,000 worth of inventory on hand at the beginning of the week and purchases another $2,000 of food products, you have $5,000 worth of inventory.

Why choose Xeinadin for restaurant accounting?

• One of my favorite features of Restaurant365 is its integrated accounting system.
• Long gone are the days when manually recording your financial data was feasible.
• Running a restaurant is expensive, and in your earliest days, you might be strapped for cash.
• The company, founded in London over 30 years ago, now boasts offices in London, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and Dubai, and works with clients across the US, UK, Europe, Middle East, and Far East.

This lag can be frustrating, especially during busy periods when quick access to data is crucial. The platform was a bit overwhelming due to its extensive features and settings. An intuitive onboarding process could make a big difference in quickly getting staff who are new to restaurant management systems up to speed. Operating expense accounts capture costs necessary for day-to-day operations but not directly tied to goods sold.

Luke O’Neill writes for growing businesses in fintech, legal SaaS, and education. He owns Genuine Communications, which helps CMOs, founders, and marketing teams to build brands and attract customers. While the hospitality sector reopens across North America, owners and operators face a whole new set of challenges.

How To Master Restaurant Bookkeeping in Five Steps

When it comes to managing your books and records, some POS systems allow you to track inventory counts, labor costs, and methods of payment as well as run sales reports. The best accounting software for restaurants includes tools for snapping photos of bills, receipts and other payments to upload them as expenses. These tools should automatically capture the key data from these documents and enter it into your accounting software.

I also appreciate Tock’s scalability, as it can grow with a business, accommodating everything from small eateries to large, multi-location operations. After using Tock, one of the standout features for me is its reservation and booking system, which effectively manages both traditional reservations and special events like private dining. After thoroughly testing Restroworks Restaurant POS, I found it particularly beneficial for smaller to mid-sized restaurants. In this article, I’ll share my top 9 picks for streamlining restaurant operations and eliminating common headaches.