Outsourced restaurant accounting can be a big deal for your business depending on where your restaurant’s growth, revenue, or cost reduction is found.
Whether you are starting out with a few restaurants or have a large number of restaurants, you need to make financially smart decisions based on your company’s situation.
If you are starting out small, it may make sense to have a company, like Navrae, handle your back-office accounting for you.
This option can alleviate a huge time burden from your daily work, while also minimizing your overall costs.
However, you may also have to consider your existing staff, whether you want to pay for software, and the cost to train your staff to use the software.
What are the costs of in-house accounting?
The larger you grow your business, the more staff you will need to run your back-office accounting.
This includes someone who can handle multiple responsibilities including:
- payroll and payroll adjustments
- accounts payable/receivable
- keeping your bank balance up-to-date
- preparing your financial reports
- using your Quickie Accounting Programs
You will also need to pay for software to hold, analyze, and generate your data, while sometimes using additional third-party software to integrate between all your systems.
This will require your staff to be trained on how to use the software, meaning paid time for training. The larger you grow, the more likely you will split those responsibilities amongst more employees.
As you hire more employees, your costs for staffing, training, and personal leave go up. Not to mention the struggles of trying to find anyone with the experience needed.
This is what makes outsourcing your accounting such a viable option. It affords you the opportunity to reduce costs by having a dedicated team to handle all of this for you at a fraction of the cost.
How do you benefit from outsourced restaurant accounting?
If you are operating one or two restaurants you likely spend most of the time performing management duties, in addition, back-office work.
An outsourced accounting company could reduce the time you spend on generating financial statements, performing payroll, accounts payables, and reconciling your bank statements.
Imagine what you could do with all that free time!
Your costs are lower because you don’t have to hire full-time personnel to manage all these functions for you.
Now you can handle any exceptions yourself or pay your existing hourly staff to handle it for you.
Some positions, like a dedicated accounts payable clerk or even just an accountant, can cost you up to 68% more than what you would pay an outsourced accounting company.
If you’re looking to expand your company, a fixed cost for your accounting needs is easier to budget moving forward.
Another KEY point! By outsourcing, you also eliminate the pains of training, retaining, and replacing your staff.
What’s the big deal?
How does all of this translate for you? And what benefit does an outsourced restaurant accounting company add to my business?
There are many reasons why outsourcing can be beneficial to you:
- Time – less time spent searching for new staff, more time spent training them, less time you could be spending focusing on core functions to sustain and increase your growth
- Cost – depending on if you have a team or just one person on your staff, your decision to scale up or down can help you decide on outsourcing
- Accessible – the larger your business grows or the more restaurants you have, the more your data can spread across multiple stores, requiring you to have better access.
- Transparency & Confidence – Never miss a payment deadline and know that all your transactions meet federal, state, and local compliance laws.
Imagine that you have 3 restaurants and one dedicated staff member handling your back-office work.
You are in a great position to open a fourth restaurant, but you will have to take on the additional cost of a staff member.
As shown before, this can be quite costly, when compared to outsourcing the work to an accounting service.
Instead of hiring an additional person to help manage your new restaurant, you can reduce the cost to expand all future restaurants by outsourcing the work.
This is a great benefit to keep your costs low because you can:
- Grow knowing your fixed costs
- You don’t have to keep hiring staff
- Aren’t paying for software in addition to staff
What should you look for in a company?
Look for a company that is focused on the restaurant industry, which understands what you do.
Many accounting practices accept all sorts of clients and do not specialize in how restaurants operate.
Look for a company that provides the full package, not just payroll or bookkeeping, but real-time reports and that charges a flat fee that won’t penalize your growth.
With Navrae, all your data from every restaurant is gathered and processed in the cloud and is accessible at any time, from anywhere you have an internet connection.
Navrae has over 20 years in the restaurant industry, so we understand issues that can arise, helping us to act before an issue gets to you.
We also provide a great standard set of services in addition to a few add-on services to make sure you are running at peak performance.
Take away
Outsourced restaurant accounting is a great alternative to hiring additional staff, paying for software, or doing it yourself.
Make sure you choose a company that specializes in the unique industry that is the restaurant business.
Navrae’s value grows as you expand, so making the switch early means it’s easier for you to grow.
With less time spent hiring and training back-office staff, you save money and know your future fixed cost when growing.
Schedule a Free Online Meeting to see how we can benefit you.
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