You cook, We clean (the books): Process Design
Process Design is critical to any successful business model. Particularly the restaurant business where having great food doesn’t solely equate to success. Your food and finances have to be solid. Here, we explain how Two Sense can help you manage your food and your financials with our recipe for bookkeeping perfection. Bon appetit!
As a restaurateur, you’re able to walk into a restaurant and immediately recognize what is working or not working within their establishment. You’ll notice the servers don’t have side stations equipped with clean silver or full water pitchers. You’ll be curious why the restaurant has 86’ed every sought after item on the menu. Were they just too busy? Or were they under prepped, under forecasted?
As a restaurateur, you’re able to identify concerns with the way other restaurants are operating within minutes of arriving. That’s your niche; your expertise.
Let’s compare that to my cooking background. My daughter, Makena, is about to turn one. We call her Mak and her Aunt very cutely nicknamed her Macaroon (Mak-aroon, get it?). As the perfect first Mother’s Day gift, I received a macaroon making kit. I’m very excited to give this a whirl! As her first birthday approaches, I’m considering homemade macaroons for dessert. Regardless, I will purchase a cake for everyone to eat, and, let’s be honest, enjoy! In essence, I’m not trying to be a chef, but here and there, I like to play chef.
Being the foodie that you are, you can appreciate my interest in the kitchen, right? But alas, cooking isn’t my specialty. Bookkeeping is. And what you can pinpoint as my strengths or areas for improvement in the kitchen, I can help you identify areas where your financials are either solid or in need of change.
This is where Two Sense expertise can complement your cooking skills. The inner workings of restaurant financials require an understanding of how your point of sales treats every menu item, and where they land on your income statement. A restaurant has to manage their food and beverage costs with guidance from the menu analysis, preference reports, and cost analysis. It’s vital that you and your investors understand what’s happening in your business.
We want your Income Statement to prompt business decisions properly. We want to create streamline processes for your back-office to reduce the pains of turnover and allow your financials to have consistency for a month-over-month and year-over-year comparisons.
Just as I can enjoy aspects of baking, similarly, we appreciate your interest in your own restaurant’s financials. As a finance restaurateur, we are able to identify concerns with the way restaurant books are managed within minutes of reviewing. That’s our niche; our expertise.
Clean up
Consider what we call, “You Cook, We Clean, Process Design”. This service is beneficial to your business whether you’re in the planning stages or have been opened for years. We will review your Balance Sheet and Income Statement to validate that all your income and expenses are all appearing in the correct place and correct value. We will identify any needed changes to align with accounting principles, the IRS, and industry best practices.
Based on our findings, we will make any required changes to be sure your financial reporting is accurate. We will also make modifications to establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to help you run your business. For example, what’s your dinner average check, without beverage, during high season, and how does it compare to your budget?
Design & Implementation
So, where’s the Process Design, you ask? After we make the needed updates and have a comprehensive Income Statement for monthly review (ideal), the process design can begin. We will create and implement all necessary ongoing processes and document them for your back-office team. Then, we will call these documents, “recipes” for your accountant.
We want your accounting team to run the office like your cooks can run the kitchen, with recipes and procedures in hand. For that reason, we will also document and implement any needed internal controls (think of things like temperature checks on refrigerated meats and dairy) to reduce the risk of fraud or incorrect reporting.
Training
Lastly, like the diligent “Chefs” that we are, we need our cooks to be able to navigate the kitchen. We will train your accounting team on these new processes and be sure they understand the documented procedures. After one month has passed, we will complete another view of the last 30 days (a condensed version of the clean-up step above) to be sure the implemented changes are correct and understood.
During this period, your team has access to email questions, and request calls for clarification. If there are gaps in understanding, we will discuss these findings with you and make recommendations for further changes or other options.
If you don’t have an accounting team for us to hand these processes over to, check out our Bookkeeping Services for more details. We will happily manage your books for you.
Next Steps
After the 30-day review, we recommend you move to our Hourly CFO services. This transition will ensure your investment in the Process Design is well maintained, understood, and contributes to your business. Check out our Hourly CFO services for more details.
Ready to get cookin’? So are we! Accounting processes design is our niche, our expertise. Ultimately, we want you to continue to cook with confidence and we will clean the books so you stay focused and financed in what you love. Reach out or visit our FB page with to connect!
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