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Q: What reports are needed to run a restaurant right?

Written by: Brandon O'Dell

Article Overview: Reporting and record keeping are extremely important pieces to the successful restaurant puzzle. Find out what financial snapshots are absolutely necessary to guage your restaurant's performance in this Q&A.

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Q: What reports are needed to run a restaurant right?

A:
That's an important question. There isn't enough reporting and record keeping in the restaurant business. Many chain restaurant can see by the end of the week whether they made money or not. Most independents have to wait until their account returns the monthly numbers anywhere from 4 days to 4 weeks after the end of the month. In my opinion, this is too late. If you don't know how you did in the first week until the end of the month, you're not managing proactively in my opinion. You need to be on top of a problem as close to when it happens as possible to solve it.

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Minimum reports I suggest for every restaurant owner:

Sales by item - day/week/period
Purchases & Expenses - week
Inventory - week
Ideal cost of sales - week
Prime cost - week
Budget - week/period
Preliminary P&L - week/period
Actual P&L - period/year
Guest counts - day/week/period
Gross profit per customer/item - week
Labor - day/week/period
Cash reconciliation report - server/shift/day

Each of these reports should include the necessary comparisons to sales, budgets, etc. Reports have to be designed properly, and include all the information needed. With just the budget, labor, purchases, inventory and sales reports, you can generate about anything you need, most importantly a preliminary P&L. If your reports aren't enough to build a preliminary weekly P&L or cash flow statement out of, most POS software don't, they aren't enough in my opinion.

Of course there are other useful reports to have, but most I think can be ran on an "as needed" basis. There are also shift reports that are necessary to the operation of your business, but those aren't included here.

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Home > Franchises > Brandon O'Dell > Q What reports are needed to run a restaurant right
Article Tags: budget, budgets, cash flow statement, cash reconciliation, gross profit, independents, labor day, money, prime cost, proactively, reconciliation report, report server, restaurant business, restaurant owner

About the Author: Brandon O'Dell
RSS for Brandon's articles - Visit Brandon's website

Brandon O'Dell is an independent food service consultant and owner of O'Dell Restaurant Consulting. O'Dell Restaurant Consulting offers general consulting services to restaurants, colleges, private clubs and most other food service types. Our focus is on helping business owners create operational systems within their businesses that help them become more profitable and earn more free time. Work to live, don't live to work. Areas of specialty include teaching owners to price by gross profit instead of budgeted food cost percentages, and helping them develop unique selling points and implement emotion based marketing tactics. Please visit our blog at http://blog.bodellconsulting.com for articles, Q&As, conversations and best practices. You can also learn more about our services through our website at http://www.bodellconsulting.com. Brandon O'Dell O'Dell Restaurant Consulting http://blog.bodellconsulting.com http://www.bodellconsulting.com brandon@bodellconsulting.com office: (888) 571-9068

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