The Restaurant Manager’s Guide to Automated Accounting & Scheduling Workflows

Operating a successful restaurant is no easy feat. As a manager, you juggle dozens of responsibilities daily—from procuring quality ingredients to overseeing kitchen operations, hospitality reporting, managing staff, and ensuring top-notch customer service. With so many balls in the air, the administrative workload makes it easy to feel overwhelmed.

However, by leveraging automated solutions for accounting, scheduling with rota templates, payroll, and other workflows, managers can optimize efficiency across the business. Automation enables data-driven decision-making, streamlined operations, labour cost control, and enhanced compliance.

This comprehensive guide will explore how intelligent tools can empower restaurant managers to boost productivity and profitability.

The Problems with Manual Processes

Many restaurants still rely on manual techniques and legacy systems that are slow, disjointed, and error-prone. Managers attempting to wrangle these disconnected processes face many pain points:

1. Accounting Headaches

Accounting tasks like daily cash reconciliation, reporting, and inventory management often fall to the manager. Manual data entry into spreadsheets is tedious and leaves room for human error.

Waiting until month-end to access reports provides limited visibility. And switching between different systems to obtain financial insights can take hours of precious time.

2. Payroll and Scheduling Nightmares

Creating optimal staff schedules while balancing labour costs, forecasted sales, and employee availability keeps managers in a constant loop of adjustments. Likewise, manually tabulating hours worked, overtime, and other factors to calculate payroll is highly cumbersome. Mistakes result in compliance issues and employee dissatisfaction. And juggling the many interconnected systems is maddening.

3. Data Disjointedness

With accounting in one system, inventory in another, and HR information in another, obtaining a holistic view of the business is virtually impossible. Managers lack real-time insight into how changes and initiatives impact the bottom line.

4. Limited Growth Potential

Inefficient workflows and reactive decisions inhibit a restaurant’s potential for expansion, new locations, and implementing optimizations. Technology limitations hold the business back.

Modern restaurants can’t afford disjointed workflows, delayed insights, and frustrated managers. Intelligent solutions offer a better way forward.

Benefits of Hospitality Automated Accounting Software

 

Automating accounting processes provides restaurant managers with real-time visibility into the metrics that matter most. Key features and benefits include:

• Digital Cash Reconciliation: Automatically cashup online, check, and credit card payments against POS system data for immediate visibility into net sales and cash position.
• Smart Inventory Management: Oversee supplier orders and inventory levels in real time. Let the system automatically recommend reorders based on the use rate and lead times.
• Vendor Payment Automation: Manage accounts payable workflows, including invoice matching/approvals, payment schedules, and bill reminders. Seamlessly integrate with accounting software.
• Instant Financial Reporting: On-demand access to sales summaries, profit and loss statements, balance sheets, accounts receivable/payable ageing reports, and other critical insights via web and mobile apps.
• Custom Analytics: Build customized dashboards with key data visualizations for daily decision-making. Save time digging through spreadsheets for answers.
• Data-Driven Decisions: With live metrics and financial performance tracking, managers can nimbly respond to anomalies, implement optimizations, analyze promotions, adjust pricing, manage staff levels, and more.
• Platform Centralization: A unified platform eliminates the friction of switching between disparate systems. All essential data flows into one secure, trusted hub.

Revolutionize Scheduling & Payroll

Automating scheduling, timekeeping, and payroll processes also provides tremendous gains for restaurant managers.

• Labor Cost Optimization: Smart scheduling algorithms factor in sales forecasts, historical demand, and labour guidelines to optimize staff coverage. Easily adjust for anomalies like weather or ongoing promotions.
• Compliance Guardrails: Built-in compliance features guarantee labour regulations around breaks, overtime tracking for minors, and more are accounted for in schedules.
• Shift Management Simplified: Employees can securely request time off, swap shifts, and pick up available shifts via a self-service portal with the best pub employee scheduling software like Opsyte. Manager approvals and notifications streamline communications.
• Timesheet Auditing: Tools like geofencing, facial recognition for clock-ins, and digital timecards curb timesheet manipulation and “buddy punching.”
• Automated Payroll: Employee hours are automatically synchronized from schedules and timesheets into payroll for accurate wage calculation. Overtime, reimbursements, and other factors are seamlessly incorporated.
• Employee Self-Service: Workers can access schedules, request time off, review hours worked, and manage direct deposit information via web/mobile. Payroll errors and inquiries to managers are reduced.

Choose a Unified Hospitality Platform

While individual solutions for accounting or scheduling provide benefits, managers achieve the most significant impact when automating workflows through a unified hospitality platform like Opsyte.

Opsyte combines robust accounting, operations, scheduling, payroll, and hospitality HR management software tools with deep reporting and analytics. The purpose-built solution is designed specifically for restaurants’ unique needs.

1. 35+ Integrations: Opsyte seamlessly integrates with over 35 leading restaurant management systems, including POS providers, vendors, payment processors, and other technologies.
2. Custom Onboarding: Opsyte’s team helps customize onboarding and configuration to your existing systems and business processes for a smooth transition. Dedicated customer support provides ongoing guidance.
3. Complete Visibility: With all data feeding into a centralized platform, managers gain unprecedented visibility into sales, labour, inventory, and other metrics to drive smarter decisions.
4. Actionable Analytics: Interactive dashboards and reporting provide real-time insights to inform promotions, menu design, inventory needs, staff scheduling, and more. Easy customization allows the manipulation of data models and views.
5. Compliance Guardrails: Configurable settings guarantee compliance with all relevant labour, wage, and employment regulations. Granular permission controls also support security and privacy regulations.
6. Mobile Accessibility: Opsyte’s web and mobile apps enable managers to access reporting and manage workflows on-the-go from any device. Be alerted to anomalies no matter where you are.

Achieve Your Restaurant’s Full Potential

By automating cumbersome accounting and operations workflows, restaurant managers free up time to focus on customer service, food quality, staff development, and business growth. Contact Opsyte today to schedule a demo and discuss your most significant pain points.

Frequently Asked Questions

What types of accounting tasks can be automated?

Restaurant accounting workflows that can be automated include daily sales reconciliation, cash flow management, reporting and analytics, inventory tracking, accounts payable/receivable, and more. This eliminates tedious manual processes.

How does automated scheduling help optimize labor costs?

Intelligent scheduling tools factor in projected sales, historical data, labor guidelines, and other variables to optimize staff coverage and labor spending. Managers align schedules to demand.

What payroll processes can be automated?

Payroll automation includes seamless syncing of hours worked from schedules/time clocks, automated wage calculation, overtime tracking, and data transfer into payroll systems. This minimizes errors.

How can restaurants improve compliance with automation?

Built-in compliance features guarantee labor regulations around breaks, overtime, minors, and more are accounted for in schedules. Granular permissions also aid regulatory compliance.

What analytics can give managers actionable insights?

Custom reporting and analytics provide real-time visibility into sales trends, labor costs, inventory needs, customer segments, promotional performance, and other metrics to inform better decisions.

How does a unified platform help managers?

Consolidating data onto a single restaurant management platform eliminates duplicating workflows across disparate systems. Managers gain complete visibility for smarter direction.