As we approach the end of the tax year, it’s more important than ever to for your financial records and reports to be in order. When it comes to your restaurant’s financials, accuracy and timeliness are paramount. To better understand the role of financial recordkeeping and reporting in the success of your business, let’s first distinguish between these two closely connected processes.

Financial Recordkeeping vs. Reporting

Financial recordkeeping is the process of tracking and recording all financial transactions that take place within a business, including sales, expenses, and payroll. Examples of financial records include journal entries, ledgers, receipts, and invoices.

Financial reporting, on the other hand, is the process of consolidating, analyzing, and communicating financial data to provide transparency, insights, and key metrics (e.g., cost of goods sold, food costs, labor costs, EBIDTA, gross profits, gross profit margin, menu item profitability, net profit margin, etc.). Some examples of financial reports include income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements.

Why are accurate financial records and reports so important?

Below are some of the functions that financial records and reports serve:

• Provide valuable information to help you make data-informed business decisions.
• Allow you to monitor your business’s performance and profitability.
• Produce key metrics for budgeting, financial forecasting, and cash flow management.
• Present a picture of your business’s financial health to stakeholders.
• Attract and maintain investors by offering transparency and proving profitability.
• Provide data for tax planning, helping you determine your eligibility for tax credits and minimize your tax liability.
• Highlight opportunities for operational improvement and cost saving.
• Help you detect issues early on, reducing the chance of costly errors, oversight, and theft.
• Ensure compliance with tax and other regulations.

Tips for Accurate Recordkeeping and Reporting

1. Reconcile your books regularly. Routinely reconciling your accounts—that is, comparing your internal financial records with your external bank and credit card statements—acts as a critical internal control. Frequent bank reconciliations help to verify the accuracy of your financial records and detect potential discrepancies early on.
2. Establish and maintain other internal controls, such as segregation of duties, inventory management, internal audits, approval processes, access controls, and variance analyses (comparing actual figures against budgeted or forecasted amounts).
3. Consider using a point-of-sale (POS) system for efficient data tracking and management. Integrating your POS system with your accounting software can help to improve the accuracy of your recordkeeping and reporting processes.
4. Make sure you have the right people on your team, including a CPA who can support your business’s success through industry-specific bookkeeping, financial reporting, tax planning, and more.

Let RBT CPAs Support You

 When it comes to choosing your team, consider partnering with RBT CPAs for remarkable service you can trust. RBT’s specialized restaurant accounting experts will help you keep your books in order throughout the year, ensuring the highest level of accuracy, timeliness, and compliance. Beyond managing your restaurant’s books, our team is also available to support all of your other accounting, tax, audit, and advisory needs. Give RBT CPAs a call today—and find out how we can be Remarkably Better Together.