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Join nowI have started restaurant business and recently start using Quickbook. I have never use Quickbook before. I want to know how best can I set up the Quickbook to suit the restaurant business?
Thanks
Greetings, Dabanani.
Congratulations! We're pleased that you've chosen QuickBooks Online (QBO) for your business.
Let me provide you some helpful articles that'll guide you in setting up QBO.
Here are the articles:
And for your Chart of Accounts, I highly suggest you consult this with your accountant.
Please let me know if you need anything else. Wishing you continued success.
Hey @Anonymous,
Welcome to the community! One of our regular users, @Anonymous, specializes in restaurant accounting and has a tremendous amount of industry knowledge in general. I'd recommend checking out her posts and articles!
Getting started is always the most exciting part! I do, however, have a question to answer your question - do you know what you want to track in QuickBooks? Are there certain workflows (invoicing, banking, inventory) that are absolutely necessary to your operation? If you're brand new to QuickBooks, I recommend tackling each workflow one at a time.
For restaurants specifically, I think the most important step is learning how to categorize your products and services. Getting the item type is crucial. While service items are straightforward, the difference between inventory vs. non-inventory items is not (@Anonymous can definitely speak more to this).
I'd encourage you to do a bit of research on Google, but essentially the difference is:
Here are a few examples to contextualize the non-inventory criteria, since this tends to be a bit more confusing:
This nuance is particularly challenging for the restaurants because they often refer to "inventory" as "everything in the stockroom." While we may use some of these items and materials to create products we sell, QuickBooks doesn't always refer tp those items the same way.
I will include a link you to our Inventory Overview and Setup guide that provides more details, but don't feel overwhelmed! Start slow and build up your accounts piece-by-piece. QuickBooks has specific behaviours and workflows that are key for getting your accounting right (tracking income correctly, staying compliant for tax reasons).
Once you get them down, you'll be flying through your accounting. Please reach out to us if you have any more questions!
What kind of restaurant do you have?
Thank you for this detailed explanation. Am not particularly sure what to track. We buy, for example, lamb, chips, vegetables and rice. But we do not sell these individually instead, in our menu, for example, we sell Moroccan style lamb with Jollof rice. In this order, will be lamb, vegetables and rice. This makes it difficult for me to track stock because they are not sold individually as we buy them.
Our kind of restaurant is international selling mostly American, Burgers, European, African and but of Asian
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Hi Dabanani
Congrats on your new venture!
Can I ask if you are using a POS system, or some other computerized system when it comes to tracking what customers are ordering? Depending on the system and its set-up, it may influence what your best set-up of Quickbooks might be.
Kristen
@Anonymous
ahhhh, need some QAQC
this page you linked, https://community.intuit.com/articles/1145670-inventory-overview-and-setup
on the bottom are links for more information
Have you clicked on them? any of them?
Some one should.
No i do not use any system. we use the report from Just-Eat machine to know our sales report for the day. Also, what we purchase individually, we do not sell those. For example, we buy rice, lamb and vegetables but when selling, we sell for example, Moroccan Lamb, which will be lamb with vegetables and rice, is the order include rice. So the order will be for Moroccan Lamb and rice and we will make that but we buy lamb, vegetables and rice as raw materials to make this order.
Thank you
Hey @Rustler, thanks for the feedback, could you be more specific as to what needs QA/QC?
The definitions and examples I've used come right from our affiliate training partners. As for the nomenclature of inventory, restaurants have a unique definition, which is why I recommend @Anonymous ensure they understand what QuickBooks classifies as inventory.
Any advice you can offer to the OP?
As I said
on the bottom are links for more information
Have you clicked on them? any of them?
Restaurants do not have a different definition of retail inventory, inventory definition is the same for all. What products are maintained as inventory items vs being expensed immediately are a company choice. - I didn't even bring that up though
@Rustler, thanks for the feedback. The point I was trying to make to the OP (@Anonymous) is that when workers or the owner in a store take a physical inventory (which they may or may not simply call "inventory"), they may not distinguish "inventory" from "non-inventory" items the way QuickBooks does.
Those who are new to the program should be aware of this distinction.