If I could just get this screw to go in…
I don't understand.
Oh, let me try a screwdriver, there we go.
Hey everybody, Ryan Gromfin here – author, speaker, chef,
restaurateur, founder of TheRestaurantBoss.com, as well as
ClickBacon and ScaleMyRestaurant.com.
Now just like I showed you, you would probably never use a hammer
to drive a screw and you would never use a screwdriver to drive a nail.
Well, what does this have to do with your restaurant financials?
A lot of times I see people trying to get KPIs - key performance indicators
out of their accounting software, or I see people trying to use KPI tools
to get accounting information and they're two totally different tools.
Now, they don't have to be, there are some very expensive solutions
out there that do a great job of combining them together, but for
most independent restaurant operators out there, I consider independence
to be one to five units doing one to five million per location.
For most of you out there, these should be looked
at as two separate tasks.
Now, first accounting.
When I think of accounting, accounting is designed to
do two things in my opinion.
The first is, let you know how much money you owe the
government at the end of the year.
That's the purpose of accounting.
Now accounting follows something called GAAP - generally
accepted accounting principles.
And there are some generally accepted accounting rules, accounting
principles that we're all supposed to follow, they change a little bit
from country to country and state to state, but for the most part,
there's a generally accepted way of accounting that the world accepts
and your government accepts that, and you have to follow those rules
so, at the end of the year, you can write a check to the government
for a certain amount of money.
Now the second reason or the second purpose of accounting is so if the
government doesn't believe that you paid them enough money and
they audit you, you can go back to your accounting records following
the generally accepted accounting principles and prove to them that
what you paid was right, or they'll prove that what you paid was wrong
either way, but without an accounting tool that follows those rules, you
have no way to know what you owe them and to defend your position,
should they believe it's wrong.
That's about it, now of course the argument can be made for
many, many, many other reasons for accounting software, but to
keep this simple, that's about it.
Hey everybody, we just need to take a moment here and thank Raydiant Digital
Signage for sponsoring this video.
With sponsors like Raydiant and with all of you out there
watching, subscribing, commenting, liking, and sharing these videos;
we're able to keep bringing you more of these amazing training
videos at absolutely no cost.
You know if you're looking for a Digital Signage solution
for your restaurant and when I say Signage, I don't just mean
menus, but I mean full signage.
I mean advertising, promotions, checklist, digital kiosks, of
course, menu but with Raydiant; you can do all of that so easily.
As you can see, all you need to do is take this little guy right here, plug
it into the back of any TV, and then with your subscription to Raydiant,
you have access to maybe hundreds of thousands, definitely tens of
thousands of templates for menus and advertisements and commercials, and
you could import any of your media and you can take their media, it's
just absolutely incredible as you can see what you're able to do with
such an amazing and simple solution.
So with everything going on these days with handing out paper menus
and not using permanent menus and QR codes and everything else,
now is the perfect time to make a switch to a digital sign solution
that is going to be absolutely easy enough for you to do it yourself.
Actually, if you want to take a look at a video, just click the
link up there where you can register to get some special pricing and
watch a video where I worked with one of the Raydiant specialists to
get my TV set up, build a menu and push it live to the television in
about 10 minutes, maybe even less.
And trust me if I can do it, you can do it.
And they have an amazing team of support to help you out there.
So please click on that link above and check out Raydiant Digital Signage
and don't forget to let them know that The Restaurant Boss sent you,
so you can get our special pricing.
Now to operate your restaurant, this is where you need some sort of a
dashboard or a scoreboard to measure KPIs - key performance indicators.
Now, you could get let's say your food cost, your cost of goods sold which
is a very popular and highly important KPI for restaurants, you could use one
of the more popular accounting tools like QuickBooks Online or Xero or any
other of the accounting tools to get your cost of goods sold, but you have
to do some very complex daily entries and a lot of really complicated
setup to make it work in that manner.
It's just not designed for that, it's not designed to
be a restaurant KPI tool.
Same thing, you could get your labor cost out of QuickBooks,
but it's very complicated.
I've worked with some clients, we've hired QuickBooks consultants, we've
spent a lot of money and we've turned QuickBooks into a pretty powerful KPI
tool, but it's just not designed for that out of the box, it requires a lot
of setup and a lot of daily entries.
Instead what I suggest is use accounting tools and keep it as basic
as possible to do your accounting, then use specific tools whether it
be some sort of a dashboard or even an excel spreadsheet to get your
specific KPIs for your restaurant.
Now I used to use excel when I was operating restaurants over 10 years
ago, but when I started working with clients in consulting, I developed
a software tool called Click Bacon, which you can check out, we'll put a
link to it up here or up here or down there or somewhere, but Click Bacon is
a specific restaurant accounting tool, it's a dashboard designed to measure
what I believe are the six most important KPIs in your restaurant.
And other people might have different KPIs and if that's the
case, maybe there's a different dashboard that works for you, or
again maybe you can use excel.
The challenge with excel is that it requires a lot of customizing and it's
sometimes complicated and ugly, but it does a pretty good job and I work
with a lot of clients that are still using excel, but the most important
thing I wanted to share in this video is that you don't use a hammer to
drive a screw into a piece of wood and you wouldn't use a screwdriver
to drive a nail into a piece of wood.
Stop trying to use your accounting tool to get you the KPIs - the
key performance indicators that you need in your restaurant
and stop trying to use a KPI tool to handle your accounting.
They're two separate functions and require two separate tools
for most of you out there.
I hope you enjoyed this week's video and I look forward to bringing you
another one just like this next week.
I love all of you crazy restaurant operators out there
and remember, systems create freedom, freedom creates
value, and value creates scale.
Have an amazing day.
Are you struggling to grow your restaurant business?
Are you failing to find the time to do all the things you
need to do because you're stuck doing everybody else's jobs?
This sucks, I know, I've been there.
You're not alone.
The difference between where you are now and where you want to
be is a plan and some new tools, and that is why I created scale.
It's my newest course for restaurant owners who want
to grow their businesses and build an extraordinary brand.
Learn more at www.ScaleMyRestaurant.com.
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Remember, systems create freedom, freedom creates
value, and value creates scale.
Manage systems, develop people, and be awesome.