Outsourcing the accounting is a decision about attention, not just cost. A restaurant group has a finite amount of management attention, and every hour spent on invoices and reconciliations is an hour not spent on the floor, the menu or the next site. Here is what an outsourced hospitality accounting service actually does, and what it needs from you.
What you get
- A finance team sized to your business, drawn from a larger one. A financial controller, a payroll specialist, a management accountant and someone senior to call, without four salaries.
- A routine that does not have bad weeks. Daily postings, weekly reporting, monthly accounts and quarterly filings happen whether or not your office manager is on holiday.
- Comparison. A team that keeps books for dozens of hospitality sites knows what a normal wage percentage, card fee or supplier price looks like, and will say when yours is not.
- Systems you do not have to run. Invoice capture, bank feeds, till integration and payroll software, set up and maintained by people who use them every day.
How it works day to day
Your sites keep doing what they do: ring sales, receive deliveries, run shifts. The till, the invoice inbox and the rota feed the finance team. You see a weekly page of numbers, a monthly pack, and the occasional question when something looks wrong. You approve payments and payroll. You stop doing the rest.
Where the profit comes from
Not from the fees being lower than a salary, although they often are. It comes from decisions made sooner: a rota rebuilt when the wage percentage shows high in week two instead of month three, a supplier challenged when the invoice price moves, a dish repriced when the margin slips. Profitability is the sum of those small corrections, and an outsourced team's job is to surface them in time.
What it needs from you
- Suppliers told to send invoices to one address.
- Managers who cash up properly and approve hours weekly.
- A till that can export sales, or that can be connected.
- Someone who reads the weekly numbers and asks one question.
Solutions 4 Caterers has run outsourced finance for hospitality operators since 2003, and inside HSG it works from the same data Opsyte captures at the site. Ask them how the first thirty days would go.