Any competent financial controller can keep a set of books. Bars and restaurants are not any business. The volume, the cash, the staff turnover and the VAT rules reward people who have seen it all before.
Where generalists struggle
- Volume. A busy site can produce hundreds of supplier invoices a month and thousands of till transactions a week. Without capture tools and a routine, the backlog wins.
- Cash and tips. Cash-ups, floats, card tips and tronc are a daily reconciliation, not a month-end one. Get them wrong and you have a staff problem before you have an accounts problem.
- Wet-led stock. A bar's gross profit lives in the cellar. Line cleaning, wastage, spillage and staff drinks all move it. A financial controller who has never counted a stock room cannot see the problem in the numbers.
- Variable hours. Rotas change by the hour. Payroll has to start from the hours actually worked, not contracted hours, or the labour cost in the accounts is fiction.
- VAT. Food, drink, eat in, take away, service charge, deposits and gift cards do not all behave the same way. Specialists know the edge cases.
What a dedicated hospitality financial controller does differently
They build the routine around the trading week, not the calendar month. Sales posted daily. Invoices captured as they arrive. Hours approved on Monday, payroll run from them, tronc allocated separately. Stock counted on the same day each week or month, so the gross profit figure is comparable.
They also know what good looks like. A specialist will tell you that your wage percentage looks high for a wet-led site, or that your card fees look wrong for your volume, because they see dozens of similar businesses. A generalist has nothing to compare you to.
The questions to ask before you hire
- How many hospitality sites do you keep books for today?
- Which till systems have you connected to a ledger, and how do sales get posted?
- How do you handle tronc, and who acts as troncmaster?
- When do I see last week's gross profit and wage percentage?
- What happens on the day a VAT return is due and I have not sent you something?
The answers tell you whether you are hiring a financial controller or a hospitality financial controller. Solutions 4 Caterers, the finance company inside HSG, has done nothing else since 2003. Ask them the same questions.