"All in one" is a claim worth testing. In a restaurant the test is simple: can a sale rung through the till on Friday night reach the management accounts, the payroll and the VAT return without anybody typing it again? If it can, the accounting is joined up. If it cannot, you have several services and a person in the middle.

The chain

  1. Sales. The till closes the day. Sales by department and VAT rate post to the ledger. Cash and card are matched to the bank and the card processor.
  2. Purchases. Supplier invoices are captured as they arrive, coded to site and category, matched to statements, and scheduled for payment.
  3. Labour. Clock-ins become approved hours. Approved hours become payroll. Payroll becomes labour cost in the ledger, by site, in the same week.
  4. Tips. Collected through the till, allocated through a separate tronc, documented as the law requires, paid alongside wages.
  5. Reporting. The weekly summary and the monthly management accounts are produced from the ledger the chain filled, not from a spreadsheet beside it.
  6. Filing. VAT, PAYE and year-end accounts come from the same books, so a filing is a review rather than a rebuild.

Where "all in one" usually breaks

At the joins. A software company does the rota and the till integration. An accountant does the books and the filings. A payroll bureau does the wages. Each is competent. Nobody owns the handoffs, and the handoffs are where hours disappear and errors hide.

Questions to ask any provider

  • Who posts sales from my till to the ledger, and how often?
  • Do my approved hours flow to payroll, or does someone re-enter them?
  • Who is the troncmaster, and how is the allocation recorded?
  • When do I see last week's wage percentage and gross profit, by site?
  • If something is wrong, how many companies do I have to call?

HSG was built around the last question. Opsyte holds the rota, the clock-ins, the invoices and the till feed. Solutions 4 Caterers keeps the books, runs the payroll and does the filings from the same data. One group, one routine, one phone call.

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