4 Operations Reporting Mistakes that Hurt Your Restaurant

How many teams or departments go into running your business? Most businesses have human resources, accounting, IT, operations, production, and more. For most restaurant owners, all of those different departments fall onto just one person: you. So when it comes to operations reporting for your restaurant, it’s easy to make mistakes when you have to perform the juggling act that it takes to run your restaurant.

Unfortunately for you, operations reporting mistakes can really hurt your restaurant, whether it’s a mistake in production records or reports. You’ve worked hard to get to where you are today. You don’t want to risk losing it by making one of these four common operations reporting mistakes.

Inaccurate Production Records

If, for exmaple, you are a sub-franchise owner. Do you know how many subs your franchise produces in a day? If you can only hazard a guess, then you’re keeping inaccurate production records.

Accurate production records provide you with the detailed information you need in order to run your restaurant efficiently. For example, what if you’re over-buying ingredients for the number of subs you produce on a regular basis? You’ll wind up with rotting vegetables, spoiled meat, and wasted money.

But with an accurate production record, you’ll be able to optimize your processes for maximum efficiency, and a great customer experience. Operations reporting for restaurants is more than just a day-to-day report that gets passed on to your stakeholders. It’s a reflection of the success of your restaurant. Without accuracy, you could be doing a lot better or worse than you expected.

Lack of Attention to Detail

You should already know that operations reporting is a detailed process. You need precise numbers, ratios, and more. But what happens if you get interrupted by employees asking questions or customers demanding to speak to the manager every time you try and sit down to focus on your operations reporting? You’re likely to make mistakes or lose track of the little details that matter—a lot.

When you’re too busy to pay attention to details, red flags can get missed and you could find yourself in debt or losing your hard-earned franchise all too soon.

Let’s look at daily account audits. Misplacing a zero or a decimal can turn 40 pounds of lettuce into 400 pounds of lettuce. What would happen if you didn’t have time to proofread? You could find yourself on the line for a very expensive mistake.

Not paying attention to the small details in things like daily account audits can throw off business procedures, slow down efficiency, and create costly mistakes. Operations reporting for restaurant or franchise owners requires attention to detail.

Standardized Reports

Every restaurant is different. For instance, a full service restaurant has different day-to-day operating procedures than a Taco Bell franchise. Your customers, values, and production processes are different. So why do some financial consultants use the same standardized report for both?

You deserve customized reporting that’s as unique as you are.

Reports that are customized to how your franchise restaurant runs can help you pick out subtle red flags before they become problems. Reports should also be tailored to your goals for your franchise restaurant. Do you want to grow your business or just maintain it? Are you looking to pick up another restaurant franchise in the near future?

Customized operations reporting for your specific franchise allows you to accomplish your goals at a faster pace, spurred on by your ability to appropriately track your progress and key metrics for your restaurant that may not have been tracked otherwise. When you work with high-quality operations reporting, you deserve reports that are customized to your business needs and goals.

Misclassifications on Statements

When you’re as busy as you are, it’s easy to make the mistake of misclassifying an expense or other operating activity on your cash flow or income statement. When it comes to your cash flow statement, it’s important to correctly categorize expenses into either operating, investing, or financing activities. Are you 100 percent certain which items go into which category? If you’re not, then it may be time to bring in some outside expertise.

If you’re working off of an incorrectly categorized cash flow statement, you could find yourself operating off of the incorrect amount of cash, leaving you high and dry if you continue down that path for too long.

Your income statement needs to be just as accurate as your cash flow statement. While the two are similar, the income statement includes information about depreciation, as well as the company’s performance. What would happen if your income statement was misclassified? You may think your franchise restaurant is performing particularly well, only to find out that something was misclassified, leaving you more in the red than ever before.

The problem with misclassification of operations reporting for franchise restaurants is that you could find yourself in a tricky spot without the accurate expertise you need.

Call GSS for Operations Reporting for Your Restaurant

Global Shared Services has the experience, team, and technology you need for great operations reporting.

We provide high-performance, end-to-end operational reporting services you can trust, delivered by our high-level team and tailored to the needs of your business. Choosing our restaurant accounting services gives you streamlined processes and the ability to scale through operational efficiencies – no matter how many locations your business grows to.

Ready for great operations reporting for your restaurant or franchise? Contact us today.