# Accountant vs. quickbooks (or something like that)



## pmd18 (Mar 25, 2015)

I was curious how most small caterers kept tract of their finances. I'm planning on netting no more than $10,000 this year, so I wasn't sure if an accountant was necessary at this point. What do you think?


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## nicko (Oct 5, 2001)

Running a small business there are so many facets and one thing that can distract you from your main goal is tracking your spending. As a small business owner I track everything in Quicken and I work with an accountant at the end of the year for tax purposes. For payroll I use a payroll service and the cost of the payroll service is worth not having the headache of filing all the paperwork for state payroll. If you an afford an accountant I would go with that. Often they will give smaller businesses a break on price.


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## cheflayne (Aug 21, 2004)

I have never owned a catering business (although I work for one), but I was a restaurant owner. I did my own books including payroll, but I did use an accountant for year end taxes.

I did my own books for two reasons. The first being the more obvious one of saving me money. The second being that it forced me to be more cognizant on a daily basis of exactly where and how my money was being utilized. It forced me into staying a hands on owner.

If you asked me my food cost, I could immediately tell you. Labor cost, the same. Etc. I have worked for owners that couldn't tell you without having to look it up or ask the accountant.

The most successful owners that I have worked for in the past and present are those that are hands on. The less hands on they have been, the more bleeding of money I have observed. In cases where the owner is oblivious to the daily minutiae, the bleeding is closer to a hemorrhage.

In baseball, the pitcher on the mound has more impact on the outcome of the game than the reliever sitting in the bullpen or the fan sitting at the top row of the stadium.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!  :~)


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## chefwriter (Oct 31, 2012)

I used Quickbooks for our 40 seat restaurant. It can track all expenses as long as you input them and the program does payroll as well.

     We tried several payroll services but they always wanted us to figure the hours first, then tell them what they were. Thanks to software like quickbooks, figuring the hours is the only effort. Input the time card info and the system does the rest. Once I understood how it worked, payroll took about 45 minutes for eight employees. Signing up for the online connection meant all tax updates happened and any errors became the responsibility of Quickbooks. 

     I don't remember exactly how much the whole thing cost. So much for the initial program, so much for the online service and of course they expect you to update every couple of years for another price. It may have been the same paying for a service but I never got around to comparing the numbers. 

     What I did enjoy (kind of) was knowing precisely how much payroll was costing and for what. At the end of the year the program developed an "accountant's copy" you could download to hand over to the accountant for year end taxes. 

     While I never got around to taking full advantage of it, I also appreciated the expense recording. If you input all expenses, the software keeps track of all of it and can generate multiple reports of all kinds. A friend called this record keeping the "general ledger" but he did it the old fashioned way with pencil and paper. Taking the time to input the expenses while paying the bills makes the process much easier and reduces errors. 

     I never used Quicken or any other software but I imagine they are all similar and using one is much better than not using one. As has been pointed out already but can not be overstated is that tracking ALL expenses is vital. It can be a bad surprise to find out how much money you are losing over what you thought were inconsequential issues. 

     Two examples-

     We used a linen service for towels, aprons and cook shirts. When taking a closer look, I discovered the numbers of items dropped off and the numbers charged for were not always accurate, nor was anyone in the linen company keeping that close an eye on it. I switched to buying black T-shirts and chef coats, dropped the rented ones and began counting the towels and aprons upon arrival. The linen company quickly got the message and began a better tracking system. And of course our expense went down considerably for linen. 

     We rented a dumpster for awhile.  After reviewing what was actually going in the dumpster and how much space was actually needed for the garbage we produced, we changed to two large wheeled cans and setting the cardboard to the side. That lowered the disposal bill by quite a bit. 

     You should absolutely have a restaurant qualified accountant to help you. Not so much to do it for you but for the financial knowledge they can share. They should know about tax breaks for purchases and expenses, depreciation of equipment and other expenses, how to set up your record keeping and a lot more. They can also tell you how to pay yourself. That may sound funny but too many small business owners don't think of their efforts as  justifiable expense and go far too long without addressing the issue. You need to be paid and your pay needs to be recorded as a business expense in order to have a true picture of your business's feasibility.


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## granola girl (Mar 8, 2015)

Thank you for the information. I had a similiar question. After operating as a Cottage Food licensed business, I am moving into a commercial kitchen. Book keeping is my least favorite thing to do. I will make a point of recording as it occurs and use a book keeper for taxes too.


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## Mia Burks (Jul 31, 2017)

Some aspects of business are simply done better by the trained accounting professional. Just as chefs know their way around the most complicated delicacies, accounting specialists know their way around the bookkeeping aspect of business better than any other member of a team. Though they have many skills, there are several skilled areas accounting specialists can overhaul to improve the way a business functions.
Some time one can handle it if he knows most of the excel formula, vb codes and access. But most of the cook are not like that. They need to play their field. And sometime it is risky to hire a bookkeeper. I think you know why. For our family business we depend on accounting software. And we don't need to be worried about the expenses or income.


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## chefbillyb (Feb 8, 2009)

I used Quickbooks with my Catering business, Vending business and Food Service Management companies in both Washington and Oregon. If your only doing 10K the first year you could get along great with you doing everything yourself. This will give you a chance to get you feet wet in boing the books. When the business grows you can then decide how much of this you want to do. I started off with a part-time bookkeeper with my in-house bookkeeping staff accumulating all the data so my main bookkeeper could do the monthly reports, P&L's and so on and taxes. I always did the payroll so I could control the hours worked and so on. Doing payroll is real easy on Quickbooks. If you feel the business will grow to much higher sales then I would start off with an Accountant so he/she gets you pointed in the right direction. If it's just a part-time business do as much as you can yourself to save money......Good luck with the new business.........ChefBillyB


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