Article by David Joseph, Co-founder of DAVO Sales Tax
As your restaurant grows, your time becomes more essential to the long-term success of your business. You may have started by making sure you touched every process in your business, but now you need to get some time back, and one of the easiest places to start is in the back office.
There are many tools available to automate some of the most tedious tasks so you can focus on better things. Industry sources say that full-service restaurants earn around 3-5% profit. To make any improvements you need to work to grow your sales, and you need to find ways to run a tight ship.
A wise friend of mine once told me, “It’s not how much you make; it’s how much you keep. If it doesn’t contribute to your bottom line, you have two choices: ditch it or do it as efficiently as possible.”
You didn’t get into this business for the tedious back-office jobs that don’t help your bottom line. You want to spend your time on your craft, menu, guest experience, marketing, and with your staff – not with this.
Back office tasks become something we tolerate, but they are time-consuming and draining. Even worse, mistakes are costly. It would help if you got rid of tedious jobs that take up your time and resources.
When you switch to a cloud-based POS, there are apps and extensions to help manage all kinds of typical restaurant tasks. Cloud POS systems enable you to leverage technology to streamline scheduling, inventory, payroll, bookkeeping, online orders, loyalty, gift programs, sales tax management, and more. Also, having these tasks systemized and collecting data can help you make better business decisions and directly improve your bottom line.
Here are the three items to automate in your restaurant ASAP:
1. Scheduling:
Move past the printed sheets of paper, whiteboards, verbal commitments, emails, and spreadsheets. A scheduling app can help you easily manage your schedule, collect availability, communicate with your team, and let them easily switch shifts. The popular scheduling tool 7Shifts claims your managers will spend 80% less time on schedule making and 70% less time communicating with staff.
2. Payroll and Time Tracking:
Time tracking apps are more reliable and efficient ways to keep track of your employees’ time. Employees can clock in and out on their own, and the app syncs with your payroll service to send them information when it is time to run payroll. Many services, like Homebase, even offer screening for COVID-19 symptoms as your employees clock in to keep your team safe and compliant.
3. Collecting, Filing, and Paying Sales Tax:
We are biased, but we think businesses get zero benefit from managing their own sales tax. Keeping the state’s funds causes lumpy cashflow issues, mistakes, and late filings quickly get expensive. It is just something you have to do with no benefit to your bottom line. DAVO puts sales tax on autopilot. Each day we automatically set aside the necessary sales tax funds, then file and pay them to the state right when they’re due–without you having to do anything. It’s a no-brainer.
We want you to spend more time growing your business. We want you to be efficient and technology can help you get your valuable time back. Automating these three specific items are a great place to start. They’re easy to set up and gets you results immediately.
DAVO Automated Sales Tax (davosalestax.com) integrates with many popular POS systems to set aside sales tax daily and file and pay it when it’s due–on-time, and in-full. Put your sales tax on autopilot and never worry about it again.
David Joseph is the co-founder of DAVO Sales Tax and a former restaurant owner. DAVO Automated Sales Tax integrates with many popular POS systems to set aside sales tax daily and file and pay it when it’s due, on-time, and in-full. Put your sales tax on autopilot and never worry about it again. David can be reached at david@davosalestax.com or (888) 659-8432.
