Learning best accounting software for restaurants or best accounting software for food business is essential to your restaurant’s success. I recently tried to put together a spreadsheet for quick restaurant inventory tracking for my business and found some great free accounting software, but I still wasn’t completely satisfied. It seemed that I had to constantly switch from one program to another when I wanted a break from making Excel models. This way was time consuming and hindered my productivity. Fortunately, there are many cloud based accounting software systems that offer point of sale (POS) and ecommerce (ECommerce) technology, in addition to excellent restaurant inventory tracking features.
Choosing the best accounting software for food business is not easy as you think. Because accounting software for restaurants and cafes are designed to cater to specific kinds of restaurants and food businesses. As a result, you need to find out which kind of restaurant you run.
MarginEdge
PROS
- Integrates with QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, Sage Intacct, and Xero for general bookkeeping
- Uses the latest invoice prices to recalculate the cost of recipes automatically
- Compares actual ingredient usage to what should have been used given the dishes sold
- Integrates with 6 of 8 Best Restaurant POS Systems
- Straightforward pricing
CONS
- Must pay for bookkeeping software, such as QuickBooks Online, in addition to MarginEdge
- Employee scheduling is not available
- Cannot forecast sales and food usage based on prior data
Overall Score4OUT OF5
| RATING CRITERIA | PRICING | 4.12 | OUT OF | 5 |
| EASE OF USE | 4.81 | OUT OF | 5 | |
| GENERAL FEATURES | 5.00 | OUT OF | 5 | |
| RESTAURANT FEATURES | 3.00 | OUT OF | 5 | |
| EXPERT SCORE | 5.00 | OUT OF | 5 |
Our Expert Opinion
MarginEdge provides many popular restaurant features as an add-on to QuickBooks or other bookkeeping software. Startup restaurants may choose to begin with QuickBooks Online and then add MarginEdge when they’ve grown enough to utilize some of its more advanced features. The primary advantage of adding MarginEdge to your QuickBooks is the detailed tracking of your food cost and the impact of changes on recipe costs. There’s no employee scheduling included with MarginEdge, which is a feature larger restaurants will likely miss.
Pricing
MarginEdge costs $300 per month, per location, and includes all of its features at no additional charge. Since MarginEdge isn’t a standalone bookkeeping system, you’ll also need to purchase QuickBooks Online or similar bookkeeping software. QuickBooks Online Plus is $80 per month for unlimited locations.
Food Service Ace
Best for Food Trucks and Food Delivery
PROS
- Includes foodservice distribution software that assists with deliveries to customers
- Provides a series of apps great for mobile restaurants
- Manage inventory transfers between commissary and multiple food trucks
- Forecast sales based on prior data and view required inventory purchases
- Purchase food through EDI with vendors
CONS
- No upfront pricing
- No employee scheduling
- No payroll features
Overall Score3.91OUT OF5
| RATING CRITERIA | PRICING | 4.00 | OUT OF | 5 |
| EASE OF USE | 2.63 | OUT OF | 5 | |
| GENERAL FEATURES | 3.25 | OUT OF | 5 | |
| RESTAURANT FEATURES | 4.50 | OUT OF | 5 | |
| EXPERT SCORE | 4.00 | OUT OF | 5 |
Our Expert Opinion
A unique feature of Food Service Ace is its foodservice distribution software. In addition to generating pick lists, packing lists, and invoices, it will suggest routes and print driver itineraries with expected delivery times. The mobile apps are ideal for managing inventory in food trucks with no internet connection. While there is no list of POS integrations, the company will work with you to integrate with your current POS software. There is no payroll feature, so you’ll need to use a third-party payroll provider and import your payroll entries.
Pricing
Because of the high level of customization, you can’t get a quote without talking to a salesperson about your company and the features you’ll need.
Restaurant365
Released in 2012, Restaurant365 is a cloud-based software solution designed specifically for restaurant owners. It offers a comprehensive platform to meet the needs of restaurants of all sizes, as well as owners ranging from beginners to experienced bookkeepers.
We chose Restaurant365 as our best overall accounting software for restaurants because of its robust features, ease of use, and full integration with other systems. It’s made specifically for the restaurant industry and has specific features beneficial to restaurant owners.
Restaurant365 is an accounting software program that combines bookkeeping with restaurant management tools like invoicing, ordering, and staff scheduling. It doesn’t offer payroll services but can be integrated with the payroll company ADP. It is also easily integrated with vendors, POS systems, and financial institutions for automated banking reconciliation.
Some features of Restaurant365 include:
- Accounts receivable and automated accounts payable
- Budgeting and sales forecasting
- Invoice capture
- Franchisee billing and payment collection
- Streamline ordering and fulfillment
- Recipe and catering management
- Inventory management
- Employee scheduling
- Manager log book with sales data and document storage
- POS, bank, vendor, and payroll integration
Pricing for Restaurant365 is broken down into tiers and starts at $249 per location per month and goes up to $459 per location per month. Both the Core Operations Plan and the Core Accounting Plan are $249 per month and are primarily focused on operating or accounting aspects of the business.
The Essential Plan costs $369 per location per month and includes accounting, scheduling, and inventory tracking features. The Professional Plan is the top-tier option and costs $459 per location per month. It includes scheduling, inventory, and accounting features, as well as labor, analytics, and custom financial reports.
If you want to see which plan best suits your needs, you can contact Restaurant365 directly via live chat, email, or phone.
QuickBooks Online
In 2001, Intuit launched QuickBooks Online as a packaged software. The program is constantly updated and improved and is ideal for restaurant owners with little to no accounting or bookkeeping experience who want to manage their own books. It is easy to use, integrated with your financial institution, and compatible with most major POS systems. However, since it’s not specific to the restaurant industry, it may take a little longer to set it up and customize it to your specific restaurant’s needs.
We chose QuickBooks Online as our runner-up because, while it isn’t designed specifically for restaurants, it offers an impressive lineup of features, including add-on payroll services. It’s also extremely easy to use for owners with no accounting or bookkeeping experience.
QuickBooks Online offers the following features:
- Miles, income, and expense tracking
- Invoice creation and accepting payments
- Maximum tax deductions
- Enhanced reports
- Receipt organization
- Sales tax tracking
- Manage bills and employees
- Inventory tracking
- Online training
- Automated workflow
- Payroll as an add-on feature
Pricing for QuickBooks Online starts at $25 per month and goes up to $180 per month with a 50% discount for the first three months. It offers plans for all types of operations, including sole proprietors, LLCs, partnerships, corporations, and nonprofits.
A Self-Employed plan includes tracking for miles, income, and expenses, capturing and organizing receipts, estimating quarterly taxes, invoicing clients, accepting payments, and running basic reports. However, QuickBooks has a variety of plans that offer different features depending on your business structure. You can contact them via phone or through their site to discuss your business needs and budget.
FreshBooks
FreshBooks is another accounting software that, like QuickBooks Online, is designed to work with all industries. However, the functionality that you get for the cost makes it an especially great choice for restaurant owners who want to run a lean operation. Although not as comprehensive as R365, FreshBooks is loaded with helpful features that can help you run your restaurant more efficiently.
It’s easy to categorize and track expenses and revenue on FreshBooks, and you can store receipts in the app simply by taking a picture. Since FreshBooks categorizes the expenses, it is easy to see your restaurant’s smallest and largest areas of spending. If you connect your bank account or credit card to FreshBooks, your account will always have an up-to-date picture of your expenses in real-time.
Financial analysis and tax filing is easy with FreshBooks because the software has already categorized your expenses and revenues. Using the stored financials, you can create a balance sheet, income statement, and profit and loss statement, and run dozens of reports. You can view various revenue streams to see which menu items are most popular with your clientele.
When FreshBooks launched in 2004, their initial goal was to help businesses manage their invoices more easily. Even today, that remains a core part of their cloud-based software. You can create and send custom invoices by email, a helpful feature if you provide wholesale ingredients to other restaurants.
You don’t get shift scheduling with FreshBooks, as you do with R365, but you can track your staff’s hours worked and see how they’re spending their time.
FreshBooks Pricing
FreshBooks pricing starts at $15/month for up to five billable clients. This is less expensive than QuickBooks and significantly less expensive than R365. FreshBook’s entry-level plan should work for most restaurants since most restaurants are on the buying end, purchasing raw goods from suppliers. You can get a 10% discount off this price if you pay annually. Plus, for a limited time, FreshBooks is offering 60% off for 6 months on Lite, Plus, and Premium plans when new users skip the 30-day free trial period and opt to buy now.
ZipBooks
ZipBooks is a simple yet powerful accounting software that provides relevant tools and intelligence to take your restaurant to the next level. Sending professional invoices, automating your billing, and collecting payments effortlessly will all major credits cards, moreover, efficiently tracking your business expenses and maintaining up-to-date, color-coded records that allow you to understand what’s going on with your finances at a flick.
ZipBooks is a cloud-based software that allows restaurants to get smarter and streamline their financial operations with ease. The solution delivered by ZipBooks not only helps the management of a restaurant to take better decisions but also helps provide a detailed insight of business financial position in the market.
Touch Bistro
Touch Bistro, Inc. develops iPad point of sale solutions for restaurants, cafes, bars, food trucks, and other food and drinks venues. They have hundreds of years of experience in the restaurant industry and by using that experience, they have designed a unique POS system that helps restaurateurs make more money, deliver a great customer experience and take the guesswork out of making business decisions.
It offers the restaurants a point of sale system for billing and payments; Food Truck POS for food trucks; Food Chain POS for order taking and payments; Bars POS that enables users to manage open tabs by seat or customer name; and Coffee Shop POS for speeding taking and payments.
It was founded in 2010 with one goal in mind – to bring cutting-edge technology to the table to help restaurateurs run successful businesses.
Conclusion:
Running a food business or catering business is not as easy as it seems. On the other hand, running a restaurant is not that tough either only if you take care of your software and staff accounts. You will have to handle lot of bills and payments that can eventually confuse you and may lead you to indulge in wrong practices. That is why hiring an expert accountant for your business will be a good idea. But you should also consider taking assistance of accounting software to keep record of your expenses and net worth of your business.