As a small business grows, it is not uncommon to jump around between different software programs until the correct fit is found. Financial software such as QuickBooks may not provide the accurate service your business may need to properly track hotel reservations, efficiently produce reports that show owner disbursements for a condominium community, track daily sales from a restaurant, and the list goes on and on. No matter what combination of software your business uses, it makes sense to centralize point of sale programs in QuickBooks.
Restaurant bookkeeping is tedious and a dedicated position for the bookkeeper is crucial. Detailed daily sales are needed and no matter what, the point of sale software needs strong back of the house reporting. We often talk about being experts in restaurant bookkeeping, but credit is due to POS Technologies for their strong reporting produced from Aloha Enterprise. It's as easy as producing a daily sales report showing the proper info needed and then inputting that into QuickBooks via memorized transaction. A recent trend I noticed is small business buying into POS systems solely for the fact that they use ipads or tablets. They may look nice and prove to customers that the place is on the up and up, but sometimes the back of house reporting suffers because the product may have been rushed though production and it under delivers. Before jumping into a sales pitch that is based on the hipness of the ipad/tablet, make sure to be thorough enough when asking about the reporting, maybe even bring your bookkeeper into the conversation. If a proper daily sales report can't be produced, then you are going to end up paying way more to managers and the bookkeeper when it comes to reconciling daily cash flow. Like most bookkeeping systems, it will be worth your business's time and money to set it up right the first time and avoid a disaster down the road.
Hospitality bookkeeping can be tricky if trying to use QuickBooks only. If you run a hotel, own vacation rentals, timeshares, campgrounds, etc. a reservations point of sale is needed, and we've had tremendous success using Resort Data Processing. With a combined 10 years experience in our company of using RDP, we've seen their product develop and evolve from a DOS based program to a very robust Windows product. Its great interacting with their team and knowing they are constantly listening to their customer all the time for improvements. Reports can be generated and inputted into QuickBooks within a matter of minutes. I've seen other products that take much longer, and over the course of a year, that adds to up a lot of wasted time for your bookkeeper. Just think, that wasted time could have been used for helping during the busy times and what hotel doesn't appreciate an extra set of hands when you have dozens of check ins and dozens of check outs happening all at once.
Rental property management can get downright messy if the proper point of sale system isn't used for the bookkeeping. So far, Rent Manager proves to be the front runner for the
stand alone system that can handle it all, no QuickBooks required for this one. Many areas of managing property can get extremely complicated if not dialed in a daily basis. Keeping track of rents due, late fees, the owner's disbursements, tracking HOA dues, etc. are just a few major areas that need detailed bookkeeping. Of course, you do need a qualified team of a property manager and a bookkeeper in order to make sure all vested parties are maximizing their profits.
Don't let your bookkeeping system get too complicated just because your business has to utilize more than one financial program. Owners and managers should focus on the front of the house details while the bookkeeper handles the tedious tasks of making sure all cash flow is accurately recorded. Feel free to reach out to learn more.