If you own or manage a hospitality venue – whether it’s a local coffee shop, a hotel or a twenty table restaurant – you’re operating in one of the toughest and most competitive industries out there.
Providing quality food and beverages along with good customer service is great but it’s only half the battle; you need to be doing it profitably.
We’ve come up with a complete list of the top 5 systems for the hospitality industry that you should be using today to improve your business.
They are all designed to help manage costs and provide quality information to you, the business owner.
Our Top 5 Cloud Systems for Hospitality Businesses:
- Deputy
- Kounta
- Invitbox
- Receipt Bank
- Xero
Below we discuss why your hospitality business should start using each of these systems, and show you how the all can actually work together to simplify AND streamline your business processes and accounting systems.
1. Deputy – For Employee Scheduling & Workforce Management
If you’re not using Deputy, you probably should be!
Here’s a few reasons why you should use Deputy:
- Schedule Costing – when you schedule your staff you’ll know exactly what it’s going to cost you. You or your manager can easily schedule to a budget.
- Communication – easily communicate with all your staff on one platform. Message individuals or groups of staff or even send news to the entire team via the news feed.
- Award Interpretation – gone are the days where you’ll need to manually determine penalty rates. Once synced with Xero correctly the two systems will automatically apply the correct rate.
- Daily Timesheets – your staff submit their timesheets at the end of every shift (or in real time via Deputy App/Deputy Kiosk). You can then review at the end of every day to ensure accuracy.
- Multiple Locations – you have the ability to setup multiple locations in one account which can then be easily managed via one login. Perfect for franchises or those with more than one venue.
- Payroll Integration – timesheets are exported from Deputy to supported payroll systems for processing pay runs.
2. Kounta – Point of Sale Software
Kounta is quickly becoming a very popular point of sale (POS) option for hospitality business.
Why?
Simple – it’s easy to use front-end interface combined with its robust back-end functionality.
What else can Kounta do for your business?:
- Quickly & easily add new products via the backend and then simply sync the POS to make them available for sale.
- Kounta via the CBA’s Albert can be a terrific solution for recording sales and taking payments all via the one device.
- Multi-Site Management – manage multiple locations within the one login with the ability to share products and pricing across multiple stores.
- Printing – designate printing preferences by both register or product. Food orders are automatically printed on the kitchen printer whilst coffee orders go to the café.
- Add-on’s, Add-on’s & more Add-on’s – your POS can now integrate with your loyalty program, your accounting software (Xero), your payroll software (Deputy) and even your email marketing software.
3. Invitbox – For Automating Your Accounts Payable
Invitbox provides businesses with the ability to automate their accounts payable process; which can be an expensive task for those in the hospitality industry.
The key features you’ll enjoy when you use Invitbox include:
- Line-by-line data extraction – every line of every invoice can be automatically extracted by Invitbox using it’s PDF mapping technology.
- Inventory – based on this line-by-line data extraction, Invitbox provides the ability to export inventory data to a .csv file that can then be imported into your POS (not currently available with Kounta, but many other POS systems).
- Attachments – once you’ve exported invoices to your accounting software (Xero) you’ll find a copy of that PDF invoice attached to the transaction in Xero.
- Approval process – Invitbox provides the ability for every invoice to go through the correct and necessary approval process before moving to your accounting software for payment.
4. Receipt Bank – For Simplified Bookkeeping Processes
Whilst we’re huge fans Invitbox for accounts payable processing there’s no better app for all those “little bits & pieces” than Receipt Bank.
Simply submit your receipts to the system by taking a photo using the Receipt Bank App.
Receipt Bank then gets to work using OCR technology to extract the key data from each receipt ready to be exported to your accounting software (Xero) where a copy of each receipt is attached to the transaction.
You can easily setup multiple users so everyone with access to the business accounts can submit receipts or staff can submit receipts for reimbursement.
5. Xero – Beautiful Accounting Software
Our first 4 systems make little sense unless you’re using an accounting system that integrates with them all.
This is why you MUST be using Xero.
We think the biggest benefit to hospitality businesses using Xero is the ability to have live information at their fingertips, allowing you to make better, faster and more informed decisions.
Not every system in our top 5 will necessarily be the right fit for your hospitality business, but we guarantee you’ll find something that can benefit your operation in at least two or three of them.
If you’d like to learn more about any of the systems please contact us today and we’ll help you implement them for your hospitality business!
We’re a Xero Gold Partner so we’d be all too happy to help implement any and all of the systems above for your cafe, restaurant or hospitality business.