The Challenge
Founded in 1997, The Restaurant People is a multi-faceted hospitality group that develops, manages and operates restaurants and nightlife venues in Florida. In 2016 the group expanded beyond its Fort Lauderdale roots and CFO Michael Zielinski was faced with how to manage accounting systems and paperwork across two cities.
“When we decided to grow beyond one city, we needed to centralize our documents rather than physically drive around picking up invoices.”
Having outgrown Sage, Zielinski noted, “We started exploring third-party software solutions to add onto our POS. We would have needed multiple layers of third-party software to obtain the functionality we wanted. It was going to be expensive and complicated to enhance our infrastructure as we grew. Then we found Restaurant365 and were floored by all it could do within one system. It was a no brainer.”
Needs
Streamlined Business
After migrating to Restaurant365, Zielinksi and his team were immediately able to streamline their business.
“We were able to digitize six large filing cabinets. Now, at the end of the year, we don’t dig through filing cabinets to access our data. Everything is at our fingertips.” They also started saving time in meaningful ways. “Having master customer and vendor lists sounds simple, but in other systems we’d have to update an address 10 times. Now we update once and the information is unified across all of our entities,” Zielinski explained.
Accounting & Operations
Unlike other accounting systems, Restaurant365 works as a tool for operators as well. Zielinski described how it helps his team work in tandem with managers in the restaurants: “Before Restaurant365, our team received emails from managers asking for invoice copies. Since invoices are hyperlinked to the general ledger, managers can access the information through Restaurant365 themselves. Copies of invoices are three clicks away. The platform is straightforward and easy for people without accounting experience to use. We love that it’s cloud-based. Accountants and operators can be on the same page even when we’re not in the office.”
Unparalled Support
As The Restaurant People continues to grow and expand its use of Restaurant365 beyond accounting, the company can now rely on a support team that understands its business. “There’s no comparison between having a generic accounting system and one that’s dedicated to the restaurant business. The biggest difference is talking to support. They understand what we’re saying and they know all of the idiosyncrasies of the industry when it comes to POS systems and vendors. Restaurant 365 makes solving problems quicker and easier. We can fix issues within hours rather than days or weeks. Previously we were billed for submitting tickets to our reseller and now we contact support directly as needed,” stated Zielinksi.
Results
Restaurant365 has allowed Zielinski and his team to deliver more accurate and timely results while saving resources across the business. “It’s staggering to think how much time we’re saving on payroll. We used to have a part-time person solely dedicated to processing our payroll. With Restaurant365, we’ve been able to reduce our accounting resources by 20%, even while adding eight new locations,” he concluded.If you’d like to achieve the types of results that The Restaurant People has enjoyed since switching to Restaurant365, schedule a demo.
With Restaurant365, The Restaurant People has:
- Saved time on manual data entry
- Digitized six large filing cabinets
- Improved communication between accounting and operations
- Reduced overall accounting resources by 20%
