Cost control
Prepare an Annual Budget Plan and use it to compare sales and costs with budgeted amounts throughout the year, ideally on a month-by-month basis. This is additional to, but not a substitute for a Cashflow Forecast as cashflow, not profit, is ultimately the lifeblood of a business.
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- Carry out an energy audit and save money by reducing your fuel and energy consumption.
- Keep waste and refuse charges to a minimum.
- Check the effectiveness of your promotions and advertisements. Is your newspaper ad delivering results? Remember that by far the best and cheapest form of promotion or marketing is word-of-mouth.
- Look critically at all areas of spend and ensure that you are getting value for money.
Use our Cost Control Checklist to spot opportunities to control costs
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An across-the-board supplier analysis can result in large savings. Focus your cost saving efforts where the bigger value amounts and potential savings are:
- Source new suppliers that offer better prices across the business from food to electricity costs.
- Negotiate new prices or better value from existing suppliers.
- Strive for improvements in service or quality.
- Check all supplier invoices to ensure you are not being overcharged and that you are claiming the correct VAT (if registered).
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- If appropriate, give responsibility to key staff members to manage the costs for which they are responsible and encourage them to offer suggestions for cost reductions.
- If you have a very busy restaurant business, smart staff-rostering will help ensure that you have the required people on hand while keeping your costs to a minimum. For more help with staff-rostering, see our staff-roster template.
- Consider asking staff to multi-task.
- Agree pay-cuts, reduced hourly rates or more flexible pay rates.
- Check that you are not overpaying PAYE or PRSI.
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- Cost each type of meal you prepare.
For simple recipe costing examples, see our Quality Food Toolkit
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Put in place a book-keeping system to help control your costs and to ensure compliance with Revenue rules. This can be a simple manual system or a computerised system with spreadsheets or accounting software.
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You need to have a system in place for handling cash, eg, manning the tills and lodging to the bank. Depending on the size of your business, you may need to invest in one or more of the following:
- A till or Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) system which is an important element in controlling cash and reducing the risk of theft. It also provides vital information on your sales and customer numbers to assist with your budgeting and financial management.
- Accounting software which is needed to ensure that:
- your costs and VAT are correctly recorded.
- you pay on time.
- you don’t overpay your staff.
- you have good information for analysis and decision-making.
- Spreadsheets and other simple tools which can help you with calculations, comparisons and reports.
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- You only need to do stock-takes if you sell retail goods or significant food and beverage.
- Carry out regular stock-takes to ensure that you have the correct level of stock on hand and to avoid waste and theft.
- Depending on the size of your business, this can be done in-house or outsourced.
For more information on stock-control, see our Stock-control template.
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- Ruthlessly cutting costs without considering the implications for your business could leave you worse off than before.
- Avoid demoralising your staff.
- Ensure that you are achieving cost savings without sacrificing the quality of your product offering.
- Continue with promotional activities, such as website promotions, which source new customers.
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