Expense reports
What this is for
Three reports on money going out:
- Expense Summary — spend by category.
- Vendor Wise Expense Payment — spend by supplier.
- Outstanding Payment — what you still owe.
Together with sales, they're the two halves of whether a period was any good.
Expense summary
Per category: Total Expense, Number of Transactions, and Percentage of Total.
The percentage column is the one to read. Absolute figures move with how busy you were; shares move when something has actually changed.
A rough shape for a typical restaurant:
| Category | Usual share |
|---|---|
| Food and drink | The largest, by a distance |
| Staff | Second |
| Rent and rates | Third |
| Everything else | Small individually |
Yours will differ. What matters is knowing your own shape well enough to notice when it shifts.
Read it monthly, against the previous month and the same month last year. A category that jumps three points is worth understanding while it's one month rather than six.
Vendor-wise expense payment
What you've spent with each supplier over a period.
This is the report that gets you a better price. "We spent £41,000 with you last year and we're reviewing suppliers" is a different conversation from "we buy a lot of fish from you".
It also shows concentration. A supplier who is 40% of your food spend is a risk if they have a bad week — and worth a conversation about terms either way.
Read it before any supplier negotiation, and once a year for its own sake.
Outstanding payments
Expenses marked Pending — money you owe.
Total Payment Due and Last Due Date are the summary; the detail is per expense with its due date.
Check it weekly. Missed supplier payments cost goodwill, and goodwill is what gets you an emergency delivery on a Saturday.
Note this is the mirror of due payments — that's customers owing you, this is you owing suppliers. Don't net them off.
Expenses against sales
Neither number means much alone. The comparison is the point.
Food cost as a share of revenue is the headline. With Stock & Recipes you get this properly from cost of goods sold. Without it, food expenses against sales for the same period is a reasonable approximation — as long as your stock levels haven't moved much, because expenses count what you bought and cost of goods counts what you sold.
Staff cost as a share of revenue is the second number most restaurants run on.
Both are trends, not targets. What yours should be depends on your format, your rent and your market.
Making the reports worth reading
Everything here depends on the data going in properly:
- Categorise consistently. The same kind of spend in the same category, every time. Otherwise the shares are noise.
- Use the expense date, not the payment date, for when a cost belongs. See Expenses.
- Enter as you go. Month-end catch-ups get skipped.
- Attach vendors. Without them, the vendor report is empty.
Good to know
- Per branch, and follows your operating shifts.
- Recurring expenses appear like any other, marked Recurring — see Recurring expenses.
- Expense permissions are separate from sales reports, so someone can record and read expenses without seeing revenue. See What each role can do.
- All three export — see Exporting reports.