As an entrepreneur, your role in your business may be categorized by many names: boss, clerk, accountant, advertiser, public relations, secretary, front desk, cook, builder, designer...the list of hats goes on. Being a small business owner is a monumental task and requires more than a little elbow grease. It requires the gumption to succeed and the intelligence to understand a bit of everything. You’ve got employees who depend on you—not to mention your own family, so you don’t have the luxury of getting things right on the third or fourth time. You’ve got to get it right now. Since bookkeeping is a full time job in and of itself, here are three mistakes to not make when maintaining your small business bookkeeping.

Think of your trip to work this morning. How many coffee shops did you pass? Probably more than a few. There are over 53,000 coffee and snack shops in the United States, with over $30 billion in total revenue each year. With numbers like that, it’s no wonder that there seems to be a coffee shop on every corner, and with a market share of over 30%, it’s also no wonder that many of the shops you see have the name Starbucks emblazoned across the front of them. But let’s forget the big name chains for a little bit and take a peek behind the scenes at your local coffee shop.

Running a business just isn’t the same as it used to be. Traditionally, updating a Point of Sale (POS) system has been done every six years or so, with business owners trying to get the most out of their investment as they possibly can before upgrading. However, that may not be the wisest course of action in today’s ever-changing business world. In fact, it has come to the point that outdated POS systems may actually create a competitive disadvantage. We’ve put together four of the many reasons you may decide it’s time to upgrade your POS system.

Planning the menu and gaining a healthy clientele are not the only things you’ll need to worry about when opening or expanding a restaurant. A profitable restaurant also has a great point of sale system to keep everything running smoothly. As you search for the best POS system for your restaurant, consider these important features.

To put it simply, your point of sale system, or POS, is the software used in restaurants, retail, hospitality, and general business settings to process payment transactions. However, a good POS system is even more than that. It relieves much of the stress associated with retail inventory and helps you keep track of your best customers, which is especially helpful in the restaurant and hospitality business. It becomes a computerized service center, helping you keep track of ways you can save time and money. With all of the things you depend on for your point of sale system, you definitely want to make sure you get the right one.

As a business owner, do you want to miss out on even a tiny slice of a $31.74 billion pie? If you’re not providing gift card services, that’s exactly what you’re doing. As gift cards grow in popularity, it becomes more and more critical for every business that sells food, goods and even services to provide gift cards for their customers and have reliable gift card processing integrated into their Point of Sale (POS) system.

When running a restaurant, there are many mishaps and pitfalls that can arise in the accounting aspects of the business. Unfortunately, common accounting mishaps can be found everywhere. This is mainly because accounting methods are used to track and report everything in a business. To help you out, we’ve put together this list of five common accounting mishaps and how to avoid them.

If you’ve decided to open a restaurant, there are a lot of things you’ve probably thought a lot about. Hopefully, some of these include concept, location, recipes, vendors, location, decor, and...location. If any of these elements have not been a big part of your planning, you should probably take a step back and figure them out before you move forward. Opening a restaurant is expensive, both in terms of time and money. You want to make sure that you get it right so that your new business can succeed.

If you have ever wondered how you could better put data to work for your business, you should attend this conference. If you are looking for ways to integrate social media with your operations, you should attend this conference. If you are looking to find out what your customers want more of from a loyalty program or get more participation, you should attend this conference.

Here is a breakdown of what you are entitled to when you either subscribe to or purchase software from a company. While these are general distinctions, the specific type of software you get may have differing terms for use.