As the furlough scheme begins to wind down from 1 July 2021, many hospitality businesses are struggling with staff shortages.
In Kent, some suggest staff who were placed on furlough have either secured another job on full pay, or have moved away from the area.
As a result, some restaurants and pubs are finding it difficult to either retain or attract new staff members as COVID-19 restrictions ease.
One Tunbridge Wells gastropub was unable to get a single applicant for restaurant manager vacancy, despite offering £32,000-a-year (plus tips).
That example highlights a topical problem facing the UK hospitality sector, following the most challenging of years because of the pandemic.
Drastic business decisions, such as remaining closed during quieter hours or days, are made on the back of this type of issue.
But they shouldn’t be made without talking the problem through with specialist hospitality accountants like Diamond Accounts.
From our Sittingbourne office, we can recommend several cost-effective solutions to automate tasks within your hospitality business, so you can operate effectively with fewer people.
Salary planning
Our payroll service can be a big help when it comes to hiring new staff in your hospitality business. By having all the data at our fingertips, we can work out a competitive salary to attract the best talent.
What’s more, we will deduct any National Insurance contributions (NICs), student loans repayments or contributions into a workplace pension from their gross salary before paying them every week or month.
Certain tax rules also apply to tips and commission any of your staff receive. Cash tips are liable for income tax, but not NICs, and should be reported via self-assessment on or before 31 January.
If you pool any tips to equally share out among your workers, we can act as your ‘troncmaster’ and report and pay any income tax or NICs your workers owe via PAYE.
Managing cashflow
After the year your restaurant, pub or hotel has had, it’s more important than ever to stay on top of cashflow – and our business advice can help.
It’s usually enough to do a cashflow forecast once a year, but it’s worth doing it every quarter at the moment, after the twists and turns of COVID-19.
Keeping accurate records of all the cash that comes into, and flows out of, your hospitality business is imperative for this purpose.
Armed with these figures, we can draw up multiple forecasts to prepare you for the best case, worst case, and the most likely scenarios.
Go cashless, embrace app orders
If there’s something good to come out of the pandemic which directly applies to the hospitality sector, it’s the rise of app-based ordering.
There are plenty of apps to choose from and one of our favourites is Butlr, which lets customers pick your venue and place orders from their tables.
Once the order is placed, payment goes directly to your kitchen or bar without customers having to flag down a waiter or stand in a queue.
Speaking of payments, you only pay 1.9% to Butlr for every transaction. For a £10 order, you would receive £9.81 in your business’s bank account.
If you need help with anything we’ve mentioned in this blog, don’t hesitate to get in touch.