Many restaurant groups use Restaurant365 (R365) as an all-in-one accounting, employee scheduling, and inventory management software solution. Its real strengths lie in its accounting module, which centralizes financial information for restaurant groups to give a better overview of operations and profitability.
The software is known to be pricey, so it’s a good idea to do your research before investing in it. In this Restaurant365 review, we’ll take a detailed look at the platform’s features and integrations. We’ll also talk about how everything works and its pros and cons.
Restaurant365 Review
What is Restaurant365?
Restaurant365 is an all-in-one cloud-based restaurant management software solution for multi-location restaurant groups. It’s particularly powerful as accounting software and general operations platform for the restaurant industry. People use it to manage various restaurant business aspects, including:
- Accounting processes
- HR and payroll
- Inventory
- Employee and staff shift scheduling
- Reporting
Notably, the platform integrates with more than 70 point-of-sale systems, which simplifies the transfer of information between the front and back-of-house. Besides that, Restaurant365 integrates with several vendors and banking partners.
All-in-all, it’s an integrated cloud-based system that can scale with a multi-unit restaurant business to meet your growth requirements.
Who Uses the Platform?
Generally speaking, new and established restaurant groups use R365 for its powerful accounting and cost management features. It’s a good choice if you’re looking for a restaurant management solution that considers finance and operations alongside each other.
However, the software lacks features and modules for waitlist and reservations management. If one of your main goals is to improve online reservations and the guest experience, it's worth looking at OpenTable or SevenRooms instead.
We should also add that if you plan on hosting private dining parties or events with groups of more than ten people at your restaurant, we recommend looking into Perfect Venue. It’s a powerful complementary event management platform that works with Restaurant365 and many other leading restaurant software systems.
In a nutshell, it’s an all-in-one event management tool that streamlines your event-related tasks. You can optimize your event calendar and generate professional-looking documents such as BEOs in seconds.
Restaurant365 Features
As an overview, the platform has built-in modules and integrations to support restaurants with inventory management, accounting, employee scheduling, payroll, and HR.
Let’s break down some of the main functions that R365 offers.
Accounting
The software provides a restaurant-specific accounting solution that fully integrates with POS systems, food and beverage vendors, payroll providers, and banks. Additionally, there is a useful tool to automate a restaurant’s account payable processes.
If your restaurant group is a franchise, the platform has a feature for automated franchisee billing while supporting all franchise operations and royalties.
Inventory
Restaurant365’s inventory management system lets businesses control costs with digital accounts, ordering tools, and connected invoices. There is a commissary tool to handle ordering and fulfillment and a catering inventory tool to manage operations.
Labor and Scheduling
The employee scheduling tool lets you create staff schedules based on sales forecasts. This is useful to control labor spend and ensure this is optimized. Although, getting it accurate can be tricky.
Restaurant365’s manager logbook feature provides daily sales data and employee tasks and acts as a database to store important restaurant documents.
Payroll and HR
This is possibly Restaurant365’s most unique module, as most other restaurant management solutions only focus on operations. With the HR and payroll function, you can hire, onboard, pay, and support your workforce.
There is also a restaurant-specific applicant tracking and onboarding system to help with recruitment.
Reporting
As mentioned earlier, Restaurant365 is not only an operations management tool. It ties in the business finances to assist with decision-making. The platform includes a financial reporting feature to help restaurants visualize and understand their financial health.
This includes a restaurant analytics dashboard for convenient access to business intelligence. An operational reporting tool tracks the restaurant's operational performance in real-time and improves data-driven decision-making.
Possibly the most interesting feature here is a food cost tracking tool. You can automate the entire process of tracking your food costs and compare this to your estimated food costs. This is a useful way to identify and address issues in the food costing plan.
Mobile App
The platform offers a mobile app that lets you access your R365 features and data from anywhere. This is a convenient feature for restaurant owners and managers who want to stay on top of their business performance in real-time when they’re not on the premises.
Capital
A final feature to mention is the loan platform powered by Restaurant365 in partnership with Lendio. You can use the platform to connect with experienced loan experts and apply for capital funding for your restaurant.
Available Integrations
Integrations are one of Restaurant365’s strong points. As the software is designed to be all-in-one, it works with various other software solutions in four main areas.
These include:
- Inventory and accounting modules integrate with a restaurant's vendors.
- Accounting, payroll, and HR modules integrate with a restaurant’s bank.
- HR and scheduling modules integrate with the POS system.
- Scheduling and inventory modules use an open API so that the software can connect with virtually any system or platform.
R365 Connect
Restaurant365 Connect acts as the hub for the platform’s software integrations. The software can connect to POS systems, banks, and vendors through this platform, allowing for easy data transfer.
R365 also has an open API that allows you to connect your software system with virtually any other pertinent system or platform.
We mentioned earlier that R365 offers direct integrations with over 70 POS systems. The platform pulls data from your POS system, such as sales tickets and payment types, and uses this to create reports and assist with real-time decision-making.
It also offers integrations with major restaurant and food vendors. With this feature, you can automatically import vendor invoices to the system to help update actual food costs and inventory.
You can link the platform with your business bank account to import all banking activity into the system. This lets you use the software to automate accounts payable, bank reconciliation, pay vendors through Restaurant365, record daily deposits, and more.
Pricing Overview
Restaurant365 offers four plans billed quarterly or annually, with the latter offering a 10% discount. The plans have been designed so that you only pay for the modules you need. They also make it easy to scale the software as your restaurant business grows.
However, as you will see, the pricing plans don’t come cheap. Here is a breakdown of Restaurant365’s annual pricing details:
- Core Operations at $289 per location/month: Inventory, Scheduling, AP Capture, POS Connect
- Core Accounting at $289 per location/month: Inventory, Accounting, AP Automation, POS Connect
- Essential at $399 per location/month: Inventory, Scheduling, Accounting, AP Automation, POS Connect Smart Ordering, Smart Prep, Smart Labor, Recipe Costing, Manager Logbook
- Professional at $489 per location/month: Inventory, Scheduling, Accounting, AP Automation, Everything in Essential, Custom Financial Reports, Fixed Assets, Business Analytics
Platform Pros
- Excellent financial reporting features that align with restaurant operations
- Direct integration with loads of POS systems, banks, and vendors
- A useful forecasting tool
- Essential and professional plans have a recipe costing feature
- Unlimited users
- An all-in-one restaurant management platform
R365 Cons
- An expensive accounting solution if you only need general bookkeeping software
- Subscription prices double for each location
- No reservation and waitlist management solutions
- The system is quite challenging to set up and understand
Conclusion
As our Restaurant 365 review shows, businesses get fairly extensive functionality with this platform.
Access to real-time financial data from restaurants in multiple locations makes it easier to streamline operations. The forecasting tools, inventory management, and accounting integrations are all excellent. Plus, POS integrations make it simpler to optimize front and back-of-house operations.
However, Restaurant365 is expensive, and some restaurants may still want more features and functionalities. Ultimately, whether or not you buy into R365 will depend on your business goals. If you’re in the market for a powerful account, POS, and invoicing system, R365 might suit your needs.
If you’re looking to streamline your event management process - you should check out Perfect Venue. You can try it free or contact our team for a demo to see how it could work for your business.
