Mid-2005, Lagos – Nigeria. Kazeem(not real name), the owner of a restaurant and bar operation grossing a million naira in monthly sales approached his bank for funding towards expansion. Unfortunately, after some meetings, the bank was forced to turn down Kazeem’s request, but NOT due to lack of collateral!
He could not supply adequate and comprehensive records of daily sales and expenses covering the ten years his business had been running!
Most of the records were on paper, disorganised, and therefore not easily retrievable. The bank manager, who knew Kazeem well, was shocked to learn that Kazeem did not even have a paper based accounting system in place, that tracked the inflow and outflow of cash in the business.
As a result there was almost no way to accurately determine how much sales and expenses had taken place over a particular period. As money came in, portions were often taken, for routine purchases and expenses, without formal documentation being done by those involved.
Only at the end of the week did the manager try to collate receipts and invoice totals, to arrive at estimates for reporting. But that did not happen regularly, and was often done in a haphazard manner.
All of this came to the fore, when the bank requestred for records to enable the bank estimate the turnover volume of Kazeem’s operations. Before then, even Hakeem had paid little attention to the need for proper record keeping, based of a formal system.
Luckily, all was not lost. The benk told him to get his records in order, and then return with them for discussions.
Kazeem called up Wale(real name) his accountant/auditor – who had repeatedly advised this line of action for years – about the most cost-effective way to do what the bank requested.
Wale recommended that an external developer be engaged to develop a custom application – and suggested a self-taught Excel spreadsheet solutions developer* he knew, having seen work the latter had done for other clients at a fraction of the cost of other software solutions.
15th July 2005: The first meeting was held with the developer*.
Over the weeks that followed work progressed on the development of the app, with review meetings held intermittently, with the manager, to discuss progress, and conduct trial runs/demonstrations.
15th September 2005: The finished app was called Restaurant & Bar Manager™ 1.0
The manager of the restaurant (who had NEVER attended a single day’s computer training prior to the time) was already confidently using the “Restaurant and Bar Operations Manager” Excel VB application developed for use in the restaurant – on a daily basis.
NB: The bank had requested for up to one year of records to be provided – so data entry continued in earnest.
July 2006: The developer* called in to conduct a coaching session for a new employee
The new staff was specifically recruited to post daily entries into an improved version of the application. This was done so the manager could focus on monitoring daily operations.
A user-friendly, custom floating form based worksheet navigation menu and login authentication interface was added to the app, to prevent unauthorised users from gaining access to the data posted.
NB*: The developer’s name = Tayo Solagbade i.e. me.
The Restaurant & Bar Manager was an MS Excel-Visual Basic driven spreadsheet application (containing over 12 inter-linked worksheets).
It was built to help owners:
1. Use the computer to very easily, and accurately record their restaurant and bar operations raw sales/expense data for data analysis, trending and report generation, without having to undergo the pains of acquiring elaborate PC/Software user skills.
2. Maintain an accurate inventory of all food products, prices and period ending totals(you get daily, monthly and Year Till Date/Annual totals and percentages; profit margins estimates etc). You simply had to do daily posting of raw sales/expenses data using the automated custom data entry forms provided.
The app can be customised – or built from scratch – for other outfits to accommodate any peculiarities in their individual operations.
In 2008/2009 I built 2 new apps for large hotel clients. Each app has a restaurant module, incorporating the major features and functions of the Restaurant & Bar Manager.
One is called “Hotel Restaurant & Bars Manager (HRBM)™” – a single workbook application, like the Restaurant & Bar Manager.
The other app is called “Hotel Records Management System (HRMS)™“. It works across an intranet, allowing different hotel departments to post entries into seperate but interlinked workbook modules, which were all connected to a central reports generation workbook.
For details of how to purchase above described apps, and/or how a custom app can be built for you/your business, click here to send me a message.
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