Without these features you will probable ignore important business functions, lose sales opportunities and live with bad data. Some restaurant products integrate with third party software to solve these problems but this is not usually the best solution. For example, how do you order inventory in a product like Quick Books and then consume the inventory in your restaurant system and keep inventory accurate? How do you carry and consume the inventory in both places without constant double entry? How do you maintain daily accurate inventory in both places. How do you account for food loss in both inventory systems? What do you do when the inventory reports in both systems do not match? How do you move food loss into your third party accounting general ledger? How do you create food recipes in your restaurant system and maintain inventory levels for the individual items in your Quick Books system.

You will have similar problems in product definitions, accounts receivable, payroll, vendor orders, vendor payments, tax definitions, product pricing, unit of measure conversions, reorder reports, and many others.

Along with your restaurant functions you want a system where you can assign multiple vendors to each product, pick the vendor to receive the order for a specific product reorder, automatically convert the unit of measure from cases to each when the product is received, store the product in inventory, print a check to the vendor by due date, have the general ledge entries automatically occur, and print a general ledger report to reflect the changes to inventory, the bank account and accounts payable. These business functions are easily completed on a single system. Try doing this in two different systems.

All business accounting systems also include an accounts receivable module. You will need this module for your restaurant. If you support catering for large parties, care centers, schools, government agencies, family members etc. they may want to pay you on-account. Using a restaurant software system that supports accounts receivable, you will typically press an on-account button and select a customer to add an order to accounts receivable. All your inventory and sales data will be tracked as usual. The general ledger a/r account will be increased to reflect the on account order. And, if you print an accounts receivable report you will see this order and all others that have been processed on-account. When the check or credit card for the on-account order is received you will go into accounts receivable and receive the payment. All appropriate general ledger accounts will be adjusted. Try doing this on two systems.