Farm Shops and Cafes – Financial Management for Retail Enterprises
Many estates now include retail businesses, for example farm shops or cafes/restaurants, and these often require different financial management systems and processes to the core business. Ryan Pearcy , SB Digital Director looks at some of the issues facing farm retail businesses and how modern technology can help resolve these effectively.
The issues Farm shops and café/restaurants often complement existing estate activities. They frequently arise from opportunity and, as a result, controls and processes tend to follow, rather than being designed at the outset. Utilising the right systems can generate additional income effectively, without costing an arm and a leg. Most retail businesses have a till system. Traditionally these were isolated systems, meaning all takings had to be manually copied from the till printouts into the finance system. This way of reconciling takings is so ingrained that HMRC accepts the copying of information from daily till printouts into finance software as a caveat to Making Tax Digital (MTD) compliance. Although this may mean you have an “out” for this aspect of reporting it doesn’t remove the financial admin burden. Not only does the information on the daily takings need to go on to the finance system but this needs to be reconciled against the many different payment methods as they come into the bank, which often don’t tie up. A smart integrated system automatically posts transactions in a way that enables one click reconciliation.
Card payments have become the number one method of paying for goods - a development which accelerated during the pandemic. This has the benefit of reducing the risk of fraud from theft as well as making the retail team more efficient by removing the need to manually “cash up” at the end of a day. It doesn’t remove the risk of error though. Most card payment terminals are not connected to a till which means the value needs to be entered manually, which can introduce errors. To ensure an automated process you would need a modern card payment terminal that integrates into your till system. Most modern till systems will have stock management built in that reduces stock levels as items are purchased. A successful store maximises profits on popular goods whilst selling off slower-selling items at reduced prices. This is only possible with insights on the products themselves, including turnaround time and margins. This is further complicated with perishable goods which are often a key selling area for farm shops. To generate these insights, systems need to not only track stock and sales, but have dashboards and reporting functionality.
8 | SCRUTTON BLAND | AGRICULTURE AND FARMING
Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog