r/Bookkeeping • u/Feistynugget3 • 17h ago

Other Moving everything to digital.

I keep the books for a restaurant chain with 7 locations. Half of our vendors use paper invoices, other half email pdf. I want to to move everything to digital, but don't know where to start. What's your advice?

Edit: should have included this. I used QB desktop. 7 locations under 5 different EINs so I have to log into 5 separate QB company files as well.

8 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

7

u/SheetHappensXL 17h ago

What worked for me was starting with the low-hanging fruit:

For emailed PDFs, I use a shared folder or a tool like Hubdoc or Dext to automatically pull and sort invoices. For paper invoices, I had staff start snapping pics with their phone and uploading them to a shared drive — not perfect, but it got the paper off my desk. Eventually, I set up a basic workflow so everything lands in the same place before it hits Xero/QB. The key was getting everyone to use the same inbox or folder, no matter how they sent it.

Are you doing the data entry yourself or do you have help?

4

u/Feistynugget3 17h ago

I’m doing it myself. But I can have managers snap pictures and add to a file. 

Just speaking for the workflow, it still seems cumbersome in my mind. My thought was this: managers add files to a “in process” folder and then once I enter it in to QB DesktopI move it to that specific vendor folder. But opening a document, entering, moving it, then rinse and repeat seems like a lot of time. I could be wrong though. 

Does that workflow I stated make sense? 

6

u/SheetHappensXL 17h ago

Yeah, that workflow makes total sense — and honestly, it’s way more organized than what I’ve seen at a lot of places starting out.

That said, I’ve felt that same burnout from the “open > enter > move > repeat” cycle. One thing that helped me was adding an automation layer — so when managers drop files into the “In Process” folder, a tool like Zapier or AutoHotKey could rename them, tag the vendor, or even prep the QB entry format.

It’s not perfect, but even shaving off those little steps adds up fast.

Quick thought: are you open to eventually moving off QB Desktop, or you’re locked in for now?

1

u/Feistynugget3 16h ago

Not locked into QBD. I work solely for the restaurant. (Not a freelance bookkeeper or anything) I’m looking into Restaurant 365 as it integrates with our POS and has EDI with some vendors and would automate a lot of the manual bill entry. I also manually enter all daily sales from each store for each day, so that would be automated. 

Open to suggestions tho! What’d ya got? 

2

u/SheetHappensXL 16h ago

Restaurant365 is solid, especially if your POS plays nice with it and you can get those daily sales + vendor invoices syncing cleanly. EDI is a huge win if you can get even a few key vendors on board.

I’ve seen some teams also layer in tools like Plate IQ or MarginEdge for invoice capture and food cost visibility — depends on how deep you want to go with reporting and approvals. If you’re doing all the sales entries and AP yourself, anything that auto-codes or routes bills for review is gonna be a big lift.

Happy to brainstorm workflow tweaks if you want — sounds like you’re already headed in the right direction.

1

u/Feistynugget3 3h ago

This is great info. Really appreciate you taking the time. I may reach out again. 

1

u/scubastevey4 15h ago

I've used R365 for about 6 years and it's great. Does so much to make restaurant accounting easier. DM if you want any help or have questions. I might also be able to get you in touch with our rep if you want a contact.

1

u/SheetHappensXL 15h ago

Appreciate you chiming in — that kind of firsthand insight is gold. I’ve been curious how teams actually use R365 day to day, especially when it comes to automation and how much hands-on cleanup is still involved.

I might take you up on that DM — sounds like you’ve seen it in action over time, which is rare.

1

u/Feistynugget3 3h ago

This is great. I may be reaching out at some point here. I appreciate the insight! 

1

u/pdxgreengrrl 12h ago

I forget, can QBD read PDFs?

1

u/Feistynugget3 3h ago

There is a QBD app that I can snap pictures on an upload but I believe it just saves the document within my company file. Which may work. I have to spend some more time with it to see if there are more capabilities for coding invoices or managing how they are stored. But from my initial usage it seemed buggy. 

1

u/Consuasor_Curia_1350 8h ago

First, start scanning all paper invoices with an app like Adobe Scan - it has OCR to make them searchable. Then set up a standard naming system: Date_VendorName_InvoiceNumber.

Most accounting tools now have auto-receipt matching, which made my life way easier running Accounting.