Consolidated reporting across four venues

A small group has four venues: a café that does breakfast and lunch, a bistro that does dinner, a bar that does late nights and a newer restaurant that opened in the spring. Each manager sends their figures at the end of the month, in their own way, and the owner adds them up into a group total. The total rises, and nobody can say whether that is because the venues are doing well or because the new restaurant has been added in.

Consolidated reporting is the job of turning four sets of figures into one honest picture of the group. It means adding the venues together on the same definitions, dates and currency, separating the venues that traded throughout from those that did not and choosing the few figures that can fairly be compared between a café and a bar.

This guide covers how to consolidate a group's figures, the mistakes that creep in when venues are added together, and the three figures that travel between very different sites. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

Consolidated reporting brings several venues' figures together into one set of group figures, alongside each venue's own. It answers two questions: how is the group doing as a whole, and how is each venue doing within it?

The idea comes from accounting, where a consolidated financial statement presents a group of companies as if it were one. For a restaurant group, it is less formal, but the principle is the same: the group's figures should add up honestly from the venues' own.

Adding four totals together takes a minute. Making the sum mean something takes more care. Each venue may count sales differently, close its month on a different day, trade in a different currency or have opened partway through the year.

Without that care, the group total moves for reasons that have nothing to do with how the venues are run: a new venue opening, an old one closing for refurbishment, a currency rate moving, a manager changing how they count covers.

Start with one set of definitions for every venue. What counts as sales: before or after tax, before or after service charge, after discounts? What counts as a cover? What is a week, and which day does it start? When does a month close?

Write the definitions down once and send them to every manager. A group whose venues each define sales in their own way cannot be consolidated, however carefully the numbers are added.

Every venue's figures should cover the same dates. If one venue closes its month on the last day and another on the last Sunday, the group's month is a patchwork of different periods.

Use the same weeks and months for every venue, built from whole weeks if possible, so each period contains the same days for every site. The group's figures then cover one period, not four slightly different ones.

A group with venues in more than one country trades in more than one currency. Adding sales in different currencies without converting them is meaningless, and converting them at today's rate makes last month's figures move every time the rate changes.

Convert each day's sales at that day's rate, and keep the result fixed once the month is over. The group's past then stays the same whenever the report is run, and it reconciles with what was actually banked.

The most important split in consolidated reporting is between like-for-like venues, those that traded for the whole of both periods being compared, and the rest. A new venue adds sales with nothing to compare against; one closed for refurbishment removes them.

Report the like-for-like figure alongside the total. The total shows how large the business is; the like-for-like figure shows whether its venues are doing better or worse than before. A group whose total rises while like for like falls is growing by opening, not by trading well.

A café, a bistro, a bar and a restaurant are different businesses. They open at different hours, serve different guests, sell different mixes of food and drink and earn very different amounts per guest and per seat.

Comparing their raw figures side by side, covers, spend per head, revenue per seat, tells you mostly that they are different kinds of venue. A café will always serve more covers at a lower spend than a dinner restaurant; that is not a sign that either is doing well or badly.

Some figures travel between different kinds of venue because they compare each venue with itself or measure a share rather than an amount. Three are especially useful: growth against the venue's own matching weeks last year, prime cost as a share of sales, and the share of guests who return.

Each is a percentage, so it means the same thing for a café as for a bar. Together, they show whether each venue is growing, whether it is running efficiently and whether its guests like it enough to come back.

Growth against the same weeks last year, for each venue, is the fairest way to compare venues of different kinds. A café growing by six per cent and a bar growing by two per cent can be compared directly, because each is measured against itself.

Use matching weeks, not dates, and allow for each venue's own closures, festivals and changes. A venue that added a terrace or longer hours this year should report like for like without them, with the new trade shown separately.

Prime cost, food and drink cost plus labour, as a share of sales, travels well between venues because it measures how much of each sale is spent producing it. A café and a bar have different cost structures, but each has a share it should stay within, and a rise in that share is a warning at either.

Compare each venue's prime cost share with its own target and its own past, rather than expecting every venue to hit the same number. A bar with a high drinks share will often run a lower prime cost than a café selling mostly food.

The share of guests who come back, within a few months of a first visit, travels between venues because every kind of venue depends on regulars. A café whose guests return weekly and a restaurant whose guests return monthly can each be compared with their own past.

A falling return rate is often the earliest sign that something is wrong at a venue: service slipping, a menu change guests dislike, a competitor nearby. It usually shows up before the sales do.

Some figures should not be compared across different kinds of venue at all: covers, spend per head, revenue per seat, table turns and ticket times. Each is shaped by the kind of venue, its hours and its menu.

Use them within each venue, against its own past and its own targets, and between venues only when they are genuinely similar, such as two bistros in similar areas. Comparing a café's spend per head with a restaurant's leads only to wrong conclusions.

Groups are prone to particular reporting mistakes: venues with different definitions, months that close on different days, currencies converted at the wrong rate, new venues mixed into like for like and figures averaged across venues that behave differently.

An average spend per head across a café and a restaurant, for example, rises if the restaurant's share of the group's guests grows, even if both venues' spend per head falls. Our guide to six reporting mistakes that lead to bad decisions covers these and how to avoid them.

A restaurant dashboard for the group shows the few figures the owner needs every day: sales, covers and the key shares, for the group and for each venue, against the previous period. It is a glance, not an analysis, and it should take a minute to read.

The detail belongs in each venue's own reports. Our guide to a restaurant dashboard you look at daily covers what belongs on one.

Consolidated reporting does not replace each venue's own reports. Each manager still needs their daily report, their weekly review and their monthly figures, because the decisions that improve a venue are made at that venue.

The group report sits on top of them. It gathers the figures that matter at group level and leaves the rest where it is useful. Our guide to restaurant reporting: six reports, no more covers the set each venue needs.

A group has costs that belong to no single venue: the owner's salary, a central office, a shared accountant, a group marketing budget. Deciding how to share them across the venues changes each venue's profit, and arguments about the method can take over the meeting.

Keep it simple. Report each venue's profit before shared costs, which is what the manager can influence, and show the shared costs as a separate line for the group. If they must be shared out, do it by a simple rule, such as share of sales, and use the same rule every month.

Consolidated reporting is one part of running multi venue operations well. The others, consistent standards, shared buying, a common way of training and briefing, all depend on knowing how each venue is doing in comparable terms.

A group that reports consistently can spot the venue that is slipping, learn from the venue that is improving and move people and ideas between them. One that cannot compare its venues fairly runs each one in the dark.

Each venue needs its own targets, set from its own past and its own kind of trade, rather than a single target for the whole group. A café's target for spend per head and a bar's would never be the same, and a group-wide target would be wrong for both.

The group's target is then the sum of the venues' targets, not a separate number. Each manager knows what they are aiming for, and the owner knows what the group will achieve if they get there.

Ranking venues against each other on raw figures, in a league table at the monthly meeting, is tempting and usually harmful. The café always tops the covers table, the restaurant always tops spend per head, and the managers learn that the table is about the kind of venue rather than how well it is run.

If you rank venues at all, rank them on the figures that travel: growth against their own past, prime cost against their own target and the share of guests who return. Then the ranking says something about the managers rather than the buildings.

A monthly group report usually needs one page. At the top, the group's total sales and like-for-like growth. Below, each venue's line: growth against its own last year, prime cost share against its target and the share of guests who return, with a sentence on anything unusual.

Below that, the shared costs and the group's profit. The report should take ten minutes to read and point the owner to the one or two venues that need attention.

The best use of the group report is a short monthly meeting with the venue managers. Each manager explains their own line in a few minutes: what moved, why and what they are doing about it.

Keep the meeting focused on the three travelling figures and the actions. A meeting that compares every figure for every venue becomes a contest between venues that are not alike, and the managers of the café and the bar end up defending the nature of their businesses.

A growing group should always separate the two sources of its growth: new venues and better trading. Both are good, but they say different things. Growth from opening shows ambition and capital; growth from trading shows that the venues are getting better at what they do.

Report them side by side every month. An owner who sees only the total may keep opening venues while the existing ones quietly decline, which is one of the most common ways for a growing group to get into trouble.

A new venue needs special handling in consolidated reporting. For its first year, it has nothing to compare with, so report it against its own budget and keep it out of the like-for-like figures. Its opening months are usually unrepresentative, with a launch period followed by a settling down.

After a full year, it joins the like-for-like set. Until then, a group total that includes it should be read with care.

A venue that closes, for good or for refurbishment, should leave the like-for-like figures for the period it was closed. Its last months may also be unusual, as trade winds down or a refurbishment approaches.

Report its figures separately for the months around the closure. A group whose like-for-like growth suddenly improves because a struggling venue has closed has not, in fact, started trading better.

Groups that have grown by buying venues often have different systems at different sites: one till here, another booking system there. Their figures may be defined differently even when they have the same name.

Until every venue is on one system, check each source's definitions against the group's and adjust before consolidating. Moving every venue to the same system, with the same settings, is usually the single biggest improvement a group can make to its reporting.

Lenders and investors usually want the group's consolidated figures, with the like-for-like growth and each venue's contribution. They will also want to know how the figures were put together: the definitions, the currency treatment and how new venues were handled.

Prepare a short note on the method and keep it with the reports. A group that can explain its figures clearly is far more convincing than one whose figures are impressive but unexplained.

An invented group runs a café, a bistro, a bar and a restaurant that opened in the spring. Its total sales are up eighteen per cent on last year, and the owner is pleased. The consolidated report, rebuilt on one definition of sales and matching weeks, shows like-for-like growth of only two per cent, with the new restaurant providing most of the rise.

By venue, the café is growing well, the bistro is flat and the bar's return rate has fallen for three months while its prime cost share has risen. The owner spends the next monthly meeting on the bar: a new manager had changed the late menu, and regulars disliked it. The menu is restored, and the bar's return rate recovers over the following months.

In servearound, the network dashboard covers all venues or one: revenue, covers, spend per cover and the no-show rate against the previous period, a revenue and covers trend, what is happening right now and figures such as returning guests, kitchen ticket time and top seller. Money from venues trading in different currencies is added up in the network's currency at the rate for each transaction's own date. Network transactions list every bill and paid order across the venues, with its venue, method, who took it, amount and status, and the Feedback tab gathers guest feedback from every venue, with a venue picker.

The detailed reports, for reservations, orders, payments, the kitchen, tables, the menu, guests and campaigns, are one venue at a time, chosen with a picker, so a side-by-side comparison of venues is built by switching between them. Food and drink costs and labour are not held in servearound, so prime cost comes from your own records. servearound is priced per venue; see pricing and Analytics.

Bringing several venues' figures together into one honest set of group figures, alongside each venue's own.

The figure from venues that traded for the whole of both periods, without new or closed venues.

Only on figures that travel: growth against their own past, prime cost share and the share of guests who return.

Convert each day's sales at that day's rate, and keep the result fixed once the month is over.

Against its own budget for its first year, outside the like-for-like figures.

Report each venue's profit before shared costs, and show the shared costs as a separate line.

Monthly, with a short meeting of the venue managers.

No. Each venue still needs its own daily, weekly and monthly figures.

Consolidated reporting turns several venues' figures into one honest picture of the group. It needs one set of definitions, the same dates for every venue, currencies converted at each day's rate and a like-for-like figure that leaves out venues that opened or closed. Without them, the group total moves for reasons that have nothing to do with how the venues are run.

Compare very different venues only on the figures that travel: growth against their own past, prime cost as a share of sales and the share of guests who return. Keep the group's restaurant dashboard to a glance, keep each venue's own restaurant reporting in place, watch for the reporting mistakes groups are prone to and use the monthly report to point attention at the venue that needs it, which is what good multi venue operations depend on.