As the restaurant industry evolves, optimizing operational efficiency is critical to success. In this conversation, Chris Gieske, Controller of Pouring With Heart, and Sean Skuro,
Director of Consulting Solutions and Customer Success at Sensiba, discuss how Pouring With Heart leverages Sage Intacct to support their rapidly growing business.
Note: This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you tell us a little about Pouring With Heart?
Chris: We’re a bar group founded in 2002, with 27 locations in California, Colorado, and Texas. Our first venue was in downtown Los Angeles, and that’s where we’re headquartered.
Prior to implementing Sage Intacct, what challenges were you facing?
Chris: Our old ERP was not capable of handling 27 entities in one file that you could view from top down to entity level. Additionally, getting real-time data in front of our GMs, directors, and executives so they could make the right call quickly was something our former ERP couldn’t do. We needed to be able to get them real-time information, especially coming out of COVID.
What made you decide to work with an implementation partner?
Chris: We all know that when you’re making a technology change, such as adding AP software or going from one ERP to another, your day-to-day accounting doesn’t stop. That’s where you need to have a trusted implementation partner that’s going to help you lead up to that cutoff deadline, help you get everything in order, and ensure everything is set up correctly so your transition is seamless. Your implementation partner is critical.
What are some of the things that you look for when you’re selecting an implementation partner?
Chris: I think it’s trust. You are literally putting the finances of your company in a third party’s hands. If something goes wrong, you’re talking delayed quarter closes, delayed year closes, and delayed audits. The first thing we looked for was great recommendations and references, somebody who knew Sage Intacct, who knew what we were getting into, and had delivered before.
What are some of the things you leverage in Sage Intacct that you didn’t realize were possible before?
Chris: We knew what we were getting with the dashboards, the bank reconciliation tools, and the overall fluidity of how you can book journal entries. There are so many other great things within Intacct. One is being able to put in multiple budgets and being able to run review analysis with real-time data within those dashboards.
We have a dashboard set up for GMs that pulls in our expenses and labor accruals. We’ve got our controllable expenses booked every day through our AP software into Intacct, so they can see exactly how we’re tracking sales.
That is a huge game-changer for us that allows us to make real-time moves within the week. If you’re trending in a way that’s going to put your venue in a bad spot, you can pivot from that. That’s key in the restaurant business.
How do your GMs manage the business? Does Sage Intacct enable them to do things they didn’t do before? How are they using their dashboards?
Chris: Our GMs and directors can see how a venue is trending so they can make in-the-week changes to their labor. If they’re seeing sales go a different direction, they’re able to make an adjustment.
If their costs are out of whack, they can work toward offsetting those costs in different ways. They can get creative. They can even go on a marketing push and blast out a happy-hour special. There are so many ways we can take real-time data and react.
On the finance side, because our drill-down dashboards are accessible to our GMs, they’ve become more financially literate. We have people who started as a barback who are now running a multimillion-dollar bar. They’re able to go through their spend and drill down to the exact invoices via their dashboard so they know what makes up their COGS.
They’re bettering their financial skillset, which, in turn, produces better GMs and directors. We not only get outstanding dashboards; we also get free financial education for our GMs.
Where have you seen some of the biggest impacts from Sage Intacct?
Chris: We were able to produce a construction dashboard that helped us track, over the course of the last two years, eight projects that we’ve built out for over $15 million. We utilized the project track module inside Intacct to build a dashboard that allows us to upload a construction budget by sub-construction division. A construction manager might be able to put in items like flooring, fixtures, furnishings, pool tables, and windows.
We’re able to book those entries as we go through a project and we can track any variance in real time. That has been huge in opening bars and building out two breweries. The amount of information we’ve been able to get from Intacct has been amazing.
Are there any other benefits you’ve experienced?
Chris: Sure, look at cost control. You can track and control costs at the purchasing level. Intacct has so many terrific buckets that you can put purchases in and run a slew of reports that provide great analysis to share with your partners and determine where to reduce costs.
What do you use most and why?
Chris: The last few quarters, my focus has been on budgeting and forecasting. We’ve been able to put multiple budgets in a dashboard to understand where we thought we were going and where we’re ending up. There’s a really cool tool inside Intacct called the forecast module, where you can take your actual spend, compare that with your budget forecast, and get a projected outcome for the quarter.
We all want the ability to play around with our forecasts or cash forecasts and be able to have different options as our budget plays out. Being able to access multiple budgets in one dashboard offers great analysis.
Are there other benefits?
Chris: Our close process has been seamless since we’ve jumped onboard with Sage Intacct. We close in seven business days and it’s become normal practice. It’s not something that I even highlight anymore because the systems have already done it for us.
To learn more about gaining greater visibility into your real-time business performance, contact us to book a Sage Intacct consultation.
