If you’ve ever tried to manage your accounting software for restaurants, franchises, or wineries across multiple locations, you can probably relate. The chart of accounts starts simple, then slowly turns into a monster. Every time the business adds a new location, opens a new concept, launches a catering program, or decides it wants to track bar revenue separately from the kitchen, another layer of accounts gets added on.
After a few years of growth, what used to be a clean, manageable chart becomes a maze. Not because anyone did anything wrong, but because traditional accounting systems leave you no other choice.
This is why operators light up when they finally understand how dimensional reporting works. If you’re tired of feeling stuck with your basic accounting software, you’re going to want to see what dimensional reporting can do for you.
A Better Way to Slice the Business
61% of restaurant operators reported traffic declines between 2023 and 2024, and more than one-third said their restaurants weren’t profitable last year. When margins are that tight, you can’t afford guesswork. Better reporting and clearer analytics become non-negotiable. That’s where dimensional reporting can help.
Instead of rebuilding your chart of accounts for every new reporting question, software with dimensional reporting, like Sage Intacct, lets you tag transactions with flexible dimensions so you can slice the business any way you need. Think of them like clean, consistent labels the system understands. Labels that give you instant visibility into how the business is performing from whichever angle matters that day.
For restaurants and wineries, those angles change constantly. Maybe today you need to understand how take-out performed compared to dine-in. Tomorrow, the CFO wants to compare labor efficiency between locations. Next month, a franchise owner wants to see how catering is trending in one region versus another. In traditional accounting software for restaurants, every one of those questions requires building another messy report or expanding the chart of accounts. With Sage Intacct dimensions, it’s simply a matter of selecting the lens you want to look through.
Midsize restaurant owners, in particular, are feeling the squeeze. Industry reports show they’re having the most trouble navigating current economic conditions and maintaining healthy profit margins. It’s no surprise operators are looking for tools, like Sage Intacct’s accounting software for restaurants, that help them stay ahead instead of scrambling behind the numbers.
This is where Sage Intacct really matches the rhythm of the industry. Instead of forcing your business to conform to the limitations of a traditional accounting system, Sage Intacct flexes with the way your operation actually runs, and that flexibility matters now more than ever.
Today’s customers expect more, and restaurants know it, with 39% of surveyed restaurant owners saying they plan to use data insights to better understand what their customers want as a way to stay competitive. That kind of analysis simply isn’t possible when your reporting is stuck in spreadsheets and static monthly statements.
With dimensional reporting, you can track performance by meal period (like breakfast, lunch, dinner, late-night, or takeout) without creating different versions of every revenue or cost account. You can separate front-of-house and back-of-house costs, or break out bar revenue from kitchen revenue, without reinventing your whole reporting structure. You can assign dimensions for locations, brands, or regions, which is a lifesaver for franchise groups managing dozens (or hundreds) of units.
Special events and catering become easy to analyze, too. If you’re a winery hosting weddings and private events or a restaurant adding a catering arm, those costs and revenues no longer need their own set of accounts. Tag the event, and Sage Intacct handles the rest. The system stays clean and simple. The reporting gets sharper. Everyone wins.
Most operators reach a point where the business outgrows the software they started with. New locations get added. Franchisees join the network. A new concept launches in another city. Suddenly, the chart of accounts starts to crack under the weight of all that complexity.
Dimensions fix that. They make it possible to fold new entities or new lines of business into your reporting without redesigning everything from scratch. Controllers can see the entire enterprise in one consolidated view while also drilling right down into a single restaurant, a specific brand, or a region that needs attention. Managers see only what’s relevant to them, and everyone sees the same numbers. No more reconciling spreadsheets or explaining why one report doesn’t match another. It creates a reporting foundation that can keep pace with the business… instead of holding it back.
Operators waste SO much time on spreadsheets because their system can’t slice the data the way they need. When your POS, accounting software, and reporting tools all live in different worlds, you end up exporting, reformatting, building pivot tables, and manually stitching together insights at the end of each month.
Dimensions break that cycle. They turn reporting into something dynamic and usable in real time, not after the fact. You can look at prime cost trends daily, understand how takeout is affecting labor, compare table turnover across locations, or see which brands are outperforming, all without juggling multiple sources of truth. The finance team gets cleaner data. Operators get faster insight, and leadership gets confidence that the numbers they’re seeing are the same numbers everyone else is using.
For growing restaurants, franchises, wineries, and hospitality operators, accounting software for restaurants with dimensional reporting is the difference between chasing numbers and understanding the business. It lets you keep the chart of accounts lean, gives you flexibility as you grow, and finally delivers reporting that keeps up with the real speed of the industry. Once operators see how dimensions work, it becomes hard to imagine running the business any other way.
If you’d like to see Sage Intacct’s dimensional reporting in action or talk through how it could simplify your reporting, we’d be happy to walk you through it. Just reach out, and we’ll take it from there.