CARD Advance helps your hospitality business with a microcredit (€2 000 to €50 000)
AAPI and Growzer optimise and automate your staff cost and kitchen management.
This collaboration of CARD Advance, Growzer and AAPI runs until 30 June 2021. Want to know how this works?
Contact info@aapi.be for more info and terms and conditions.
The white cash register or registered POS system (GKS) is catapulting us all the way into the digital age alongside the formal economy. Now, the GKS is still viewed too much as a control tool, while it contains a wealth of information for hospitality operators.
Business models based on big data analytics today make it possible to make informed and efficient decisions faster and even predict future trends.
Data mining traces anomalies, patterns and correlations in data sets containing millions of data in milliseconds. A level of detail that you and I as humans cannot pick up.
Digital disruption continues unabated in every sector, and data plays a leading role in this evolution. So anyone who wants to keep up today in this rapidly changing world had better know how data can contribute to tomorrow’s business.
We may well see (big) data as the new oil: a raw material of strategic importance for companies. Unlike oil, data are not scarce; we are all emitting a deluge of data at lightning speed. But like oil, data has little added value in ‘raw form’: we can only really use it if we first refine it into actionable insights. So if we deploy the right tools, we can indeed make sense of that huge, rapidly growing and unstructured volume of data and find correlations in it that lead to unexpected and valuable insights.
Perhaps there is a plethora of data present in your hospitality organisation today and there is a real chance that you can extract more from it than you are doing today. Potentially, there are also insights hidden in this that can help you address your current and future challenges. Measuring is knowing but it is not enough.
AAPI is the tool that unlocks and links all that information as well as the data from numerous other new hospitality technologies. With one swipe of the smartphone, hospitality entrepreneurs get transparent financial insight into all aspects of their business.
Based on the Digital Business Dashboard, AAPI also formulates recommendations and advice that lead to smart route-to-market solutions. This advice allows the hospitality entrepreneur to make correct and fundamentally sound decisions.
No more monkeybusiness
To be successful in the hospitality industry, there is more to it than that. More than ever before, there will be a need for human contact and high-quality, personal service. The successful entrepreneur of the future will build on digital perfection and a new form of human communication. AAPI, No more monkey business!
AAPI tells you some tricks to plan as efficiently and flexibly as possible. AAPI’s planning and payroll module ensures that you receive the tips & trics below as a smart sensor and notification in your planning at the moment it matters for your optimal efficiency estimate and calculation. AAPI’s intelligent sensors playfully tell you everything about the social legal implications of your actions in the field.
There is no such thing as complete flexibility, you know that too. Your employees are not hanging on by a thread. As a rule, you will have to announce your variable hourly schedules at least five days in advance. However, with overtime, flexi-jobs, students and interims, you can quickly pump in some hours. Changing your schedule during the week and cutting hours at the last minute is not possible, unless your employees agree. A good discussion with your employees beforehand seems to us to be the only right start. It will be give and take in the next few weeks anyway.
Unlike in most sectors, there is quite a bit of stretch on hourly schedules in the hospitality industry, thanks to the ‘great flexibility’ system. This allows your people to perform their contract hours not strictly on a weekly basis, but on average over a longer period, usually a year. If the first few weeks of the restart are on the calm side, you may only allow your full-time employee to work 30 hours, for example. You let the other 8 hours catch up as soon as you get back to full speed. This avoids being stuck with too many fixed hours that you may not be able to fill all of them. You do need to make sure that each employee has neatly performed their average contract hours at the end of the year. To take advantage of the great flexibility, it is especially important that your labour regulations provide for the principle as well as the hours.
You all know about net overtime. In the next few months, they will become even more important. On net overtime, you pay no patronage charges and the employee no taxes or NSSO. Although flexi-jobs or students are sometimes slightly cheaper, the advantage of these hours is that they are performed by your most experienced employees. Moreover, it is also nice for them that this allows them to quickly make up some of their lost income from during the force majeure. And did you know that you can also apply these hours for flexi-jobbers and students, provided they are full-time, of course.
Part-time employees are unfortunately the least interesting of all from a cost perspective. You don’t get a box office discount for them, you can’t let them perform net overtime and their flexibility is also limited. Thus, you can let them perform 12 ‘credit hours’ each month on top of their hourly schedule. However, you should note that if this happens regularly, the part-timer may demand a contract increase. This is when the contract supplement might be a better alternative. With this, you temporarily increase contract hours for a week or a month. And if your part-timer has a 38-hour attachment for a particular week, you can even apply net overtime for that week!
Permits and approvals: it’s pretty much the first thing every start-up catering entrepreneur has to deal with. Not only is the number of permits already quite high, the entrepreneur also has to comply with all the rules at different levels: federal, regional, local, …
Because both the hotel and catering industry and the government services clearly benefit from a simplification of procedures, a number of city councils have appointed hotel and catering-specific online portals, e-deskettes and hotel and catering coaches. And the Flemish ict-organisation for local authorities V-ICT-OR has also made work of a digital hospitality counter, through which the (starting) hospitality operator can arrange all licence applications and other administrative obligations.
Through all these systems, start-up entrepreneurs are guided through the schemes specifically applicable to them, which they can apply for or handle directly. This concerns the correct choice and handling of insurance, price indications, music in the business, smoking in the catering industry, alcohol, VAT receipts, hygiene, Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain (FASFC), environment, company waste, signboard, terrace, and so on. Authentic sources such as the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE) and the national register are used as much as possible. Links are also provided to the digital back-office systems of federal, Flemish and local administrations.
The streamlining and automation of this process not only ensures that the hospitality operators are immediately guided through all the necessary procedures, it simultaneously provides a great relief of the administrative burden on the (local) boards.
In Belgium, the white till has caused a shock effect. The introduction of this GKS meant that all catering managers were ready for a thorough professionalisation of their cash register system and their overall management. So no more gut feeling, time to keep accurate records, calculate and plan everything. This is the only way for catering entrepreneurs to ensure that they operate with healthy margins, use their staff efficiently and keep a well-run business in the long term.
Together with government measures on human resources in the hospitality industry, this ensured that digital tools quickly found their way into the sector. In their slipstream followed management tools, ordering solutions, marketing platforms, food safety applications and accounting packages.
Digitalisation is making it increasingly easy to support hospitality entrepreneurs in their business operations. Entrepreneurs are also more active online. The white box office has certainly helped this in the Belgian hospitality industry. New entrepreneurs are also open-mindedly looking at digital tools and incorporating them un their management and governance. The insights they gain from them are a crucial management component.
A hospitality-specific digital tool, AAPI for example is a feat of digital innovation and can rightly be considered the flight forward. Not only does it provide complete transparency for personnel management, it also helps the hospitality entrepreneur to schedule his personnel efficiently, to continuously monitor personnel costs – among other things by linking it to an automatic check-in and check-out function – and to communicate more smoothly with employees. In addition, all contract management is done digitally and there is an automatic link with Dimona.
Often, more efficient and transparent staff management goes hand in hand with better cost management in all areas. After all, staff costs are part of the total cost per dish and therefore have a direct impact on the price you have to charge. To calculate the price needed to achieve the target margin, you also need to have a perfect view of the cost of each ingredient and the dose you need of that ingredient in the dish. The Growzer tool, for example, can help you map out all your F&B catering management. Central ordering, automatic 24-hour stock management, smart menu engineering and maximum cost control are among Growzer’s capabilities.
If you list your HR administration, People Management, F&B costs as well as your overheads, you suddenly have a pretty complete picture of your expenses. If you collect all this Business Data in AAPI, then you can calculate which dishes are the cheapest and which the most expensive, which ones you can charge the biggest margin on and what impact the price increase of a particular ingredient has on the profitability of a dish. Only then can you make truly informed decisions: do you raise your price, use a little less of that expensive ingredient or just dump the dish from your offer?
In this way, a hospitality operator achieves a level of professional management never seen before. Every change is registered, which is good for transparency towards the authorities but also for insight into business operations. Because a good overview of costs and the factors that influence these costs almost automatically leads to better management, and to better decisions.
Or how the white box office might eventually contribute to a more profitable business after all.
With AAPI, you always have visibility of your returns.
AAPI helps create your schedule in a simple drag-and-drop style.
Depending on wage costs and returns, AAPI will present you with the best candidates and their availabilities.
You can draw up contracts in a jiffy without having to check with your social secretary.
Let your employees sign their contracts and documents digitally, without the hassle of printing, signing and scanning.
As an employer, you upload your signature once. AAPI automatically places this on every document signed by your employee. All documents are stored securely online.
What about Dimona declarations?
Dimonas are automatically adjusted according to your employees’ schedules or absences. You are sure that everything is correct and you are socio-legal in order, even after the shifts.
AAPI always has a ready-made digital answer to any socio-legal question.
Constantly changing social legislation and increasing complexity around taxation and new technologies require a lot of attention. AAPI keeps its own finger on the pulse so you don’t have to.
Imagine…
…You have scheduled a flexi employee, but due to the inclement weather you decide last minute to cancel this colleague.
The dimona declaration was already made, and you don’t immediately think of cancelling it… 😅 Recognisable?
“Shit! Forgot to cancel Dimona declaration!”
Thanks to AAPI’s feature ‘automatic cancellation Dimona declaration’, an already scheduled Dimona declaration is automatically deleted when an employee has not clocked in (illness, shift change, …)
As an employer, you can choose this ‘cancellation moment’ yourself. For example, x minutes after scheduled start time, or x minutes after scheduled end.
Every time a Dimona declaration is automatically cancelled, you will receive a notification from AAPI, so you will be aware of any changes at any time of the day.
Useful right? 💪
Create a new employment contract for every new employee?
To print, send, hand-sign and scan those contracts afterwards …🥱
Fair? A person has better things to do. With AAPI, you create contracts, can have them digitally signed by your staff and store them all in a central place.
No more documents getting lost! Done with all that paperwork.
With AAPI’s ‘Contracts WIZARD’, you extend multiple fixed-term hospitality contracts (for students, flexis, permanent employees,…) in no time.
The flow of this particular HR admin is super clear, and in terms of ‘user-friendliness and experience’ there is talk in terms of ‘extra efficient’ and ‘lightning-fast’. As ever, AAPI’s smart sensors also smoothly guide you through the hospitality-specific (PC 302) social legal points of interest in this flow. And according to good AAPI practice, the entire administrative flow (automatic renewal of contracts – automatic submission of contracts for signature in AAPI ME – automatic sending of dimonas) is complete.
Always in order at every social inspection 👮♂️
But now that administrative shit comes with it. ‘Ouhnee!’, we can already hear you saying.
No worries!!
Invite new employees via SMS or via the app AAPI ME to and let them register all their personal data themselves in the AAPI ME app. (Android/IOS).
Once this employee has filled in all the details, you will be notified via a
notification.
AAPI will then (based on the chosen status) automatically create the dimona and contract.
Scheduling shifts with AAPI? A piece of cake!
With AAPI, you create a schedule in a simple drag-and-drop style.
No more those gigantic Excel files, which don’t really make sense to anyone.
You choose from a list of free employees, invite them to a shift at the same time and in 2 minutes your schedule is made.
Your staff can also indicate in advance which shifts they would/could like to take.
Every entrepreneur knows that things often turn out differently than you originally thought. Last-minute changes to your schedule? That’s really k*****! 😣
With AAPI, you can switch quickly and fill absences.
Someone who unexpectedly doesn’t show up or won’t get there? Relax!
Send a quick message in WHATSAAPI or get the best candidates and their availabilities suggested by AAPI in function of salary cost and efficiency.
Thanks to AAPI, you handle the optimal shift change in just a few clicks.
These are automatically adjusted and sent according to your employees’ schedules or absences. You can be sure that everything is correct and that you are socio-legally in order, even after the shifts 😉
“Have those contracts been signed yet?”
Due to all sorts of circumstances, your employee may forget to sign his/her contract, and sometimes, as an employer, you simply forget to follow up or check.
A little nuance or nonchalance, but you don’t want to come to this observation during a social inspection in your catering business…. 👮♂️
A signed contract is conclusive proof of the agreements you have made with your employee, and one of the documents that is routinely requested during a social inspection tour.
To avoid that kind of hassle, AAPI has developed the ‘do not clock in without a signed contract’ notification.
If you activate this ‘gentle reminder’, AAPI’s smart sensors ensure that employees cannot clock in if there is no signed contract available from them.
And so no one starts his/her shift without the contract being signed🤝.
Not only is this then the perfect time to put contracts in order; it also takes no more than a few seconds to sign contracts. Through the respective AAPI apps, employer and employee can digitally sign the contract in a beat.
Important: Of course, as an employer, you still have the option of quickly clocking in your employee manually.
According to our customers, the above notification is interesting when you work with students on daily contracts. This type of contract often needs to be drawn up, and is often forgotten.
If this notification is active, employee and employer will be notified, and the contract can be signed digitally immediately.
For every absence request (illness, holiday, recup holiday, parental leave, economic unemployment,… ), AAPI automatically suggests fellow employees with the same function.
“Damn, Alex is sick in bed and can’t come to work!”
No worries! Thanks to AAPI, you switch quickly to unexpected changes. In just a few clicks, you have planned the ideal replacement.
Even before your coffee gets cold, you have already found a replacement☕
Those are automatically adjusted and sent according to your employees’ schedules or absences. You can be sure that everything is correct and that you are in order before social inspection.
Processing and managing absences has never been so smooth!
P.S. We have since learned that Alex has recovered completely and is back at work smoothly💪.
