Cuisine Served with Tact
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to sit down with Iwan Hokahin. He is the owner and head chef of Barrel House; an upscale bar and restaurant on the island of St. Eustatius. Barrel House offers its guests a fusion of international cuisine with an authentic Caribbean touch. Food and drinks are served by friendly staff in a lively atmosphere that boasts beachfront views and live entertainment. Barrel House is popular with many locals and even attracts visitors from nearby islands eager to sample its cuisine!
Technology Stack
From January 2023 Tact has been supporting Barrel House with its accounting and advisory needs. As with all of our clients, we aimed to provide Barrel House with an accounting system that would enable its success. Popular restaurants like Barrel House experience a high volume of sales; particularly via card payments. This is a payment method that is becoming increasingly popular locally and beyond. Additionally, keeping track of purchases and amounts owed to suppliers was established to be an important criteria for Barrel House in managing its cash flow.
With the above and other requirements in mind we began setting up Barrel House’s accounting system. The final setup allows for invoices and receipts from suppliers to be easily processed and sent to the accounting application. This allows for up to date reporting of outstanding vendor balances due. Additionally we implemented a tool called Tactly (developed by our sister company) to ensure that the high volume of MCB bank transactions for Barrel House would be sent directly to the accounting application. This would eliminate the need for manual data entry, reduce errors and allow Iwan to spend more time in the kitchen doing what he loves!
Accounting & Advice
Aside from maintaining Barrel House’s accounting system, we provide the business with a full range of services including accounting, payroll, tax filing and advisory. Every month we complete bookkeeping and provide Barrel House with an income statement and balance sheet report. Throughout the year we handle all tax filings to the Belastingdienst including ABB, loonbelasting and opbrengstbelasting. At year end we automatically prepare and file the annual statements to the Belastingdienst.
We also provide advice to Barrel House on both an ongoing and project basis. One of the earliest advisory projects we completed for Barrel House was A/B tax planning. With this service we looked at the tax and business implications for Barrel House operating as a sole trader (option A) versus a BV (option B). The results showed that Barrel House would be better off tax and business wise operating as a BV.
As a follow-up, we assisted Barrel House with the necessary legal and paperwork to make this change. After the new BV was incorporated by the notary, we assisted with completing and filing the necessary forms with the business registry, Belastingdienst, license department and other relevant parties. Our advisory team took charge of the entire processing including even making sure the relevant accounting entries were made to reflect the business had switched from a sole trader to a BV.
Looking Forward
As the tourism sector continues to bounce back post Covid19 and the island’s development continues, we anticipate that this will have a positive impact on Barrel House and other local bars and restaurants. In the immediate term there will be the need to navigate the high costs of doing business with increasing staff and food costs. We look forward to continuing supporting Barrel House with navigating the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
