Having looked at thousands of tax returns of gas stations, convenience stores, truck stops and car washes, from a financing point of view, deals are definitely more difficult to evaluate when the store does not have a decent software package that integrates with the POS package. I’m not referring to just general software like QuickBooks, Xero etc. Those are all fine accounting packages. I’m referring to convenience store accounting packages where you can quickly differentiate from inside sales, including QSR sales but also to monitor fuel sales.
- It makes it easier to monitor the health of the business. Financials can be generated almost immediately.
- It makes it easier for financing also, since most lenders like to have inside and outside sales broken down.
Since there are multiple philosophies of marketing fuel (low margins high gallonage, high margins low gallonage and average gallonage and inside sales, it’s difficult to underwrite when these are not clearly laid out in the financials.
In times when the price of fuel has been more volatile, it is even more important to know how the business is doing at all times.
There is a section of C-store account packages at the following link: https://petromac.com/accounting-software/