Bookkeeping for Restaurants

Restaurant bookkeeping goes wrong in a small number of predictable places, and almost all of them come down to the same thing: money arrives in a different shape than it was earned. A day's sales ring up in the point of sale system, but what lands in the bank is a credit card batch minus fees, a delivery platform deposit minus commission, and whatever cash made it to the deposit bag. Matching those back together, every day, is the actual work.

GlacialBooks is built for that reconciliation problem. Activity is categorized as it arrives, matches carry a confidence score, and every figure on your profit and loss traces back to the journal line and source event behind it, so when your food cost looks wrong you can find out why instead of guessing.

What makes restaurant books different

Daily sales do not equal daily deposits

Your point of sale reports gross sales. Your bank sees a credit card batch that settled a day or two later, net of processing fees, plus separate deposits from each delivery platform, net of their commission. If you record deposits as revenue, your sales are understated and your fees disappear into nothing. The correct treatment records gross sales from the sales summary and books the fees and commissions as expenses, then reconciles the net against the deposit.

This is the single most common way restaurant books get quietly wrong, and it compounds every day it goes unaddressed.

Tips are a liability, not revenue

Tips collected on card are money you are holding for your staff, not money you earned. They belong in a tips payable account until they are paid out through payroll or in cash. When tips run through revenue, both your sales and your labor picture distort, and reconciling payroll becomes guesswork.

Food and beverage cost only means something if inventory is right

Cost of goods sold for a restaurant is not simply what you paid vendors this month. It is beginning inventory plus purchases minus ending inventory, and if you skip the inventory adjustment your food cost percentage swings wildly month to month for no real reason. Vendor invoices also need splitting, because a single delivery often carries food, beverage, and paper and supplies that belong in different accounts.

Third-party delivery is its own reconciliation

Each delivery platform pays on its own schedule, nets out commission at its own rate, sometimes withholds for refunds and adjustments, and reports in its own format. The order total the customer paid and the deposit that reaches your bank are rarely the same number, and the gap is a real expense you need visibility into. Restaurants running three platforms are effectively running three separate reconciliations on top of their own.

Comps, voids, and cash over and short tell you things

Comps and voids are not just noise to be cleared. Tracked properly they show you where margin is leaking, whether that is remakes, staff meals, or something worth a conversation. Cash over and short works the same way, and it only becomes useful when it is a real account rather than a rounding difference someone plugs.

How GlacialBooks handles it

Bank and card feeds arrive with the source detail intact, and activity gets categorized continuously with the reasoning visible on every line, so a delivery platform deposit is recognized for what it is rather than dropped into a generic income bucket. Reconciliation runs with confidence scoring and a review queue, which is exactly what you want when deposits land in batches that do not match any single day's sales.

Arko runs the month-end close overnight, prepares the report packet, and leaves only the true judgment calls for you. The profit and loss, balance sheet, cash flow, and trial balance all tie back to the journal line and source event behind every figure, so when your food cost moves you can follow it to the invoices that caused it. Journal entries stay immutable and corrections post as reversals, which matters more in a business that gets audited for sales tax and payroll than most owners expect.

Receivables and payables live in the same workspace as everything else, so vendor bills, payment timing, and overdue reminders stop living in a separate tool and a paper folder.

If you are behind

A lot of restaurant owners are, and there is no judgment here. Months of unreconciled deposits, commingled cards, and a shoebox of vendor invoices is an ordinary situation rather than a crisis. GlacialBooks starts from wherever you actually are. Connect your accounts and the work begins on the history as well as the present.

Useful restaurant tools

Use the profit and loss builder to see sales, food and beverage costs, labor, and operating margin in one statement. The sales tax calculator loads the state base rate and keeps the local rate visible for planning, while the official state source stays linked beside the result. The QuickBooks comparison explains who runs the daily bookkeeping workflow, and GlacialBooks pricing shows the current product cost.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best bookkeeping software for a restaurant? The right tool is one that handles daily sales reconciliation, separates tips as a liability, splits vendor invoices across food, beverage, and supplies, and reconciles third-party delivery deposits that arrive net of commission. GlacialBooks does that categorization and reconciliation automatically and shows its reasoning on every line.

How do you record restaurant sales correctly? Record gross sales from your point of sale summary, then book credit card fees and delivery commissions as expenses, and reconcile the resulting net against what actually hits the bank. Recording the deposit as revenue understates both your sales and your costs.

Where do tips go in restaurant bookkeeping? Card tips are a liability, held in a tips payable account until they are paid out through payroll or in cash. They are not revenue and running them through sales distorts both your revenue and your labor cost.

How do I handle DoorDash and Uber Eats in my books? Each platform deposits net of its commission and on its own schedule, so record the gross order revenue and the commission as a separate expense, then reconcile against the actual deposit. Treating the deposit as your revenue hides a real cost that often runs a meaningful share of every delivery order.

How is restaurant cost of goods sold calculated? Beginning inventory plus purchases minus ending inventory. Skipping the inventory adjustment is why food cost percentages jump around month to month without the underlying business changing at all.

Connect your accounts and see your restaurant's books reconciled tomorrow morning. Start free.