Bookkeeping & Billing for Restaurants & Hospitality

Bookkeeping for restaurants and hospitality businesses: how LedgerBPO runs it

Bookkeeping for restaurants & hospitality means tying each Toast or Square Z-report to the bank, recording delivery-platform payouts gross of commission, tracking tips as a liability until paid, and reporting food and labor cost weekly. LedgerBPO assigns a named accountant who posts daily sales, reconciles processor and delivery deposits, and closes the books inside your QuickBooks Online or Restaurant365 file.
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What we handle

Bookkeeping for restaurants & hospitality means tying each Toast or Square Z-report to the bank, recording delivery-platform payouts gross of commission, tracking tips as a liability until paid, and reporting food and labor cost weekly. LedgerBPO assigns a named accountant who posts daily sales, reconciles processor and delivery deposits, and closes the books inside your QuickBooks Online or Restaurant365 file.
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Billing and books together

Daily Z-reports posted and matched to processor and delivery-platform deposits
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Reconciled every month

Tips, sales tax and gift cards held as liabilities, not revenue
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What you see

Prime cost reported weekly by location so decisions happen in time
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A named accountant, a backup and a team lead

Inside your own software, on a fixed close calendar, with a reply from a person within 1 business day. Call +1-657-777-0006 or start a quote.
Get a custom quote 06 / 06

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Bookkeeping for restaurants and hospitality businesses: how LedgerBPO runs it36 seconds · captions on · no audio

Updated September 2026 · Reviewed by Nimra Khalid

Restaurants accounting challenges

01
The Z-report and the bank never match on the same day
A Friday Z-report in Toast or Square shows gross sales, tax, tips and tenders, but the card portion lands in the bank one to two business days later, net of a processing fee of roughly 2 to 3 percent, with Saturday and Sunday often bundled into Monday's deposit. Without a daily sales journal and a clearing account, revenue and cash drift apart every week.
02
Delivery platforms pay net of commission
DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub deposit weekly payouts after deducting marketplace commissions that their published partnership plans set at 15 to 30 percent of the order subtotal, plus refunds, promotions and error adjustments. Booking the net deposit as sales understates revenue, hides the commission, and makes menu-price decisions on delivery impossible.
03
Tips are a liability until they are paid
Credit-card tips arrive in the restaurant's bank account and belong to staff, so a location doing $60,000 a month in card sales with tips averaging 18 percent is holding around $10,800 a month that is not revenue. Tip pools, tip-outs to support staff and tips paid through payroll all have to be tracked, and employees must report tips of $20 or more in a month to the employer under IRS rules.
04
Prime cost is decided weekly, not monthly
Food, beverage and labor together are the largest share of a restaurant's spend, and a monthly P&L arrives too late to fix an over-ordered produce week or a schedule that ran heavy on a slow Tuesday. Operators need cost of goods from weekly counts and labor from the POS timeclock in a four-week or weekly cadence.
05
Sales tax, gift cards and local levies pile up quietly
Sales tax collected on every check, gift cards sold but not redeemed, and city or county meal taxes are all money owed to someone else that sits in the operating account looking like cash. A location that sells $8,000 of gift cards in December owes $8,000 of food in January, and a missed sales-tax remittance date carries penalties and interest.

What we handle for restaurants and hospitality businesses

Daily sales journal from the POS

Each Toast, Square or Restaurant365 end-of-day report is posted by location with sales by category, sales tax, tips, discounts, comps and tenders, and matched to deposits through a clearing account.

Delivery-platform payouts gross

DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub statements are recorded at gross order value with commissions, promotions, refunds and adjustments posted to their own lines.

Tips, tip pools and tip credits

Card tips are held as a liability, tip pools and tip-outs are tracked, and tips paid through payroll are reconciled to the POS so the FICA tip credit workpapers are supported.

Weekly prime cost

Food and beverage cost from invoices and inventory counts, and labor from the timeclock, are reported weekly as a percent of sales by location.

Vendor bills and food cost

Broadline, produce, protein and beverage invoices are captured, coded by category, matched to delivery slips, and reconciled to vendor statements monthly.

Sales tax, gift cards and liabilities

Sales tax and local meal taxes are reconciled to the POS and prepared for your filing, and gift-card sales sit in a liability account until redeemed.

Restaurants software we work in

Square
QuickBooks Online
Xero
Gusto
Bill.com
Toast
Restaurant365
MarginEdge
7shifts
All 50 platforms

Restaurants compliance notes

Tip reporting and tip credits

Employees must report cash and card tips to the employer, the employer withholds payroll taxes on reported tips, and large food and beverage establishments file Form 8027 annually. Where the restaurant takes a tip credit against minimum wage under the FLSA, the wage records must show that tips brought each employee to the full minimum. We reconcile POS tips to payroll and keep the workpapers; your payroll provider and CPA handle filings.

Sales tax and local meal taxes

Restaurant sales are taxable in most US states, many cities and counties add a meal or hospitality tax, and rules differ for catering, delivery, alcohol and service charges. We reconcile tax collected in the POS to the ledger by jurisdiction each month, prepare the workings for your filing, and flag rate changes or new locations so nothing is missed.

Daily cash and deposit controls

Cash-heavy service creates the need for a daily cash count, a deposit log and a documented over-and-short account. We reconcile the counted cash per shift to the POS cash tender, match deposits to the log, and report over-and-short by location and manager so problems surface within days rather than at year-end.

Alcohol, franchise and lease reporting

Liquor license reporting, franchisor royalty and marketing-fund reports based on gross sales, and percentage-rent clauses in leases all depend on POS sales figures that tie to the ledger. We prepare the sales schedules these reports need from reconciled numbers and keep the supporting Z-reports on file.

KPIs we report

KPI	Why it matters
Prime cost as a percent of sales, weekly by location	It combines the two largest costs in the business and moves fast enough that only a weekly number lets managers act.
Z-report to deposit variance	Anything beyond fees and settlement timing is a posting error, a missing deposit or a cash problem to investigate that week.
Delivery-platform effective commission	Commission, promotions and refunds as a percent of gross platform sales tells you what each order actually nets.
Over-and-short by location and shift	Small, consistent cash differences are the earliest sign of a control problem.
Sales tax and tip liabilities reconciled monthly	Money held for others is the easiest cash to spend by accident and the most painful to replace.

Services for restaurants and hospitality businesses

Frequently asked questions

What does bookkeeping for a restaurant include?

It includes posting daily sales from the POS by location and category, matching card, cash and delivery-platform deposits, holding tips, sales tax and gift cards as liabilities, coding food, beverage and supply invoices, booking payroll with tips reconciled to the POS, tracking weekly prime cost, and reconciling every account monthly. You receive a location P&L and a liabilities summary each month.

Do you work with Toast, Square and Restaurant365?

Yes. We post from the end-of-day and sales summary reports in Toast or Square, and work directly inside Restaurant365 where a group uses it as the accounting system. Sales, tenders, tips and tax are carried into QuickBooks Online, Xero or Restaurant365 by location. We do not ask you to change POS or accounting platforms.

How do you handle DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub payouts?

Each platform's weekly statement is recorded at gross order value, with commission, marketing promotions, customer refunds and order-error adjustments posted to their own expense lines and the net matched to the bank deposit. This shows true delivery sales and what each platform costs, so menu prices and platform choices rest on real numbers rather than net deposits.

How are tips handled in the books?

Card tips are recorded as a liability when the sale is posted, reduced when tips are paid out in cash or through payroll, and reconciled to the POS tip report and the payroll register each period. Tip pools and tip-outs to support staff are tracked so the liability clears to zero. Cash tips reported by staff flow through payroll for tax withholding.

Can you report prime cost weekly?

Yes. Food and beverage cost is built from invoices coded by category and a weekly inventory count you enter, and labor comes from the POS or scheduling timeclock export. The two are reported as a percent of net sales by location every week, with a short note on what moved, so managers can adjust ordering and schedules before the month is lost.

What does bookkeeping for a restaurant cost?

Pricing depends on volume and scope, so we send a custom quote within 1 business day. For a market benchmark, US outsourced bookkeeping generally falls between $150 and $1,600 a month (indinero, 2026). Multi-location groups that add delivery-platform reconciliation, weekly prime cost and tip reconciliation sit toward the upper part of that range.

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Bookkeeping and billing for restaurants & hospitality