Industry · Restaurant accounting
Restaurant accounting that finally shows your real prime cost.
Your POS doesn’t deposit clean numbers — it bundles gross sales, comps, tips, sales tax, and card fees into one figure, and margins live or die on prime cost. TechBrot’s team, led by a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, reconcile daily sales, track food and labor cost, handle tips and sales tax, and report per location — so you know exactly where the money goes. Independent firm, not affiliated with Intuit Inc.
Restaurant accounting reconciles daily POS sales to QuickBooks — separating gross sales, comps, tips, sales tax, and card fees rather than booking one netted deposit — and tracks the numbers a restaurant actually runs on: prime cost (food and beverage cost plus labor as a percentage of sales), COGS by category, inventory, tip handling, and sales-tax remittance, per location. TechBrot’s team, led by a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, deliver it in your own QuickBooks file against a written fixed-fee scope, then add fractional CFO advisory once the books are real. We deliver the books and coordinate with your CPA, who files.
Maintained by TechBrot Inc., an independent firm — not affiliated with Intuit Inc. Does not file income taxes or advise on labor law; coordinates with your CPA, EA, and counsel.
Restaurant accounting, in five questions.
Why is restaurant bookkeeping harder?
A day’s POS summary bundles gross sales, comps, tips, sales tax, and card fees into one deposit. Accurate books require splitting each apart — plus tracking prime cost (food, beverage, and labor), inventory, tips, and sales tax.
Do you reconcile Toast and Square to QuickBooks?
Yes. Daily POS sales are reconciled to your QuickBooks file, separating gross sales, comps and discounts, tips, sales tax collected, and processing fees — not netted into one number.
Can you track prime cost and food cost?
Yes. We track COGS and labor to calculate prime cost as a percentage of sales, maintain inventory where needed, and split food versus beverage cost — the single most important number in a restaurant P&L.
Do you handle tips, payroll, and sales tax?
We handle the bookkeeping for tip pooling and allocation, integrate payroll so tipped-wage and tip-credit entries post correctly, and track sales tax for remittance. TechBrot does not file income taxes or advise on labor law; we coordinate with your CPA and payroll counsel.
What does it cost?
A fixed monthly fee against a written scope — driven by locations, sales volume, POS and payroll complexity, and whether inventory and multi-location reporting are in scope. No hourly billing.
Restaurant accounting, plainly.
Restaurant books break in ways ordinary bookkeeping doesn’t. A single day’s POS summary bundles gross sales, comps and discounts, tips, sales tax collected, and card-processing fees into one deposit, while accurate books need every piece split apart. Profitability turns on prime cost — food and beverage cost plus labor as a percentage of sales — and most generic bookkeepers never track it. Add tips, payroll, sales-tax remittance, inventory, and multiple locations, and the margin for error disappears.
TechBrot is a bookkeeping and advisory firm led by a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor who reconcile daily POS sales to your own QuickBooks file, track cost of goods sold and prime cost, handle the bookkeeping for tips and sales tax, report per location, and turn it into financials you can run a kitchen from. Accurate, POS-reconciled books come first; for operators ready to act on the numbers, fractional CFO advisory adds the judgment layer on top. TechBrot delivers the books and coordinates with your CPA, who files. Independent firm led by a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor — not affiliated with Intuit Inc.
Restaurant prime cost, section by section.
What prime cost is, why a netted POS deposit hides it, and how restaurant books split sales, tips and sales tax to track it per location — set out in full below.
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The full explanation, section by section — what prime cost is, where restaurant numbers get lost, and how the books should track it.
Can you track prime cost and food cost?
Restaurant prime cost is food and beverage cost plus labor, measured as a percentage of sales, and it is the single most important number in a restaurant profit and loss. Restaurant books track it by reconciling daily POS sales, recording cost of goods sold and labor against those sales, and breaking out food versus beverage cost, so you can see margin by category and act on it.
Restaurant accounting, plainly
Restaurant books break in ways ordinary bookkeeping doesn’t. A single day’s POS summary bundles gross sales, comps and discounts, tips, sales tax collected and card-processing fees into one deposit, while accurate books need every piece split apart. Profitability turns on prime cost, and most generic bookkeepers never track it. Add tips, payroll, sales-tax remittance, inventory and multiple locations, and the margin for error disappears.
Why restaurant bookkeeping is harder
Restaurant accounting differs from regular bookkeeping because restaurants run on daily POS sales and razor-thin margins. Tips create payroll and reporting obligations, inventory has to be tracked, and sales tax must be remitted. Standard bookkeeping that only tracks company-wide income and expense can’t tell you your prime cost, or whether a location is actually making money. Restaurant books are built to answer both questions.
POS deposits hide the real numbers
Nearly every messy restaurant file fails in the same three places, and the first is the deposit. Toast, Square and Clover net deposits after tips, comps, refunds and processing fees. Booked as one number, sales are misstated, fees disappear, and the sales tax you collected gets buried in revenue instead of sitting as a liability. The fix is a daily sales summary, split apart and reconciled to the actual deposit.
No food or labor cost tracking
Without cost of goods sold and labor tracked against sales, prime cost is unknown. You can’t tell whether food cost is creeping past a commonly cited twenty-eight to thirty-five percent, whether labor is running too high, or which menu items actually make money. Most struggling restaurants don’t have a sales problem. They have a prime-cost problem they can’t see, and the fix is tracking both costs as a percentage of sales.
Tip and sales-tax obligations slipping
Tips and sales tax are the third place restaurant numbers slip. Tip pooling recorded inconsistently, tipped-wage and tip-credit payroll entries posted wrong, and sales tax collected but not tracked for remittance each become a compliance headache. The bookkeeping answer is tip allocation booked correctly, payroll integrated so those entries post right, and sales tax tracked by location. Labor and tip law stay with your counsel, and income-tax filing stays with your CPA or EA.
Daily sales reconciliation
Daily sales from POS systems such as Toast, Square, Clover and Lightspeed are reconciled to QuickBooks, separating gross sales, comps and discounts, tips, sales tax collected and processing fees from the daily sales summary, then tying the result to the bank deposit. Labor scheduling, inventory tools and third-party delivery payouts, commissions and fees are booked the same way. If it runs your service or pays out to a bank account, it can be reconciled.
Restaurant accounting, done by an expert
Restaurant accounting done by an expert is scoped to your locations, POS and volume, and delivered in your own QuickBooks file by a Certified ProAdvisor. Food and beverage cost, labor and inventory are tracked to produce prime cost as a percentage of sales, with cost of goods sold broken out by category so margin shows item by item. Tip pooling and allocation, tipped-wage payroll and sales tax by location are booked for on-time remittance.
Restaurant-book cleanup
When the books are already tangled, a restaurant-book cleanup comes first. It untangles netted POS deposits, rebuilds cost of goods sold and prime cost, separates the sales tax buried in revenue, and reconciles each location back to a known-good baseline. QuickBooks and POS setup adds a restaurant chart of accounts, a class or location structure for multi-unit reporting, and apps that connect your POS and payroll without manual re-entry.
Can you handle multiple locations?
Multiple locations are tracked separately in QuickBooks, typically using classes or location tracking. Each location gets its own profit and loss and its own prime cost, alongside a consolidated view of the whole group. It is the same multi-unit structure franchise groups rely on, and it answers the question company-wide books cannot: which location is actually making money, and which one is being carried.
From netted POS deposits to clean prime cost
A restaurant engagement moves from netted POS deposits to clean prime cost in four phases. Discovery maps your concept, locations, POS, payroll and where the books are breaking. Cleanup and setup follow if needed. Daily and monthly reconciliation keeps sales, prime cost, tips and sales tax current per location, with cash handling and deposits tied out. Reporting and advisory delivers a monthly package with per-location prime cost and margin.
Clean books are the start
Clean books are the start, and the next service is the point. Once the POS reconciles and prime cost is real, the question changes from whether the books are right to what to do about them: which menu items to push or re-price, how to staff against the sales curve, and when a concept is ready to expand. Operations advisory, through fractional CFO work, turns the numbers into those decisions.
Maintained by the ProAdvisor team
Restaurant books here are kept by Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors, certified in QuickBooks Online Level 2 and Payroll, at an independent bookkeeping and advisory firm, not affiliated with Intuit. Restaurant engagements are a fixed monthly fee against a written scope, set by locations, sales volume, and POS and payroll complexity, with no hourly billing. Get restaurant books you can run a kitchen from. Send this to whoever runs the numbers for your restaurant, and subscribe for the series.
Three places restaurants lose the numbers.
Nearly every messy restaurant file fails in the same three areas. Knowing which one you’re in tells us where to start.
POS deposits hide the real numbers.
Toast, Square, and Clover net deposits after tips, comps, refunds, and processing fees. Booked as one number, sales are misstated, fees disappear, and the sales tax you collected gets buried in revenue instead of sitting as a liability. The fix is a daily sales summary that separates gross sales, comps and discounts, tips, sales tax, and fees — reconciled to the actual deposit. If you’ve never split a POS deposit apart, your revenue and your sales-tax liability are both guesses. This is fixable.
No food or labor cost tracking.
Without COGS and labor tracked against sales, prime cost is unknown. You can’t tell whether food cost is creeping past a commonly cited 28–35%, whether labor is running too high, or which menu items actually make money. The fix is COGS and labor tracked to produce prime cost as a percentage of sales, with food and beverage broken out by category. Most struggling restaurants don’t have a sales problem — they have a prime-cost problem they can’t see.
Tip and sales-tax obligations slipping.
Tip pooling recorded inconsistently, tipped-wage and tip-credit payroll entries off, and sales tax collected but not cleanly tracked for remittance — each is a compliance headache waiting to surface. The fix is tip allocation booked correctly, payroll integrated so tipped-wage entries post right, and sales tax tracked by location for on-time remittance. We keep the books and the records right; labor and tip law, and income-tax filing, stay with your counsel and CPA — we coordinate cleanly.
Restaurant accounting, done by an expert.
Every engagement is scoped to your locations, POS, and volume, delivered in your own QuickBooks file by a Certified ProAdvisor — coordinating with your CPA, who files.
Daily sales reconciliation
Toast, Square, Clover, and Lightspeed reconciled to QuickBooks — gross sales, comps, tips, sales tax, and processing fees separated correctly from the daily sales summary, then tied to the bank deposit.
COGS, labor & prime cost
Food and beverage cost, labor, and inventory tracked to produce prime cost as a percentage of sales — COGS broken out by category so you can see margin item by item and act on it.
Tip handling & sales tax
Tip pooling and allocation booked, payroll integrated for tipped wages and the tip credit, and sales tax tracked by location for on-time remittance. We do the bookkeeping; your CPA and counsel handle filing and labor law.
Restaurant-book cleanup
Untangle netted POS deposits, rebuild COGS and prime cost, separate the sales tax buried in revenue, and reconcile each location back to a known-good baseline before monthly work begins.
QuickBooks & POS setup
A restaurant chart of accounts, location and class structure for multi-unit reporting, and the right apps connecting your POS and payroll to QuickBooks cleanly — so the daily sync runs without manual re-entry.
Operations advisory
As you scale, fractional CFO advisory on menu and item profitability, labor scheduling against the sales curve, location performance, and cash flow — the judgment layer above the books.
Connected to how you run service.
- Toast — daily sales summary, tips, and fees reconciled to QuickBooks
- Square — gross sales, refunds, and processing fees split from net deposits
- Clover — sales, comps, and sales tax separated for accurate revenue
- Lightspeed — POS sales and inventory cost tied back to the books
- TouchBistro — service-level sales detail reconciled per location
- 7shifts — labor hours and cost mapped against sales for prime cost
- MarginEdge / restaurant inventory tools — food cost and COGS feeds reconciled
- DoorDash / Uber Eats — third-party delivery payouts, commissions, and fees booked correctly
On different software? If it runs your service, manages your labor, or pays out to a bank account, we can reconcile it to QuickBooks. Ask on a discovery call.
From netted POS deposits to clean prime cost.
Every restaurant engagement follows the same four-phase rhythm — built so your books are accurate before anyone tries to advise on them.
Discovery
A 30-minute call to map your concept, locations, POS, payroll, sales volume, and where the books are breaking. No pitch — just whether monthly reconciliation, a cleanup first, or QuickBooks setup is the right next step.
Cleanup & setup
If needed, a cleanup to untangle netted POS deposits and rebuild COGS, plus correct QuickBooks setup — a restaurant chart of accounts and the class or location structure multi-unit reporting needs.
Daily & monthly reconciliation
Daily sales reconciled from the POS summary and the books closed monthly, with prime cost, tips, and sales tax maintained per location — cash handling and deposits tied out so nothing walks.
Reporting & advisory
A monthly package with per-location prime cost and margin, then advisory as you grow — menu profitability, labor against sales, and whether the next location is ready.
Clean books are the start. The next service is the point.
Once your POS reconciles and your prime cost is real, the question changes from “are the books right?” to “what do we do about them?” Which menu items to push or re-price, how to staff against the sales curve, whether the second location is carrying the first, when a concept is ready to expand — the decisions that actually move a restaurant.
That’s where restaurant advisory comes in: a Certified ProAdvisor who knows your numbers turning them into menu, labor, and growth decisions. As automation commoditizes basic bookkeeping, this judgment layer is where the value — and the margin — now lives. Explore fractional CFO & advisory →
Maintained under a Certified ProAdvisor.
This page reflects how TechBrot actually handles restaurant engagements. It is maintained by TechBrot Inc., a Delaware-incorporated independent firm led by a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and kept current on POS-to-bank reconciliation, prime cost and COGS, and tip and sales-tax handling. Where our approach or scope changes, this page is updated. TechBrot delivers the books and coordinates with your CPA, who files.
Certifications
Active Intuit ProAdvisor across QBO L2 and Payroll
Scope
POS reconciliation, prime cost/COGS, tips, sales tax, multi-location — income-tax filing coordinated with your CPA/EA
Fixed-fee
Written scope before work · delivered in your own QuickBooks file
Independent
Not affiliated with Intuit Inc. · QuickBooks is a registered trademark of Intuit Inc.
Restaurant accounting questions.
Why is restaurant accounting different from regular bookkeeping?
Do you reconcile Toast, Square, and other POS systems to QuickBooks?
Can you track prime cost, food cost, and inventory?
Do you handle tips, payroll, and sales tax?
Can you handle multiple locations?
What does restaurant bookkeeping cost?
Do you offer advice, or just bookkeeping?
Ready when you are
Get restaurant books you can run a kitchen from.
Book a 30-minute discovery call. We’ll review your POS, where the books are breaking, and the right next step — with a written fixed-fee scope within 3 business days. No pitch. TechBrot does not file income taxes; coordinates with your CPA.