Restaurant and hospitality accountants.

Restaurant and hospitality accountants reconcile the till to the bank every day rather than every month, split menu sales between VAT rates at the point of sale, and run tips through a compliant tronc. Margin in this sector is decided weekly by food cost and labour cost, so monthly-only reporting arrives too late to act on.

Restaurants and cafés run on thin margins (typically 5–15% operating profit) and detailed cost discipline. Food cost percentage, labour cost percentage and prime cost (food + labour) drive viability. A two-point swing in either can be the difference between profit and loss for the year. That requires bookkeeping that surfaces these numbers in real time, not in a year-end accounts pack.

We work with independent restaurants, multi-site operators, café chains, dark kitchens and hospitality groups. Daily takings reconciled to till exports. Supplier invoices captured via Dext, coded to detailed cost categories (fresh produce, dry goods, alcohol, soft drinks, paper goods). Labour cost split by department (kitchen, FOH, management). VAT handled correctly, including the 5% reduced rate where it applies, the alcohol vs food split for restaurants, and the takeaway-vs-eat-in distinctions.

Tronc, the system for distributing tips and gratuities, has specific HMRC rules around when tips are taxable as employment income vs distributable separately. We administer tronc schemes for clients, including the Tipping Act 2023 compliance that became mandatory in October 2024.

Two percentages, tracked weekly, explain most of the difference between a site that works and one that does not: cost of sales as a share of net sales, and labour as a share of net sales. Both are controllable within days. Neither is visible in a set of accounts produced six weeks after the month closed. We run a weekly flash on both, tied to the rota and the delivery invoices rather than to the ledger, then reconcile the flash to the formal accounts at month end so the operator has never been working from a number the accounts later contradict.

The daily reconciliation underneath it is unglamorous and non-negotiable. Gross takings from the till system, split by VAT rate, are matched to card settlements, cash banked, delivery aggregator remittances and voucher redemptions. Aggregator income arrives net of commission, so booking the remittance as sales understates turnover and hides a cost that often runs to a fifth of the order value. Cash shortfalls, voids and staff discounts get logged as they happen, because a variance found on Monday is a conversation and a variance found in April is an unexplained hole.

VAT is where menus turn into rate decisions. Hot food and anything consumed on the premises is standard rated, most cold takeaway food is zero rated, and alcohol is always standard rated, so a single order at the counter can carry two rates. HMRC sets the boundaries out in its guidance on VAT rates on different goods and services, and the till must be configured to that mapping or the return is wrong before anyone opens a spreadsheet.

Tips are the third area, and the rules moved recently. Employers must pass on qualifying tips to workers fairly and keep a written policy, and where tips are distributed through an independent tronc arrangement the National Insurance treatment differs from tips the employer allocates itself. HMRC's booklet E24: tips, gratuities, service charges and troncs is the reference, and the worker-facing summary sits at tips at work. We set up the troncmaster arrangement, run the distribution through our payroll service, and keep the paperwork that proves the employer did not direct the split. If you are still deciding what level of support you need, our bookkeeper vs accountant comparison sets out what each role delivers, what each costs, and the monthly reporting role that sits between them. The daily till and supplier posting that produces those weekly numbers is handled by our cloud bookkeeping service, and the period reporting on top of it by our monthly management accounts service. Both appear in our accounting services index.