Restaurant Bookkeeping in QuickBooks: A Practical Guide

To do restaurant bookkeeping in QuickBooks, start by building a chart of accounts made for food service, with separate revenue lines for food, beverage and delivery, and cost lines for food, liquor and labor. Record each day's business with a single daily sales entry (a sales receipt or a journal entry) that separates gross sales, sales tax collected, credit card tips and merchant fees, so the amount left over equals the money that actually hits your bank. Track prime cost (cost of goods sold plus labor) and your food cost percentage every period, and reconcile every bank, card and liability account monthly against the real statements.

Last updated July 2026.

Set up a restaurant chart of accounts

A generic chart of accounts hides the numbers a restaurant lives and dies by. Split your revenue and cost accounts so the profit and loss statement tells you something useful. Keep food sales apart from beverage and liquor sales, and break out cost of goods sold the same way, because a food cost and a liquor cost blend into a meaningless average if they share one line. Here is a workable starting structure. Rename accounts to fit your concept, but keep the categories distinct.

• Revenue: Food Sales, Beverage Sales, Liquor Sales, Delivery Sales.
• Cost of goods sold: Food Cost, Beverage Cost, Liquor Cost.
• Labor: Kitchen (back of house) Wages, Front of House Wages, Payroll Taxes, Benefits.
• Liabilities: Sales Tax Payable, Tips Payable, Gift Cards Outstanding.
• Operating expenses: Rent, Utilities, Merchant Fees, Delivery Commissions, Repairs, Supplies, Marketing.

Sales tax you collect is not revenue. It belongs to the state, so it sits in Sales Tax Payable until you remit it. The same logic applies to tips your staff earned and gift cards you have sold but not yet redeemed. Keeping those three out of income is the single biggest fix for restaurants whose books overstate sales.

Record daily sales the right way

Do not treat every bank deposit as a sale. Your point of sale system already knows the full picture for the day: gross sales by category, tax collected, tips, discounts and how guests paid. The clean approach is one daily sales entry per day (or per shift) that mirrors the POS Z report, entered either as a zero total sales receipt or as a journal entry. Both work. Book gross sales and tax and tips, then subtract the pieces that never reach your bank, so the entry nets to the exact deposit. Card processors keep their fee, tax is a liability, tips are owed to staff, and only the remainder lands in checking.

If you use a sales receipt, set up items that point to these accounts, enter sales as positive lines and fees as a negative line, and the receipt totals to the net deposit. For a journal entry, debit the bank for the net, debit merchant fees, and credit the sales and liability lines. Whichever you pick, use it every day so the entry always ties to the settlement.

Handle credit card tips

Tips charged on a card flow into your bank account, but they are not your money. They belong to the employees who earned them, so they should never touch your income accounts. Create a Tips Payable account with the type Other Current Liability, then credit it for the tips collected each day as part of the daily sales entry.

When you pay those tips out, you reduce the liability. If tips go out through payroll, they clear against Tips Payable and get taxed correctly on the paycheck. If a server takes cash tips at the end of a shift, reduce Tips Payable and reduce cash. Done right, the Tips Payable balance equals the tips you are still holding for staff. If you enabled tips in your settings, QuickBooks may use an Undistributed Tips liability account for the same purpose, and it works the same way.

Merchant fees and POS deposits

Card processors usually take their cut before they send you anything, so the deposit in your bank is already net of fees. If you book only the net as sales, you understate both revenue and expense, and your food cost percentage looks wrong because the denominator is off. Record gross sales, then record the processing fee as a Merchant Fees expense, so the fee shows up where you can watch it.

Deposit timing is the other trap. A Friday and Saturday may settle together on Monday, and a batch can straddle two days. Recording daily sales gross keeps each day's revenue intact regardless of when the cash lands, and at reconciliation the batched deposit still matches the sum of the days it covers.

Track prime cost and food cost

Prime cost is the number that decides whether a restaurant makes money. It is cost of goods sold plus total labor: everything you spend to make and serve the food and drinks. Full service restaurants generally aim to keep prime cost under about 60 percent of sales, and quick service under roughly 55 percent, though your target depends on your concept and market. When prime creeps above that band, profit disappears fast.

Food cost percentage is the companion metric: cost of goods sold divided by revenue, times 100. Many operators run food cost somewhere in the high 20s to mid 30s as a percent of sales, but the useful comparison is your own trend, not a magazine benchmark. Your chart of accounts already separates the cost lines, so a properly categorized profit and loss statement gives you these ratios without extra work. Enter vendor bills against the right cost accounts as they arrive, and you can turn each supplier invoice into a clean data file before you key the bill, which keeps food and liquor costs from getting lumped together.

If you run more than one location, or want to compare bar versus kitchen, turn on class tracking and tag every transaction with a class. Then you can run a profit and loss statement by class and see prime cost per location or per revenue center. Class tracking only helps if you apply it to every entry, so make it a habit from day one.

Third-party delivery payouts

Delivery apps pay you net of their commission, and that gap is real money you need on the books. A guest pays in the app, the platform keeps its commission plus fees, and you receive far less in your weekly payout. If you record only the deposit, you hide both the sales your kitchen produced and the commission you paid for them.

Book the gross order value to Delivery Sales, record the platform's commission and fees as Delivery Commissions expense, and record any sales tax the platform collected and remits on your behalf per their statement. The deposit then equals gross sales minus commission, fees and any tax they kept. Pull the platform's payout report and reconcile the deposit against it, the same way you tie a card batch to your POS.

Reconcile every account monthly and import full history

Reconciliation is where sloppy books get caught. Every month, reconcile each bank account, each credit card, and your liability accounts against the actual statements. The bank should match your recorded net deposits, the card statement should match your entered expenses, and Sales Tax Payable and Tips Payable should equal what you still owe. If a daily entry was skipped or double counted, the reconciliation will not clear, which is exactly the point.

Restaurants generate a heavy volume of card and bank transactions, so hand keying months of history is a nonstarter. If your bank feed does not reach back far enough, or you are catching up several months at once, you can convert each PDF statement into a .qbo file and bring the cleared transactions straight into your register. Our guide on how to convert bank statements to QuickBooks for restaurants walks through the workflow end to end, and from there you import into QuickBooks Online in a few clicks so the reconciliation lines up against your daily sales entries.

Once the history is in, reconcile from the oldest open month forward. Clearing each month in order means a discrepancy points to a specific period instead of hiding in a pile, and your prime cost and food cost figures become trustworthy going back.

Frequently asked questions

How do I do bookkeeping for a restaurant in QuickBooks?

Set up a restaurant chart of accounts that splits food, beverage and liquor revenue and costs. Record one daily sales entry per day from your POS that separates gross sales, sales tax, tips and merchant fees so it nets to the deposit. Track prime cost, enter vendor bills to the right cost accounts, and reconcile every account monthly.

How do I record daily restaurant sales in QuickBooks?

Use one daily sales entry that mirrors your POS Z report, either a zero total sales receipt or a journal entry. Book gross food and beverage sales to income, sales tax to a liability, tips to Tips Payable, and merchant fees to an expense. The entry nets to the exact amount deposited in your bank, which keeps reconciliation clean.

How do I record credit card tips in QuickBooks?

Create a Tips Payable account with the type Other Current Liability. Credit it for tips collected on cards each day, since that money belongs to staff, not the restaurant. When you pay the tips out through payroll or in cash, reduce Tips Payable. The balance should always equal the tips you are still holding for employees.

What is prime cost in a restaurant?

Prime cost is cost of goods sold plus total labor: the direct cost of making and serving your food and drinks. It is the clearest gauge of profitability. Full service restaurants usually target under about 60 percent of sales, and quick service under roughly 55 percent, though the right number depends on your concept and market.

Can I import old bank statements into QuickBooks?

Yes. When the bank feed will not reach back far enough, convert each PDF statement into a .qbo (Web Connect) file and import it into QuickBooks Online or Desktop. The cleared transactions post to your register, so you can reconcile several months of history at once and tie the deposits to your daily sales entries.

Restaurant books stay clean when the same routine runs every day: one accurate daily sales entry, bills coded to the right cost accounts, and a full reconciliation each month. Get the chart of accounts right first, keep tips and tax out of revenue, and your profit and loss statement will finally show the prime cost and food cost numbers you can actually manage against.