This is the whole route, from a sale on the till to the tax that is due on it, laid out as the routine a well-run restaurant follows. Use it to check your own process, or to judge a financial control service you are considering.
Set up once
- A chart of accounts built for hospitality. Sales by category (food, drink, other), cost of sales to match, labour split between kitchen and front of house, and controllable costs separated from occupancy costs. One structure for every site.
- VAT on the till. Each button carries its rate. Hot and cold, eat in and take away, alcohol, service charge, deposits. Get this right and the sales export is already VAT-ready.
- Feeds. Bank and card processor feeds into the ledger. A till export, or a direct integration, for sales. One email address for supplier invoices.
- A tronc. A written policy, an independent troncmaster, and a process that keeps the records the law requires.
Every day
Post yesterday's sales by site and department. Reconcile the cash-up against the till, the safe and the banking. Capture the supplier invoices that arrived. Ten minutes per site, if the set-up above is in place.
Every week
Approve hours from clock-ins and prepare payroll. Code the week's purchases. Count stock where the business needs it weekly. Produce the one-page summary: sales, gross profit, wage percentage and sales per labour hour, by site, against last year.
Every month
Reconcile the bank in full. Agree supplier statements and chase the gaps. Value stock. Post accruals, prepayments and deferred income for deposits and vouchers. Produce management accounts in the same layout as last month, with budget and last year beside them.
Every quarter
File the VAT return digitally, from books that already agree. Review the thirteen-week cash forecast against what happened. Reforecast the year.
Every year
Year-end accounts, corporation tax, and the reporting of any staff benefits. If the quarters were done properly, the year-end is a tidy-up and a signature, not a reconstruction.
What a service should give you
A named person who knows your sites. The weekly page by the same morning every week. A month-end that lands early in the next month. Filings you never have to think about. And an honest opinion about your numbers from someone who sees many restaurants. That is the service Solutions 4 Caterers runs inside HSG, with Opsyte doing the capture so the routine starts from data, not paper.