Do Your POS Sales Match Your Accounting?

Compare POS sales reporting with the revenue recorded in your accounting system.

Review food sales, beverage sales and other major revenue categories separately.

If the systems routinely disagree, our

restaurant accounting services

help trace POS activity through deposits and QuickBooks.

Are Discounts and Comps Being Reviewed?

Discounts and comps reduce revenue and can quietly become a significant profit leak.

• Review activity by employee
• Review activity by manager
• Review the stated reason
• Measure discounts and comps as a percentage of sales
• Look for unusual patterns or excessive use

Are Voids and Refunds Being Monitored?

Voids and refunds should be reviewed separately from discounts.

Pay attention to:

• High activity from specific employees
• Repeated transactions
• Refunds without clear documentation
• Transactions occurring at unusual times
• Patterns that don’t match normal operations

Occasional refunds and voids are normal.
Unexplained patterns are not.

Are Your Payment Methods Reconciling?

Break payments into the actual tender types instead of comparing total sales directly to the bank.

• Cash
• Credit cards
• Gift cards
• House accounts, if applicable
• Other tender types

Cash and card transactions move through the business differently, so
each payment type needs its own reconciliation path.

Are Employee Permissions Appropriate?

Review who can:

• Issue refunds
• Void transactions
• Apply discounts
• Open drawers
• Perform paid-outs
• Reopen or change closed checks

Our

restaurant POS consulting

includes permissions, discounts, voids, refunds and exception reporting.

Do Credit-Card Settlements Match the Bank?

Every processor settlement should ultimately be traceable to a bank deposit.

Don’t rely only on dates. Weekends, holidays and processor cutoff times
can shift when funds reach the bank.

If you’re already struggling with mismatched deposits, read

why Toast deposits don’t match sales
.

Does Your Clearing Account Actually Clear?

If you use a POS or credit-card clearing account in QuickBooks, review its
balance and transaction history.

Temporary balances may be caused by timing. Old unexplained balances should not keep accumulating.

• Missing deposits
• Duplicate transactions
• Incorrect bank matches
• Refund activity
• Tip activity
• Mapping errors

Does the Cash Drawer Reconcile Every Shift?

Start every shift with a known opening drawer amount.

Calculate what should remain after cash sales, tip payouts, paid-outs
and other authorized cash activity.

Track shortages and overages by shift and employee rather than burying
them as miscellaneous differences.

Are Credit-Card Tips Accounted for Correctly?

Credit-card tips collected from customers generally aren’t restaurant revenue.

If employees receive those tips in cash at the end of the shift, make
sure the payout, Toast tip reporting and eventual processor settlement all reconcile.

For stronger procedures, see our

restaurant cash and tip controls
.

Do Bank Deposits Match What Was Actually Deposited?

Compare expected cash deposits and processor settlements with what actually reached the bank.

• Missing deposits
• Unexpected deposit amounts
• Duplicate deposits
• Unexplained adjustments

Is Your Chart of Accounts Built for a Restaurant?

Your chart of accounts should make it easier to understand how the restaurant is performing.

Important categories may include:

• Food sales
• Beverage sales
• Food and beverage COGS
• Labor
• Occupancy
• Major operating expenses
• Clearing accounts
• Sales-tax and payroll liabilities

See our complete

restaurant chart of accounts guide
.

Is POS Activity Mapped to the Correct Accounts?

Review how Toast or your other POS sends activity into QuickBooks.

Sales, sales tax, tips, cash, credit cards, discounts, refunds and gift-card
activity should not all be treated as revenue.

Incorrect mapping can produce financial statements that look reasonable
while still being materially wrong.

For a deeper walkthrough, read our

Toast QuickBooks reconciliation guide
.

Are Bank and Credit-Card Accounts Reconciled Monthly?

Every bank and credit-card account should be reconciled regularly against the actual statements.

• Missing transactions
• Duplicates
• Old outstanding items
• Unexplained adjustments

Does Your Profit & Loss Statement Make Sense?

Don’t review the P&L only by looking at bottom-line profit.

Review major categories as percentages of sales and compare them over time.

• Food cost
• Beverage cost
• Labor
• Occupancy
• Operating expenses
• Operating profit

Does Your Balance Sheet Contain Old or Unexplained Balances?

Review accounts such as:

• POS and merchant clearing
• Cash accounts
• Tip liabilities
• Sales-tax liabilities
• Gift-card liabilities
• Accounts payable
• Loans and credit cards

Pay special attention to balances that haven’t changed for months or
amounts nobody can explain.

Are You Taking Regular Physical Inventory Counts?

Accounting records can tell you what you purchased. They cannot tell you
exactly what is sitting on the shelf.

Count food, beer, wine, liquor and other significant inventory using a
consistent schedule and method.

Are You Calculating Actual COGS?

Purchases alone are not the same as cost of goods sold.

Inventory counts help show what product was actually used rather than
what was merely purchased during the period.

Are Food and Beverage Costs Being Measured Separately?

Food and beverage operations can have very different margins.

If everything is combined into one COGS number, strong beverage margin
can hide a food-cost problem—or the reverse.

Compare food sales with food COGS and beverage sales with beverage COGS
whenever that level of detail is useful.

Are You Comparing Actual Cost With Theoretical Cost?

Actual COGS tells you what product the restaurant used financially.

Theoretical cost asks what the restaurant should have used
based on sales, recipes, portions and menu costs.

A meaningful gap may point to:

• Over-portioning
• Waste
• Spoilage
• Unrecorded comps
• Incorrect recipes
• Poor receiving controls
• Product being given away
• Theft

Our

restaurant inventory and COGS controls

are designed around exactly this problem.

Are Vendor Prices and Receiving Being Reviewed?

Restaurant margins can erode even when portions and sales remain unchanged
simply because ingredient and beverage costs increase.

• Vendor pricing changes
• Invoice substitutions
• Credits
• Short deliveries
• Damaged product
• Receiving procedures

Are You Tracking Labor Cost as a Percentage of Sales?

Payroll dollars alone don’t tell you whether labor is under control.

Compare labor cost with sales and monitor the percentage over time.

• Regular wages
• Overtime
• Payroll taxes
• Other labor-related costs

Are You Reviewing Overtime and Scheduling Patterns?

Look for employees approaching overtime, unnecessary overlap, early clock-ins,
late clock-outs and staffing levels that don’t match customer volume.

Compare schedules with actual sales by day and daypart.

See our

restaurant payroll and labor controls

for a deeper look at this system.

Are Payroll Reports Being Reconciled to Accounting?

Payroll reports, payroll withdrawals and payroll expenses recorded in
QuickBooks should ultimately agree.

• Wages
• Employer payroll taxes
• Employee deductions
• Payroll liabilities

Investigate old payroll liabilities and unexplained balances rather than
assuming the payroll system handled everything correctly.

Do You Know Your Prime Cost?

Prime cost combines two of the largest controllable restaurant costs.

Track prime cost as a percentage of sales and monitor its trend over time.

Can You Explain Where Your Profit Went?

This may be the most important question on the entire checklist.

Our

restaurant profitability and financial reporting

brings these operating numbers together into one management picture.