Restaurants, cafes and takeaways juggle cash and card sales, staff rotas, tips, stock and VAT, all on margins that leave little room for error. Messy figures make it hard to know whether a site is really making money.
We work with hospitality businesses across the UK, keeping the books tidy, the VAT and payroll right and the numbers clear enough to make good decisions.
The tax challenges restaurants and takeaways face
- VAT on food and drink, which has tricky rules between hot, cold, eat in and takeaway
- Cash and card sales that must reconcile accurately
- Payroll for shift staff, including starters, leavers and pensions
- Handling tips and service charge correctly
- Tight margins that punish small bookkeeping errors
What we help with
- VAT returns with the right treatment for your menu
- Payroll for shift and part time staff
- Cloud bookkeeping that reconciles cash and card
- Year end accounts and company tax
- Clear figures on each site or service
- Advice on tips and service charge
Common mistakes to avoid
Useful tax tips
- Reconcile your till, card and bank regularly so nothing slips
- Check the VAT treatment of new menu items before you launch them
- Keep payroll on a fixed cycle so staff are always paid correctly
- Review your gross margin monthly, not just at year end
A takeaway that finally saw its real margin
A busy takeaway felt successful but never knew its true profit. We set up clean bookkeeping, reconciled cash and card, applied the correct VAT treatment and produced monthly figures. The owner could finally see the real margin and adjusted pricing and portion costs to protect it.
Fixed fees from £19.99 a month for self employed owners, and from £30 a month for limited companies. Your exact quote is agreed up front, and takes about 2 minutes to get.
Two sites, one real profit
A restaurant owner with 2 sites believed both were profitable because the combined bank balance kept rising. Split reporting told a different story. Site one ran a healthy margin while site two lost money every month once staff costs and delivery commission were allocated properly. Rather than closing it, the owner renegotiated the delivery mix, trimmed the menu to reduce waste and moved 2 kitchen staff between sites at peak times. Within a quarter, site two broke even, and the owner finally knew which numbers to watch each month rather than judging by the bank balance.
Your first month with us
- Week 1: software set up, till and bank feeds connected, old records collected from you or your previous accountant
- Week 2: payroll moved across without missing a run, staff and rota patterns loaded
- Week 3: VAT position reviewed, including the treatment of your menu between hot, cold, eat in and takeaway
- Week 4: your first monthly figures, walked through on a call in plain English, with the 2 or 3 numbers worth watching in your business
How we work with restaurants and takeaways, month by month
Hospitality does not run on a year end rhythm, so neither do we. Once you join, we set up your bookkeeping so card takings, cash, and delivery platform payouts each land in the right place. From then on the routine is monthly: your figures reconciled, your VAT position kept current, and payroll run for every shift pattern, joiner and leaver.
- Daily takings reconciled across card, cash and delivery apps, so the till and the bank always agree
- Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats payouts broken down properly, with commission and VAT treated correctly rather than lumped as one number
- Payroll for changing rotas, including starters, leavers, holiday pay and pension duties for part time staff
- Tips and tronc handled correctly, which matters more since the rules on allocating tips tightened
- Monthly profit figures that show your real margin per site, not a surprise at year end
Most of our hospitality clients had an accountant who saw their numbers once a year. The difference with monthly figures is that you see a margin problem while you can still fix the menu price, not eight months after it has eaten the profit.
What our fixed fee includes for hospitality businesses
One agreed monthly fee, set up front, covering the lot: bookkeeping, VAT returns with the correct hot and cold food treatment, payroll for your staff, year end accounts, and your tax returns. Software is included and we set it up for you. There is no hourly clock running when you ring with a question, and no extra bill because HMRC sent you a letter we need to deal with.
If you run more than one site, or you are thinking about opening a second, we will structure the reporting so you can see each site on its own as well as the whole business together. That is usually the moment owners find one site has been quietly subsidising the other.