Accounting integration that saves a day a month

At the start of every month, someone in many restaurants spends a day copying numbers. The till's daily totals go into a spreadsheet, the card provider's statements go beside them, the cash book gets checked, and the whole thing is sent to the accountant, who asks three questions about figures that do not match. Multiply that by twelve months and a few venues, and it is weeks of work every year spent moving numbers from one screen to another.

An accounting integration, done well, removes most of that day. The right figures flow from the till to the accounts in the right shape, every day, and the month end becomes a check rather than a rebuild. Done badly, it floods the accounts with thousands of tiny entries, mixes up tips and takings and creates more questions than it answers.

This guide covers what should flow to the accounts automatically, what should not, the mapping to agree once with your accountant and what to do when your systems do not connect at all. Every venue and figure in it is an example.

An accounting integration moves figures from the systems that run the venue, the till, the booking system, the payment provider, into the accounting software that keeps the books. Instead of someone typing the day's takings into the accounts, they arrive on their own, already sorted into the right categories.

At its best, it does three things: it saves the time spent copying, it removes the mistakes copying introduces and it makes the figures available sooner, so problems are spotted in days rather than at the end of the month.

The time saved comes from the copying and the checking. A venue that types in daily takings, matches them against card statements and fixes the mismatches can easily spend a day a month on it, and a group of venues several days.

With the right figures flowing automatically, that time shrinks to a short review: are the totals right, do they match the bank, is anything unusual? The accountant spends less time on questions and more on the advice that actually helps the business.

Bookkeeping is the record of every amount the business receives and spends, sorted so the accounts can be prepared. For a restaurant, most of the receipts come from the till and most of the spending from supplier invoices and wages.

The integration's job is the receipts side: getting the takings into the books accurately and in a form the accountant can use. The spending side usually comes from other places, and it is worth being clear which is which.

The most useful thing to flow automatically is one summary per day: the day's sales, split into a few categories, with the tax shown separately. That is what the accounts need, and it is far easier to check than hundreds of individual bills.

Agree the categories with your accountant: perhaps food, drinks, and any other income such as events or service charges. A handful is enough. The detail of every dish belongs in the till's reports, not in the books.

The second thing to flow is how the day's takings were paid: cash, card, transfers and anything else. Each method reaches the bank differently, card payments often a few days later and with fees taken off, cash when it is banked.

Recording takings by method makes the bank reconciliation possible. When the card provider's payment arrives, it can be matched against the card takings it relates to, and any difference shows at once.

Tax collected on sales should flow separately from the sales themselves, so the accounts show what belongs to the business and what is owed to the tax authority. A till that records tax correctly on each sale, and summarises it each day, saves a great deal of work at each tax return.

Check that the till's tax settings match the rules where you trade, especially for items taxed differently, such as some takeaway food or drinks. A wrong setting repeated every day becomes a large correction later.

Tips and service charges need careful handling, because they may not belong to the business. Depending on how they are collected and shared, they may be passed to staff, taxed differently or reported separately.

Agree with your accountant how they are recorded, and make sure the integration keeps them apart from sales. Tips mixed into takings make both the sales figures and the staff's pay harder to get right.

Voids, comps and refunds change the day's figures, and the accounts need to show sales after them, not before. A void removes an item that should never have been charged; a comp gives an item away; a refund returns money after payment.

Most accounts only need the net figure: what was actually sold and collected. The detail of each void and comp belongs in the till's reports, where the manager reviews it, rather than in the books.

What should not flow automatically is every individual bill. A busy venue rings hundreds of bills a day, and pushing each one into the accounts fills them with thousands of entries nobody needs and makes the month end harder rather than easier.

The accounts need the daily summary. The individual bills stay in the till, where they can be found when a question arises about a specific table or payment.

Supplier invoices are the other half of the books, and they come from a different place: the suppliers themselves. Some venues scan them into the accounting software, some use a separate tool, some type them in. None of them come from the till.

Keep them in one place and enter them promptly, so the month's costs are complete when the month closes. Our guide to supplier invoices: from paper pile to a number covers how to handle them.

Wages usually reach the accounts from the payroll system or the payroll provider, as a summary each pay period. Hours worked, pay, tax and pension contributions are calculated there, not in the till.

Keep tips and service charges that are paid through payroll consistent with how they were recorded as takings, so the two sides of the books agree.

The mapping is the agreement about which figure from the till goes into which account in the books: food sales to one account, drinks to another, card takings to a clearing account, tips to a liability account, and so on. It is set up once, with the accountant, and then used every day.

Getting the mapping right at the start saves months of corrections. A mapping that sends drinks into food sales, or tips into income, produces accounts that look fine and are quietly wrong.

Keep the sales categories in the accounts few and stable. The till may have dozens of menu categories; the accounts usually need only food, drinks and perhaps a few others, such as events or retail.

Map the till's categories to the accounts' categories once, and update the mapping whenever a new menu category is added. A new category that is not mapped can end up in the wrong account, or in none.

Card payments arrive in the bank a few days after the sale, usually with fees taken off. The integration should record the card takings on the day of the sale, and the bank payment when it arrives, so the difference between them, the fees, can be seen and recorded.

Without this, card takings and bank payments never quite match, and the fees disappear into the difference. A clearing account for card payments, agreed with the accountant, solves it.

Cash is the payment method most likely to cause differences, because it is counted by hand. Record the cash taken each day from the till, the cash counted at the end of the night and the cash banked, and note any difference.

The accounts need the cash taken as income and the cash banked as a movement into the bank. Differences between what the till says and what was counted should be investigated, not quietly absorbed.

Money taken in advance needs its own treatment. A gift voucher sold today is not yet a sale: the venue owes the guest a meal, so the money is usually held as a liability until the voucher is used. A booking deposit works the same way until the visit happens or the deposit is kept.

Agree with your accountant how vouchers and deposits are recorded, and make sure they are kept apart from the day's sales. Mixing them in makes the month look busier than it was, and the month the vouchers are spent look quieter.

Delivery platforms usually pay the venue a net amount, after taking their commission and any fees, days or weeks after the orders. Recording only the net payment hides both the true sales and the true cost of the platform.

Record the gross sales as income and the commission as a cost, with the platform's payment matched against both. The accounts then show what delivery really earns, which is often less than the gross sales suggest.

The principle behind a good accounting integration is daily summaries rather than individual transactions. One entry per day for sales by category, one for tax, one per payment method, one for tips: a few lines a day that the accountant can read and check.

This keeps the books clean, the reconciliation simple and the detail where it belongs: in the till's own reports, available whenever a question needs answering.

The till and the bank will sometimes disagree: a card payment that failed after the till recorded it, a refund done on the terminal but not the till, cash banked a day late. Each difference needs explaining.

Review the differences weekly rather than at the month end. A week-old difference is easy to explain; a month-old one, buried among thirty days of figures, is hard work.

Reconciliation is the check that the books match the bank. For takings, it means matching each day's card takings with the card provider's payments, each day's cash with the cash banked and each transfer with the bank's record.

An integration that records takings by method makes this far quicker. A reconciliation done weekly, by a manager or bookkeeper who knows the venue, catches problems while they can still be fixed.

At the month end, the accounts should already hold every day's takings, mapped correctly, with card fees and cash differences recorded. The month end then becomes a short list: check the totals, add the month's supplier invoices and wages, record anything unusual and close.

Our guide to month end accounts closed in three days covers the rest of the month end, from the stock count to the accruals.

Where systems do not connect, exporting reports is the fallback: download the day's or the month's figures from the till as a spreadsheet and import them, or type them, into the accounts. It takes longer than an integration, but done with a consistent format, it can still be quick.

Agree a template with your accountant: the columns they need, in the order they need them, and the categories mapped as they would be in an integration. A consistent export each month is the next best thing to an automatic one.

Ask your accountant what they actually need. Many will say the same things: daily sales by category, tax, takings by method, tips and service charge, card fees and cash differences, plus supplier invoices and payroll from their own sources.

Fewer figures, delivered consistently and on time, help them more than a mass of detail. And an accountant who receives clean figures each month has time to advise on the things that matter, such as costs, margins and cash.

In a group, the accounts usually need figures by venue as well as for the group, so each venue's performance can be seen. Map each venue's takings to its own accounts, or tag them by venue, so the group's books can be read venue by venue.

Shared costs, such as head office or group marketing, are then allocated by a simple rule, agreed once. A group whose venues are mixed together in the books cannot tell which ones are making money.

A group trading in more than one country records takings in more than one currency. The accounts for each country are usually kept in its own currency, with the group's figures converted for reporting.

Agree how conversions are done: at the rate on each day, or at a monthly average, and keep to it. Changing the method from month to month makes the group's figures move for reasons that have nothing to do with trade.

Many restaurant systems do not connect directly to accounting software, or connect only to some. That is not a disaster. A consistent monthly export, a good template and a weekly reconciliation can deliver most of the benefit.

Before paying for an integration tool, check how much time the export route really takes. For a single venue, a well-organised export can take under an hour a month.

If you do choose an integration, ask a few questions. Does it send daily summaries or every transaction? Can the mapping be set to match your accountant's categories? Does it handle tips, service charges and card fees properly? What happens when it fails, and how will you know?

Ask your accountant before choosing. They have usually seen several integrations and know which ones produce clean books and which ones produce work.

Test any integration for a month before relying on it. Run it alongside the old method, compare the results day by day and fix the mapping wherever they differ.

A month of parallel running catches most problems: a missing category, tips in the wrong place, card fees not recorded. Discovering them after a year of automatic entries means a year of corrections.

Someone should own the integration or the export: a manager, a bookkeeper or the owner. They check that it ran each day, review the differences each week and update the mapping when the menu or the payment methods change.

An integration nobody owns stops being checked, and an integration that is not checked will eventually send wrong figures for months without anyone noticing.

An invented bistro's manager spends a day each month typing daily takings into a spreadsheet for the accountant, who then spends hours matching them with card statements. The accountant agrees a simple template: daily sales for food and drinks, tax, takings by method, tips and card fees.

Each Monday, the manager downloads the week's figures, fills the template and reconciles the card takings with the bank. The month end export takes under an hour, the accountant stops asking questions about mismatches and the manager gets most of a day back each month, which now goes on reviewing costs instead.

servearound is not accounting software and does not connect to any today, so nothing flows to the accounts automatically: the integration in this guide is one you build with exports. Bills for any range of dates download as a spreadsheet, and payment analytics show what was collected by day, how it was tendered, by cash, card, transfer or an external terminal, and who collected it, with voids and comps, on the venue's own clock.

In a group, network transactions list every venue's bills and paid orders with the venue, method, who took it, amount and status, totalled in the network's currency at each day's rate. Card payments are taken on your own terminal, so the card provider's statements are the other half of the check, and supplier invoices, wages and payroll reach the accounts from your own records. See Analytics.

A connection that moves figures from the till and payment systems into the accounting software.

Daily sales by category, tax, takings by payment method, tips and card fees.

Every individual bill. The accounts need daily summaries.

Kept apart from sales, recorded as your accountant advises.

The agreement about which till figure goes into which account, set up once with the accountant.

Use a consistent export with an agreed template, and reconcile weekly.

Run it alongside the old method for a month and compare day by day.

One named person, who checks it daily and reviews differences weekly.

An accounting integration saves a day a month when it sends the accounts what they need: daily summaries of sales by category, tax, takings by payment method, tips and card fees, mapped once to the right accounts with your accountant. It should not push every bill into the books, and it should keep tips, service charges and card fees apart from sales.

Supplier invoices and payroll come from their own sources, and the month end accounts become a check rather than a rebuild. Where systems do not connect, exporting reports to an agreed template, with a weekly reconciliation, delivers most of the benefit, and good bookkeeping depends far more on consistency than on the cleverness of the connection.