Hospitality files fail in the afternoon, not at year-end. The till is $47 short, the merchant settlement is not the Z-read, the kitchen has thrown away a tray of chicken, and someone has taken a till note “for fruit and veg” without a docket. The original Bookkeeping Centre promised accurate data and time returned to the owner. In a café, that promise is a daily ritual, not a dashboard.

This is the ritual for an Australian shop, café, bar or small restaurant. Awards, penalty rates and GST food classifications move at the edges. Confirm Fair Work and the ATO food tools. Then keep a till and a stock sheet you would let a stranger add up.

The till is a control, not a suggestion

Every till, every day, needs a Z-read or the modern equivalent: a close that shows cash, card, voucher, and any account sales. Someone who is not the person who has been in the drawer all day should count the cash. The count, the reading and the takings sheet belong in one place, dated, with a name.

Variances get a reason or a chase the same day. “Till short” as a monthly dump in the P&L is how theft, change errors and an unrecorded payout become a single fog. A $20 variance every Tuesday is a process. A $200 variance once is a story you still want.

Payouts from the till — milk, a refund, the plumber who only takes cash — need a docket and a code. If you cannot produce the docket, you do not have a purchase. You have a hole. The books a tax agent can use test does not relax because the shop was busy.

Multiple tills are multiple controls. Do not blend them at 9pm so the rec looks tidy. A blended rec is how you lose the bar and blame the café.

Merchant settlements are not sales

Card takings on the till are not the deposit in the bank. Fees, batch timing, and a terminal that settles next working day sit in the gap. Code the settlement to a clearing account. Code the till’s card figure to the same account. The difference is fees, a missing batch, or a tip you have not thought about.

If you code the bank deposit as sales, you have understated sales and missed the fee — and your GST may be wrong on both sides. This is the same clearing-account habit clinics use on health-fund batches. See allied health if you want the cousin.

Keep the merchant statement. A feed is not a record. When a customer disputes a $180 function deposit in four months, you will want the batch.

Tips, without the folklore

Tips are where hospitality files become folklore. There is no single “café rule” that this journal can invent for you.

Write down what actually happens. Cash in a jar that staff take home that night is one fact pattern. Card tips that settle into the trading account and are paid out next Wednesday are another. A service charge on a function invoice is usually just a sale. A “staff drink” button on the POS is not a tip.

If money lands in the business and is then paid to staff, your default instinct should be payroll until an adviser tells you otherwise: STP, PAYG withholding if it is wages, Super Guarantee if it is ordinary time earnings. SG is 12% from 1 July 2025 — confirm the ATO. Payday super from 1 July 2026 will not care that the tip jar felt informal. Confirm ordinary-time-earnings treatment; do not assume a tip is or is not OTE because a Facebook group voted.

If you run a tronc or a points system, write the rules, keep the weekly sheet, and have the agent look at it once. A handshake tronc is how you fail a Fair Work conversation and a BAS in the same month.

Do not hide tips in “sundry income” and “wages adjustment”. Name them. The chart should have a place that an outsider can find.

GST on food and the mixed counter

GST is 10% on taxable supplies. Many unprepared basic foods are GST-free. Most food sold in a café, restaurant or as a takeaway meal is taxable. Confectionery, soft drinks, and a long list of prepared items are taxable even in a supermarket. The line is item-by-item, not “we are a grocer so everything is free” or “we are a café so everything is 10%”.

A mixed counter — coffee, a sandwich, a bag of retail beans, a jar of honey, a meal deal — needs tax codes that match the ATO’s current food tools, not the previous owner’s MYOB file. Confirm the classification when you add a new line. A bakery item can be taxable or GST-free depending on how it is sold and of what it is made. This desk will not invent the list. The ATO publishes tools for a reason.

Month-end: run a tax-rate report. Look for GST-free coffees and taxable kilos of flour that should have been ingredients, not retail. Ingredients you cook with are usually a creditable purchase if you are making taxable sales; the retail bag you sell beside the till may be GST-free. Mixing those two bags in one account is how a Simpler BAS still goes wrong. The BAS hub is the lodgement view. The POS tax map is the control.

Functions and catering need a quote that states GST, a deposit that is unearned until the event, and a close that matches the invoice. A “we invoiced the room hire GST-free because they were a charity” story needs the ATO’s charity and GST-free rules, not a kind heart.

Stock, wastage and the lying P&L

A hospitality P&L without a stock movement is a weather report. Opening stock + purchases − closing stock = cost of goods, before you even talk about wastage. If you never count, you are calling every unpaid beer a profit.

Count what moves the decision. Weekly for steak, spirits and anything that walks. Monthly for the dry store if you must. Annually only is how you discover a $20,000 hole and call it “COVID leftover” in a year that is no longer COVID.

Wastage is a named line, not a shrinkage fog. Spoiled milk, a dropped tray, a comped meal, staff food, and theft are different conversations. If you do not name them, you will order as if the kitchen is efficient and roster as if the floor is honest.

Recipes and theoretical cost are useful if someone still updates the recipe when butter moves. A theoretical cost from 2023 is decoration. Price from the last count and the last invoice, the same way a builder prices from the last job. See whether the job made money — a menu line is a small job that repeats.

Transfers between venues, or between a central kitchen and a shop, need a document. Otherwise one site’s margin is a fiction that makes the other site look sloppy.

Payroll in a penalty-rate business

Hospitality payroll is where a tidy till still goes wrong. Penalty rates, broken shifts, juniors, visa hours, and the owner’s cousin on a handshake are Fair Work territory. Confirm the award. Do not copy last year’s roster into a new rate year.

Super follows ordinary time earnings. Confirm the current ATO OTE rules when you have loadings, overtime and tips in the same pay. From 1 July 2026, payday super means the cash leaves with the pay, including a week that was all penalties and no sleep. Build the thirteen-week cash as if that were already true.

Staff meals and staff drinks need a policy that matches what you actually do. A policy on the wall and a free tap at 1am are two systems.

Merchant fees, delivery apps and the quiet 30%

Delivery-app deposits are settlements, not sales. The app’s commission, the packaging, and the refund they decided without you all sit in the gap. Use a clearing account per app. Reconcile weekly or you will price the menu on a till price you no longer receive.

Gift cards sold are usually a liability until redeemed. Confirm current GST treatment with your agent — the timing can be unintuitive. Do not drop gift-card cash into Saturday’s sales.

Deposits on functions belong on the balance sheet. Spending them on next week’s wages is a cash choice you should see on the forecast, not a coding choice that hides the liability.

The hospitality close

Daily: till, payouts, the day’s variance named.

Weekly: merchant and app clearing accounts; wages versus roster; a count of what walks; a glance at the cash sheet because rent, BAS and payday do not care about a good Saturday.

Monthly, in the close: stock movement, wastage named, GST tax-rate report, super and STP agreed, three sentences (what walked, what was short, what we will not roster again).

If you cannot do the daily piece, do not buy a “monthly bookkeeper” and expect a true P&L. The bookkeeper can assemble a file. They cannot invent dockets you threw away. The Rosebery promise of validated numbers assumed someone still counted the drawer.

A shop that knows its till, its tips and its stock can decide a price and a roster. That is financial control in an apron. The industry guides hub is the rest of the high street. Keep the drawer boring. Let the menu be the interesting part.