How do I enter daily sales for my cafe?

Create 2 customer names - Daily Sales AM and Daily Sales PM

Your setup and procedures will depend on how much detail you want to track, and your reporting needs.

Here is my streamlined approach to using QuickBooks for restaurant/food establishments:

I start with a simple chart of accounts and edit/add detail when needed.

_Post your Daily Sales using the figures from your register reports and cc settlement reports. (see below)

_Post your purchases to Cost of Goods Sold, using Write Check, or Enter Credit Card Charge, depending on how you paid for the purchase.

_Periodically (annually, quarterly, or monthly), do an inventory adjustment to reflect current value on hand.

For a restaurant/food service business, I do not suggest that you track individual items or costs in QuickBooks. It would be extremely cumbersome.

This method is streamlined and will give you good tracking for your business - with numbers that your accountant will be able to use for taxes. . . and a good overview of your business activity for evaluating and setting future goals.

Periodically, you will need to do some calculations to help you with pricing, but, for the most part, your bookkeeping should be simple enough that you can move on to the business at hand, which is serving your customers!!

___________Daily Sales Procedure: _______________

If you can get good end-of-day reports from your register/POS system, I would suggest creating a Daily Sales Summary to post the totals from your z-out tape.

Use one item for total sales (or multiple, if you want the detail in QuickBooks) - use Sales Income as the account.

Create Other charge type items for the various sales tax collected (pointing all to a liability account called Sales tax payable). Make sure that your file preferences say that you 'don't collect sales tax' because you won't use the internal sales tax platform that QuickBooks provides.

Also, create payment type items for the totals on your settlement summary report from your credit card machine, pointing them to where they go in 'real life'.

If you are using a Mac, you need to create other charge type items (instead of payment type items) and minus that amount in your daily sales summary.

This is just a general overview. You will need to develop a system that works best for you.

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The Daily Sales Summary template is available in the premier versions. You could work with a ProAdvisor who could help you set one up, or customize a Sales Receipt yourself.

I hope this helps,

Laura D

Laura D - what's the advantage to turning off sales tax tracking and entering the taxes as line items?

You can setup the sales tax using the QuickBooks platform, or using the calculations from the register.

Since most registers are calculating the sales tax based on pre-set taxable/non-taxable sales keys (items), I don't see a need to repeat the process (only to have to make adjustments) in QuickBooks.

If you use the QuickBooks platform, you can get sales tax liability reports, but will, most likely, need to adjust the sales tax that QuickBooks figures against the end of day z-report.

That said, it isn't 'wrong' or 'bad' to choose either method.  Think through the advantages and disadvantages of each and setup your procedures accordingly.

Laura D

LauraD, I see, thanks, that's clear.

Hi LauraD,

I found this old correspondance and hope you see my post. I am opening a Cafe and Restaurant and have been recommended to use Quick Books to record all out business finances.

Looking at the software available I can buy the Retail and Hospitality quickbooks and pay $1000.00 which looks to include the POS System which we do no require at this point. 

A friend with a small business has the Beginers quick books and that only cost approx $150.

 Can I talior the Beginners quick books to be used for my book keeping  for a Cafe and Restaurant?

Thanks