restaurant bookkeeping ?

Here is my general procedure:

If you can get good end-of-day reports, 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'.

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

You might consider getting some personalized help to get this setup well from the beginning. Then, you will have a system that gives you what you need with the most streamlined procedures.

It isn't a difficult process, but it is not easy if you aren't very familiar with QuickBooks and general bookkeeping/accounting principles.

Laura D

See my profile at:

http://proadvisor.intuit.com/r...

Since you want to track paid outs from the drawer, you might create items for those. . .or, 'send' your daily cash total to a bank type account called 'Cash on Hand'. Then, post your paid outs from that account and, when you make cash deposits to the bank, use that account on the deposit form.

This depends on your particular business flow and POS reports. . .

Basically, you want to capture your activity (income and expenses) as simply as possible - in such a way that you can reconcile your bank statement and run good reports for business planning and for tax purposes.

I hope this helps,

Laura D

______________

See my profile at:

http://proadvisor.intuit.com/r...

Were you able to get your system set up to track your daily sales and paid outs in a simple fashion?

Laura D