Running a café or restaurant leaves little time for bookkeeping. Between rosters, supplier deliveries and a packed Friday night service, the books are usually the first thing pushed to “later.” The trouble with hospitality is that small bookkeeping mistakes compound quickly — a few weeks of unreconciled takings can turn into a quarter you can’t make sense of. Here are five bookkeeping mistakes we see most often in cafes and restaurants across Norwest and the Hills District, and what to do instead.
1. Letting daily takings pile up
Takings come in from multiple sources in a single day — EFTPOS, cash, delivery platforms, gift cards — and if they’re not reconciled daily, it’s almost impossible to go back and match everything up weeks later. The fix is a short daily routine: reconcile takings against the till or POS report the same day, or at least by the end of the week, while the detail is still fresh.
2. Mixing up EFTPOS settlements and bank deposits
EFTPOS providers rarely settle on the same day as the sale, and settlement batches don’t always match a single day’s takings one-for-one. Recording the settlement amount as the day’s sales figure, rather than reconciling the two separately, is one of the most common reasons a café’s bank account and sales reports don’t line up.
3. Getting casual and part-time wages wrong
Hospitality rosters change week to week, and casual loadings, penalty rates and split shifts make payroll genuinely complicated. Paying the right super and keeping accurate timesheets matters just as much as getting the pay run out on time — errors here are expensive to unwind later.
4. Not separating cost of goods from general expenses
Food and beverage cost of goods sold needs its own coding, separate from rent, insurance and other overheads. Without that separation, it’s hard to see your real margin on food versus drinks, and even harder to spot when supplier prices have crept up.
5. Treating BAS time as a scramble instead of a routine
If reconciliations only happen once a quarter, BAS time turns into a stressful catch-up rather than a five-minute check. Keeping records current all quarter means your BAS-ready figures are simply sitting there waiting for your BAS agent or accountant to review, not something you’re building from scratch under a deadline.
Getting your café or restaurant’s books back on track
None of this requires a finance team — it requires a routine that fits how a café or restaurant actually runs, and someone keeping on top of it week to week. That’s what our cafe and restaurant bookkeeping support is built around: daily reconciliations, payroll done properly, and records that are BAS-ready every quarter. If your books have gotten away from you, book a free consultation and we’ll help you get back on top of it.