Restaurant accountant in Barrie

Updated September 2026.

Payroll for seasonal staff is covered in more depth on payroll in Barrie, and Barrie retailers share the point-of-sale questions.

Point-of-sale totals are the start, not the answer

The POS report says what was rung in. The bank says what arrived. Between the two sit card processing fees, delivery app commissions, gift card sales and redemptions, voids, comps, cash that went into the float or out for a supplier, and deposits that land a day or two after the sale. A restaurant that books the POS total as revenue without reconciling it to deposits is guessing at both its sales and its HST.

The fix is a daily or weekly reconciliation: POS sales by tender type matched to card settlements, delivery app payouts broken into gross sales and commission, and cash counted against the drawer report. Done that way, the gap between sales and deposits is explained line by line and the HST return is built from real numbers. It also shows where cash is going missing long before year-end.

Tips and payroll

How tips are handled in payroll depends on who controls them. Tips the employer collects and distributes under a formula it sets, including many pooled card tips, are controlled tips: they go on the T4 with income tax, CPP and EI deducted. Tips a customer hands directly to a server, or that staff pool among themselves without the employer deciding the split, are direct tips: the employee reports them as income, but they are not run through payroll deductions. Ontario’s employment standards also limit what an employer can take from tips, so the policy should be written down and applied consistently.

Seasonal staffing adds its own work. Summer students and returning servers need TD1s at the start, a record of employment when the season ends, and vacation pay and statutory holiday pay tracked properly throughout, including the holiday weekends that fall in the middle of the peak. Tip reporting and payroll goes through the cases in more detail.

A new operator opening a first location has one more step before any of this: a payroll account with the CRA, WSIB registration where the business needs it, and the pay schedule set before the first shift. Hiring your first employee lists the order to do it in.

HST on meals, drinks and what is not taxable

In Ontario, restaurant meals and drinks carry 13% HST, and so does most prepared food sold for takeout. Some basic groceries are zero-rated, which matters to a cafe or bakery selling packaged items off the shelf alongside prepared food. The POS has to be set up with the right tax code on every item, because the HST return is only as accurate as the menu setup behind it. Gift cards are another quiet trap: HST is generally charged when the card is redeemed for a meal, not when it is sold, so the sale of the card is recorded as a liability rather than revenue.

On the purchase side, the HST on food, supplies, equipment, rent and repairs comes back as input tax credits, which is real money in a business with thin margins. Coding every bill with its tax is what makes the claim complete.

Two peaks and the shoulder months

A patio on the waterfront can do a large share of its year between the long weekend in May and the end of the summer. A place near the ski hills or on the way to the snowmobile trails can do the same in January and February. Either way, the costs do not follow the sales: rent, loan payments, insurance and a core staff run all year. The cash from the busy months has to carry the quiet ones, and the HST collected during the peak is owed to the CRA, not available to spend.

We set up the books so that the seasonal pattern is visible: sales and labour by month against the same month last year, and a simple cash projection through the shoulder months. Choosing to file HST quarterly rather than annually keeps the tax collected in the busy season from building into a large bill later. Managing cash in a seasonal business sets out the approach.

Food cost and labour, measured every month

Food cost and labour cost as a share of sales are the two numbers that decide whether a restaurant makes money. They only mean something when purchases are coded by category, food, alcohol, supplies, and when inventory is counted at month-end, at least roughly. Without the count, the month you stock up for a long weekend looks terrible and the month after looks great, and neither is true. A monthly close with a count gives you a number you can compare month to month and act on: a menu price, a portion, a supplier, a schedule.

Equipment, leaseholds and the renovation

Kitchen equipment, furniture and the POS hardware are capital assets written off through capital cost allowance. Leasehold improvements, the build-out of a leased space, are written off over the lease term in their own class. When a restaurant renovates, the question of what is a repair and what is an improvement decides whether the cost is deducted now or over years. It is worth settling with the contractor’s invoice in hand, before the work starts, rather than reconstructing it afterwards.

Remote restaurant accounting from Abbotsford

EverStone is a sole practitioner CPA firm at 32615 South Fraser Way in Abbotsford, working with Barrie clients entirely online. There is no Barrie office and no local staff. Meetings are held by video or phone, documents come in through a secure upload link and are signed electronically, and no visit is required at any point. Daily sales, tips and food cost tracking are handled from the systems you already run, not from a filing cabinet. The fee is fixed before work starts; see what it costs.