Restaurant accountant in Kelowna

If you pour your own wine rather than someone else’s, the Kelowna winery page covers the excise and inventory side.

A summer that has to pay for the winter

Lake-country hospitality earns much of its year between the long weekends. Tourists, boaters, wedding parties and festival crowds fill patios and dining rooms from late spring into September, and then the valley goes quiet. The fixed costs do not: rent, insurance, equipment leases, the core staff and the loan payments run twelve months a year. A restaurant can be comfortably profitable over the year and still be short of cash in March.

The accounting answer is to treat the summer as a reserve, not a windfall. GST and PST collected in July, and source deductions withheld from July’s payroll, are held for the government and should sit in a separate account until the returns are filed. A monthly figure for the fixed costs, measured against a realistic winter, tells you what the summer has to leave behind. A bad smoke season or a wet June hits the peak months, so the reserve has to allow for a summer that does not go to plan. Cash flow for a seasonal business sets out the method.

The off-season is also when the renovation happens. A new patio, a rebuilt bar or a kitchen line bought in the winter is a capital cost recovered over time through capital cost allowance, and improvements to a leased space follow their own schedule. The timing against your year-end changes the first year’s deduction, so it is worth a conversation before the deposit is paid.

Seasonality also argues for a year-end in the quiet months. A count and a close in the middle of August compete with service; the same work in the winter gets done properly.

Tips and a staff that turns over every season

Summer hiring brings a wave of new servers, cooks and bussers each spring, and many of them leave in the fall. Each one needs to be set up correctly before the first pay, and each departure needs a record of employment. Tips add a second layer. Tips the employer controls and distributes, such as a pooled tip-out run through the till, generally go through payroll with CPP and EI deducted; tips passed directly from guest to server are treated differently. BC employment standards also limit what an employer can take from tips, so the tip-out policy should be written down and applied the way it is written.

Staff meals and shift drinks are the other quiet payroll issue. Whether a free or discounted meal is a taxable benefit depends on the circumstances, and the policy should be decided rather than left to habit. When the season ends, records of employment have to go out promptly, because they are what a laid-off server relies on through the winter. Controlled versus direct tips explains where the line falls, and the Kelowna payroll page covers seasonal hiring and ROEs.

GST on the meal, PST on the drink

BC splits sales tax in a way that shows up on almost every restaurant bill. GST applies to prepared food and drink. PST generally does not apply to food, but it does apply to liquor, so the beer, wine and cocktails on a bill carry both taxes while the meal carries one. Packaged goods sold to take home, gift cards, catering, private events and merchandise each need their own setting as well, and a gift card is not a sale until it is redeemed.

All of this is decided in the point-of-sale system, item by item. A menu category set up with the wrong tax code charges it wrongly on every transaction until someone notices, and the error compounds across a summer of volume. We review the tax settings at the start of an engagement and every time the menu changes. The BC PST guide covers registration and returns.

Point-of-sale totals, card deposits and delivery payouts

A night’s sales in the point-of-sale system never match what lands in the bank the next day. Card processors deduct fees and deposit in batches. Delivery platforms pay weeks later, net of commission and sometimes of promotions the restaurant agreed to fund. Cash goes into a float or a safe before it goes to the bank. Voids, comps and refunds move the totals again.

The bookkeeping records gross sales from the daily reports, records every fee as an expense, and reconciles each processor and platform account to zero every month. The unexplained difference is then a handful of timing items rather than a year-end mystery. Platform fees recorded only as a smaller deposit are deductions lost. The Kelowna bookkeeping page covers the monthly close.

What EverStone handles for you

One CPA, one fixed fee agreed up front:

• T2 corporate return and year-end financial statements
• Point-of-sale, card processor and delivery platform reconciliations
• Payroll for a seasonal team, including tip treatment, ROEs and year-end slips
• GST and PST set up correctly across food, liquor and everything else on the till
• Food, liquor and labour cost reported monthly against sales
• Equipment, patio and leasehold improvement schedules

Fixed fees, fully online

EverStone is an Abbotsford CPA firm working with Kelowna operators entirely online — video, phone and secure upload link. We are in the same time zone, so something sent after close is usually answered before service the next day. The fee is fixed and agreed before work starts. See what it costs.

Remote restaurant accounting from Abbotsford

EverStone is a sole practitioner CPA firm in Abbotsford, working with Kelowna clients entirely online. There is no Kelowna office and no local staff. Meetings are held by video or phone, documents are exchanged through a secure upload link and e-signature, and no visit is required at any point. Daily sales, tips and cost tracking are handled from the systems you already run, not from a filing cabinet.