Restaurant accountant in St. Catharines

A tourist season that decides the year

A dining room near the Falls or on the wine route can take in more in July than in the three winter months together. The fixed costs do not follow: rent, insurance, loan payments and a core team run all year. The business that looks rich in August has to fund February, and the tax bill from a strong year tends to arrive just as the slow season starts.

We build a simple cash forecast around your actual season, set HST filing and tax instalments so they do not land at the low point, and look at the year-end date with that in mind. A restaurant whose fiscal year closes at the height of summer carries a lot of payables, tips and gift cards into the cut-off; closing in a quieter month is often cleaner. Cash flow in a seasonal business walks through the approach, and the instalment calculator shows what a lower payment schedule would look like.

Closing out the POS every day

The point-of-sale system is the source of truth for sales, but it is not the bank. Card settlements arrive a day or two later, net of fees. Delivery platforms pay weekly after commission and sometimes after adjustments for refunds. Gift cards are sold in December and redeemed in March. Cash goes into a till, a safe and eventually a deposit.

Each of those needs a clearing account that reconciles to zero. We book sales from the daily close-out at their gross amount, record processor fees and platform commissions as expenses, and match deposits to the days they belong to. When something does not agree, it shows up in the week it happened rather than at year-end. Why reconciliation matters explains what it catches.

Tips, tip-outs and the payroll that carries them

How tips are treated depends on who controls them. Where the business collects tips and decides how they are shared, including a pool distributed to kitchen and front-of-house staff, they are generally run through payroll as employment income with the appropriate deductions. Where a customer hands a tip directly to a server who keeps it, it is generally the employee’s to report. Card tips paid out through the till sit on the line between the two, and the answer depends on how your house actually operates.

We document the arrangement, set up the payroll codes to match, and make sure the T4s at year-end reflect it. Tip reporting on payroll has the detail.

HST on meals, drinks and everything else on the bill

Restaurant meals, alcohol and takeout prepared food are taxable at 13% HST in Ontario. A mandatory service charge added to the bill is part of the price and carries HST; a voluntary tip left by the customer does not. Gift cards are generally not taxed when sold, because the tax applies when they are redeemed for a meal. Getting those three right keeps the return aligned with the POS.

On the other side, the HST paid on food and beverage purchases, equipment, rent and repairs is recovered through input tax credits. The return is only as good as the coding behind it: a supplier invoice without an HST number, or a card receipt with no tax shown, is a credit that cannot be supported if the CRA asks. Input tax credits explains what a claim needs. See GST/HST filing for how we handle the return itself.

Food cost, pour cost and the monthly count

Food and beverage cost is the number a restaurant owner can change quickest, and it is invisible without a count. A monthly count of the walk-in, dry storage and the bar, valued at cost, turns purchases into a real cost of sales and shows whether the menu prices still work. Staff meals, spoilage and comps belong in the numbers too, recorded as what they are rather than lost in the food line.

At year-end the count also sets the closing inventory for tax. The year-end count sets out how it should be documented.

The count also feeds the monthly statements, which is where the season becomes visible. Reading a one-page profit and loss by the middle of the following month lets you see a rising food cost in June. You see it while there is still a season left to fix it, rather than in a year-end file in the spring. The month-end close describes the routine.

Payroll that doubles in June

Summer hiring brings a wave of new employees in a few weeks, most of them students and returning seasonal staff. Each needs onboarding paperwork, correct deductions from the first shift and, when the season ends, a record of employment and a final pay that includes vacation pay owed. Statutory holidays fall in the busiest months, and holiday pay has to be calculated correctly for part-time and irregular schedules.

WSIB coverage applies, and a restaurant group or a restaurant owned alongside a winery may share one Ontario employer health tax exemption with its associated companies. Payroll in St. Catharines and statutory holiday pay cover both.

Remote restaurant accounting from Abbotsford

EverStone is a sole practitioner CPA firm at 32615 South Fraser Way in Abbotsford, serving St. Catharines clients entirely online. There is no St. Catharines office and no local staff. Meetings are held by video or phone, documents are exchanged by secure upload link and e-signature, 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.