For independent restaurants + food service.
Restaurant bookkeeping that splits the state's money out of every deposit.
Toast and Square settlements split into Cash + Sales Tax Payable so the remittance check is paid from money that was always the state's. DoorDash and UberEats payouts split into Delivery Sales + Commission Expense so the real margin shows on the P&L. Period close locks each month; the monthly PDF is one file.
No card required · $15/mo after trial · 30-day money-back
Sales-tax pass-through visibility
Toast and Clover and Square deposit net of processing, with tax bundled into the total. Your bank balance includes the state's cut for the past 30 days. PlainBooks separates the sales-tax dollars you collected from operating cash — so writing the remittance check is not a guess.
Food + labor ratio reality
Food cost should run 28–35%. Labor 25–35%. PlainBooks tallies the Sysco / US Foods / Restaurant Depot lines against revenue every week so you see when the ratio is creeping — not when you do the books in February.
Delivery-margin truth
DoorDash and UberEats take 15–30% commission. The deposit comes net of that, plus a few-day lag. PlainBooks separates the platform deposits from in-house Square sales so the actual delivery-channel margin is one number.
Where the books get messy
Friday dinner did $4,200. Saturday brunch did $3,800. Sunday picked up $2,900. Each Toast settlement lands net of processing, with the 7% sales tax bundled into the gross. The Sysco delivery rolled Tuesday on Net-14. The DoorDash payout came Wednesday — $1,100 for the week against $1,600 in delivery sales because the platform took 30%. Tips were $1,180 across the staff and need to land on the right paystubs for FICA tip credit. The grease-trap pickup is on the 17th.
Your bank balance reads $11,400. About $1,800 of it is sales tax owed to the state on the 20th. The food-cost ratio is creeping toward 38%. The books need to show all of this — and reconcile back to the deposits — before payroll runs Friday.
What PlainBooks does
PlainBooks gives you the books — chart of accounts shaped for an independent restaurant, the journal where Toast and Square settlements, food deliveries, payroll runs, and delivery-platform payouts each write a balanced entry, and a period close that locks each month with proper closing entries.
Sales tax is its own liability account (Sales Tax Payable). Every Toast settlement splits gross into Cash + Sales Tax Payable so the state's money is never sitting in income. When you write the remittance check on the 20th, PlainBooks reverses the liability against Cash. The amount owed is always visible on the Balance Sheet.
DoorDash and UberEats settlements come in net of commission. PlainBooks splits each deposit between Delivery Sales (gross) and Delivery Commission Expense (the 15–30% cut) so the real delivery-channel margin is one number on the P&L.
When the month closes
Close the period and PlainBooks generates the closing entries. The monthly PDF package — Trial Balance, P&L with food-cost % and labor-cost % visible, Balance Sheet (sales-tax liability broken out), GL detail, AR aging if you have house accounts, AP aging for the Sysco / US Foods / Restaurant Depot side — comes out in one file.
PlainBooks does not cost out menus, count inventory, or file the sales-tax remittance. MarginEdge and R365 do the first two. The remittance is yours or your bookkeeper's to file from the number PlainBooks shows you. If a guest writes a check the next day or a chargeback lands a week late, reopen the period with an audit-preserving reversal, fix what needs fixing, re-close.
Bills you can't afford to forget
PlainBooks puts each one on the same calendar as your real bank balance, so you see the collision before it happens.
- Rent (often triple-net + CAM)Monthly, the 1st$3,000–$8,000
- Food (Sysco, US Foods, Restaurant Depot)2–3 deliveries/week28–35% of revenue
- PayrollBiweekly25–35% of revenue
- Card processing + Toast/Square feesDaily, at settlement$400–$900/mo
- Equipment repair surprises (walk-in, hood, hvac)Unpredictable$3,000–$8,000/incident
- Gas + electric + water + waste + grease pickupMonthly$1,500–$3,500
The sales-tax money sitting in your operating account
You collected $1,800 in sales tax on the last month of card revenue. Toast deposited it bundled into the daily settlement. The state's remittance is due the 20th. Most operators don't separate it — the money looks like operating cash until the remittance bounces. PlainBooks calculates the running pass-through balance from the actual tax-collected lines so the remittance check is paid from money that was always the state's, not from this week's payroll.
What PlainBooks doesn't do
Honest about scope. If you need any of these, you need different software.
- Run your POS or take orders — Toast, Square, Clover do that
- Cost out menus or count inventory — MarginEdge, R365, xtraCHEF
- File the sales-tax remittance — PlainBooks shows what is owed; you or the bookkeeper files it
- Schedule the staff or pay them. 7shifts + Gusto + Toast Payroll handle scheduling and payroll. PlainBooks just sees what came out of the bank.
Ready to see your cash position?
$15/month or $150/year (two months free). 14-day free trial. No card required.
Start your free trialCommon questions
- Does PlainBooks work for restaurant / food service?
- Yes. PlainBooks is general-ledger bookkeeping software — workspaces, chart of accounts, journal entries, period close, bank reconciliation, the full report set (Trial Balance, P&L, Balance Sheet, GL detail, AR aging, AP aging, 1099 summary). The restaurant / food service-specific copy on this page describes the accounts and bills that matter most in this vertical.
- What does it cost?
- $15/month or $150/year when signups open. One price, all features, no tiers. Signups aren't open yet — leave your email on the home page and we'll send one note when launch happens.
- Do I need to connect a bank account?
- No. PlainBooks does not ingest bank feeds. You post journal entries directly (and for trucking workspaces, trips and state-mileage entries write the underlying entries automatically). If you want bank-fed cash visibility, that's a different category of tool.
- What about cash-flow forecasting?
- On the roadmap, not in the current build. PlainBooks today shows what your books say — current balances, what's open in AR and AP, what's posted, what's pending close. We don't promise features that aren't built.