Selling Online as a Restaurant or Retail Shop: How to Keep Your Books Clean

Disclosure: Tides Bookkeeping is an A2X partner, and we use A2X with a client's Shopify store today.

Plenty of independent restaurants, bars and shops now sell online as well as in person. That might be gift cards at the holidays, branded merch, a Shopify store for retail stock, or online orders for pickup. Each one adds a new source of deposits, fees and tax to your books. Set up right, it's simple to track. Set up wrong, it quietly muddies the numbers you rely on to run the place.

Why online sales get messy for a brick-and-mortar business

Your POS already feeds daily sales, card deposits and tips into your books. Online sales come in through a different door. A2X points out that ecommerce businesses often need separate income and expense accounts for each channel, and clearing accounts for different payment types. That's the part a brick-and-mortar setup usually doesn't have. Common problems:

• Online payouts booked as one lump of "sales," mixed in with dine-in or in-store revenue
• Platform fees buried or missing
• Sales tax from online orders not separated
• Gift cards booked as income when they're sold, instead of when they're redeemed

Gift cards: a liability until they're used

When someone buys a $50 gift card, you haven't earned $50 yet. You owe a meal or merchandise. That sale should sit in a gift card liability account and move to sales when the card is redeemed, whether that happens in person or online. A2X lists gift cards as one of the transaction types it separates out of ecommerce payouts, which helps when online gift card sales come through a store like Shopify. Unredeemed gift card rules vary by state, so check with your CPA.

Merch and retail stock: track the cost too

Merch is inventory. Record what you paid for it, and move that cost to cost of goods sold as items sell. Keep merch sales in their own income line, not mixed with food and beverage, so your food cost and prime cost percentages stay meaningful. A2X notes that cost of goods sold timing is one of the trickier parts of ecommerce accounting.

Online orders through third parties

Delivery and ordering platforms usually pay you net of commissions and fees, much like a marketplace. The approach is the same: record gross sales, record the fees as an expense, and separate any tax. That way you can see what each channel really costs you.

Where A2X fits

Tides Bookkeeping is an A2X partner, and we use A2X with a client's Shopify store today. For a restaurant or shop with an online store, that means we connect A2X to your store and to QuickBooks, set up separate accounts for online sales, fees, sales tax and gift cards, and make sure they sit cleanly next to your POS data. Every month we check that each online payout has been matched and that nothing has spilled into your dine-in or in-store numbers.

If your online sales are small, we'll tell you that and skip it. If they're growing, you'll have the right setup in place from the start.

A simple setup

1. A separate income account for each channel: dine-in or in-store, online store, merch, and delivery platforms
2. A fees expense account for each platform, so you can compare them
3. Sales tax payable kept separate from income
4. A gift card liability account that's shared by in-store and online sales
5. A tool like A2X for ecommerce payouts, so each deposit is broken into its parts and matched to the bank
6. A monthly review of each channel's sales against its deposits

What this gets you

You can see whether online sales are actually profitable once fees are counted, keep your restaurant cost percentages clean, and hand your CPA tidy books at tax time.

Common questions

Should my online store have its own bank account?

Not necessarily. Separate income and fee accounts in your books usually give you the visibility you need. We can help you decide.

Are gift card sales income?

Not when they're sold. They're a liability until they're redeemed. Ask your CPA how your state treats unredeemed cards.

Do I need A2X if I only sell a few gift cards online?

Probably not. A2X earns its keep once your online volume or fee complexity makes manual entries a chore.