Restaurant Bookkeeping Made Simple
The best bookkeeping software for restaurants
The Restaurant Bookkeeping Challenges
Whether you're a restaurant handling your own books or a bookkeeper serving restaurant clients, restaurant bookkeeping comes with unique challenges.
High Volume of Supplier Invoices
Restaurants receive dozens of invoices weekly from food distributors, beverage suppliers, and service providers, each requiring manual entry and categorization.
Complex Payment Terms
Suppliers offer different payment terms, and one payment often covers multiple invoices. Tracking what's been paid and what's still owed is a constant challenge.
Supplier Credits & Deductions
Returns, damaged goods, and pricing adjustments create supplier credits that get applied to future invoices, often automatically deducted.
Daily Sales Reconciliation
Matching POS sales, sales tax, tips, and cash to bank deposits every day is tedious and error-prone.
How Restaurant Bookkeeping Made Simple with Instant Books
We Gather All Your Documents
Restaurants receive documents from everywhere: supplier invoices, supplier statements, payment confirmations, grocery store receipts, Amazon purchases, contractor bills (repair and maintenance). Simply forward emails or snap photos, Instant Books organizes everything in one place, by month and by category.
Smart Categorization Based on Purchases
Our AI reads each invoice and categorizes expenses based on the actual items purchased, not just the vendor name. Food supplies, beverages, cleaning products, and equipment are automatically sorted into the right expense categories for accurate cost tracking.
Automatic Payment Matching
We pull transactions directly from your bank and automatically match payments to the corresponding vendor invoices, whether it pays one bill or multiple bills. Supplier credit auto-detected and applied when doing payment matching. No more hunting through supplier statements trying to figure out what each payment was for.
Account Payable and Cost Tracking in Real Time
With automatic matching of bank transactions to invoices and cost categories, you get accurate accounts payable and cost tracking updated daily.
🔌 QuickBooks Integration
If you already use QuickBooks Online for your restaurant bookkeeping, you don't need to switch. All the above features work as an extension to QuickBooks Online as well, though having only Instant Books subscription will help with reducing your restaurant cost.
Perfect For
Bookkeepers & Accountants
Bookkeeping professionals serving restaurant clients who want to automate the heavy lifting and scale their practice.
Independent Restaurants
Single-location restaurants handling their own books but would like to spend less time on bookkeeping.
Food Trucks, Catering & Cafes
Food service businesses with high transaction volumes and multiple supplier relationships.