Restaurant Chart of Accounts: Complete Template & Guide
The 25 essential accounts every restaurant needs, how they're organized, and a step-by-step setup that works for cafés, casual dining, and full-service kitchens.
What is a restaurant chart of accounts?
A restaurant chart of accounts is the structured list of buckets your bookkeeping system uses to classify every dollar that flows in or out of the restaurant.
It is the spine of your financial reporting. Every sale, every purchase, every wage payment, and every utility bill maps to one or more accounts on this list. Done well, it lets you answer questions like 'what did beverage gross margin do this month' in seconds. Done badly, it leaves you with one giant 'Sales' account and no way to see what's actually happening.
Generic accounting templates are usually too thin for restaurants. They do not separate food revenue from beverage revenue, they lump delivery commissions in with general expenses, and they have no place for receivables from Grab or FoodPanda. A restaurant-ready chart of accounts pre-builds those distinctions.
What accounts should a restaurant have?
At minimum, a restaurant needs accounts in six groups: assets, liabilities, equity, revenue, cost of goods sold, and operating expenses. Below are the 25 most useful ones to start with.
This is the same shape BasilBook seeds for every new organization — see the full pre-seeded chart of accounts on the product page.
Assets
- Cash on Hand — Physical cash in your tills and safe at the end of each day.
- Bank Account — Operating bank balance, reconciled against monthly statements.
- Food Inventory — Value of food stock on hand at cost, updated at each stock count.
- Beverage Inventory — Value of beverage stock — split out so margin analysis is separable.
- Delivery Receivables — Net amount owed by Grab, FoodPanda, Nham24 between sale and settlement.
Liabilities
- Accounts Payable — Vendor invoices received but not yet paid.
- Wages Payable — Accrued staff wages between the cut-off date and payday.
- Sales / VAT Payable — Tax collected on sales but not yet remitted to the government.
Equity
- Owner's Equity — Capital the owners have put in, plus or minus retained earnings.
- Retained Earnings — Accumulated profit (or loss) carried over from prior periods.
Revenue
- Food Revenue — Gross sales of food items, recognised on the sale date.
- Beverage Revenue — Gross sales of drinks — split out because beverage margins are very different.
- Delivery Revenue — Revenue from delivery platform sales, recognised gross before commission.
Cost of Goods Sold
- Food COGS — Opening food stock + food purchases − closing food stock.
- Beverage COGS — Same formula, separated so food and beverage margins are independently reportable.
Operating Expenses
- Rent — Monthly lease payment for the premises.
- Utilities — Electricity, water, gas, internet — the cost of keeping the lights on.
- Wages Expense — Staff wages recognised in the period they were earned, not paid.
- Packaging & Takeaway Supplies — Boxes, cups, bags — separated because they scale with delivery volume.
- Cleaning & Sanitation — Detergents, gloves, sanitiser — a real recurring line in any restaurant.
- Marketing — Ads, photography, social media boosts, printed menus.
- Delivery Commissions — Platform commissions taken off the top of each delivery order.
- Waste Expense — Cost of stock written off due to spoilage, breakage, or staff meals.
How are restaurant accounts organized?
Accounts are grouped into the six standard types and usually numbered in ranges so anyone glancing at an account code knows what kind of account it is.
| Account type | Typical range | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Assets | 1000 – 1999 | 1100 Cash on Hand |
| Liabilities | 2000 – 2999 | 2100 Accounts Payable |
| Equity | 3000 – 3999 | 3100 Owner's Equity |
| Revenue | 4000 – 4999 | 4100 Food Revenue |
| COGS | 5000 – 5999 | 5100 Food COGS |
| Operating Expenses | 6000 – 8999 | 6100 Rent |
You do not have to follow this numbering — the labels matter more than the codes. But a consistent scheme makes your profit and loss statement readable and lets your accountant import balances cleanly into tax filings.
How do you set up a chart of accounts for a café?
Start with a restaurant template, then split the few accounts where you actually need finer detail. Do not over-engineer it on day one.
- Start with a restaurant template — Use a pre-built restaurant chart of accounts rather than a generic SME one. You will save hours and avoid missing the obvious accounts like Delivery Receivables.
- Split revenue by what you can act on — At minimum, separate food, beverage, and delivery. If retail (mugs, beans, merch) is a real line, give it its own account.
- Create delivery commission expense accounts — One per platform if you can. It makes negotiating with each platform much easier when you can show what they actually cost you.
- Separate wages payable from wages expense — Wages expense is what was earned this month; wages payable is what hasn't been paid yet. Mixing them hides your real labour cost.
- Review quarterly, not constantly — Resist the urge to add accounts every week. A growing chart with 200 stale accounts is worse than a tight one with 30 you actually use.