Daily Cash Reconciliation for Restaurants: A Step-by-Step Guide
A 6-step end-of-day routine that matches POS sales against every cash, card, delivery, and wallet receipt — and catches gaps before they become losses.
What is daily reconciliation in a restaurant?
Daily reconciliation is the end-of-day routine of matching what your POS rang up against what you actually received in cash, card settlements, delivery payouts, and wallet transfers.
It exists for one reason: cash drift is invisible if you do not check it every day. By the time a monthly reconciliation flags a $2,000 gap, the staff rotation has changed twice and there is no honest way to trace it back. Daily reconciliation keeps the trail fresh.
It also gives you accurate cash flow. If you only reconcile monthly you are running the business on a guess about your bank balance — and you will misjudge a supplier payment or a payroll run.
What should you reconcile each day?
Match POS totals against six receipt streams. Most restaurants get this done in 10–15 minutes once the routine is built.
- Close and print the POS daily total — The POS X- or Z-report is your source of truth. Capture gross sales, refunds, voids, and discounts separately.
- Count cash drawer against POS cash sales — Cash sales reported on the POS should equal what's in the till minus the opening float. Record the variance.
- Match card totals against the terminal batch — Reconcile each terminal's settlement summary against the POS card total. Catch declined-but-rang-up errors here.
- Reconcile delivery platform sales — Each platform's order total should match the POS total tagged to that channel. Note any platform refunds you have not yet posted.
- Reconcile mobile wallet receipts — ABA, Wing, ACLEDA — pull the day's report and match against POS wallet sales by provider.
- Record staff meals, comps, and waste — Anything that left the kitchen without a paying customer needs to be logged today, not next week.
How do you reconcile delivery platform payments?
The platform's gross sale is your revenue; the commission is your expense; the net deposit is what hits your bank a week or two later. Track all three.
Most operators silently lose money here by recording only the net deposit as revenue. That makes your gross sales understated and your platform commission invisible. The honest treatment is: recognise gross revenue on the sale date, accrue the commission as an expense, and clear the receivable when the platform settles.
| Line | Amount (USD) |
|---|---|
| Gross order value (platform-reported) | $120.00 |
| Platform commission (25%) | −$30.00 |
| Promo / discount funded by you | −$5.00 |
| Net amount due from platform | $85.00 |
BasilBook handles all three legs automatically when you sync POS sales — see the delivery receivables feature for how the journal entries are generated.
How do you spot a reconciliation gap before it becomes a problem?
Track variance as a percentage of daily sales over time, not as an absolute dollar amount. A small persistent drift is more telling than one big one-off.
- Mis-keyed payment type — Cash sale rung up as card, or vice versa. Shows as equal-and-opposite gaps in two streams.
- Refund not posted — Money left the till but the POS still shows the original sale. Always log refunds the same day.
- Cash skimming — Persistent one-sided cash shortage of $5–$30 a day, never an overage. Investigate fast.
- Platform commission rate change — Platforms occasionally adjust commission. A sudden 3–5% gap on delivery net often points here.
Set a threshold — say 0.5% of daily sales — and treat anything above it as a defect to investigate, not noise to absorb. Restaurants that act on small gaps almost never have big ones.