Every restaurant operator eventually asks the same question at 11pm: the POS says we did $9,400 today, but the deposit was $8,850. Where did $550 go? Usually nothing was stolen — but until you reconcile daily, you can't prove it, and your accountant bills you 20+ hours a month to find out.
The six usual suspects
- Merchant processing fees. 2.5% + $0.30 sounds small until you run $280k/month in cards. That's $700+/month withheld before it reaches your bank, split across batches that don't line up with business days.
- Gift card redemptions. Cards sold last quarter are spent today. The tender shows in today's sales but no cash moves — it's a liability draw, not revenue.
- Tip withholdings and tip-outs. Pooled tips paid from the drawer, cash tips owed to card-tip servers, tip adjustments after shift close.
- Third-party marketplace payouts. DoorDash and Grubhub hold funds for days and remit net of their own fees — never on your business date.
- Timing drift. A batch that closes at 11:58pm settles after midnight. Yesterday's sales, today's deposit.
- Actual leakage. Unrecorded comps, voids after close, void abuse, or a pocketed cash table. This is the one you're hunting — and it's always the last one you check.
The fix is a daily habit, not a month-end marathon
Match each business day's tenders (cash, card, gift card, marketplace) against that day's expected bank credits within a 0.5% tolerance. Flag anything outside it the next morning, while the shift is two days old, not six weeks old. The variance list is short, specific, and answerable — and your month-end close becomes an hour instead of a week.
Doing this in QuickBooks? Here's the exact journal workflow →
Or skip the spreadsheet phase entirely — get a free reconciliation audit on one week of your real data →