Running a café or restaurant in Ireland is hard enough right now. Costs keep rising, margins are thin, and many good businesses have closed in the last few years. The more you know about where you make money, and where you don’t, the better your chances.

Your till already holds most of that information. The problem is getting it into QuickBooks properly. When the till and QuickBooks are tuned to work together, every sale lands at the right VAT rate, card fees and tips are accounted for, and you can see what you’re really making, week by week, not just at year end.

Want to know what your business is really making? Book a free discovery call and we’ll look at how your till and QuickBooks work together.

Why your till and QuickBooks often don’t agree

Since 1 July 2026, most food and hot drinks are back at 9% VAT, while alcohol, soft drinks and bottled water stay at 23%. Cold takeaway food is generally 0%. That means a single table’s bill can carry two or three VAT rates.

Meal deals make it harder. If you sell a hot meal and a soft drink for one price, the price has to be split between the 9% food and the 23% drink, including any discount (Crowe).

Ibec’s advice to small businesses was to update both the till and the accounting software, and to test bundles and combo deals, since mixed items cause most errors (Ibec / SFA). It’s easy to update the till and stop there.

The usual result is one of these:

• daily takings posted to QuickBooks as one lump sum at a single VAT rate
• card machine payouts arriving net of fees, so sales look lower than they were
• tips and service charges mixed in with sales
• a VAT return that doesn’t match what the till says

None of these show up on a busy Saturday night. They show up when the VAT return is due, or when you can’t explain why the bank balance doesn’t match the profit.

What a properly tuned till and QuickBooks setup looks like

Tuning your till into QuickBooks means each day’s trading arrives already sorted, so nobody has to re-key or guess. A good setup covers:

• Sales by VAT rate. Food and hot drinks at 9%, alcohol and soft drinks at 23%, and any 0% items, each mapped to the right VAT code so your VAT3 matches the till.
• Sales by category. Food, drinks, coffee, takeaway and so on, so you can see what sells and what earns.
• Payment types. Cash, card and vouchers recorded separately, so each can be matched to what actually arrives in the bank.
• Card fees. Recorded as a cost, not hidden inside lower sales figures.
• Tips and service charges. Held in their own account and paid out to staff, in line with the Tips Act rules on fair distribution (Department of Enterprise).

Some tills connect to QuickBooks directly; Lightspeed, for example, syncs daily sales (Lightspeed). Others need an app in between or a regular import. Either way, the connection is only as good as the mapping behind it, and that is where most setups go wrong.

Online orders and delivery apps belong in QuickBooks too

If you sell online, through your own ordering site or a delivery app, those sales need the same treatment as the till. They are often the messiest part of the books.

• Payouts arrive net. The amount in your bank is usually after the platform’s commission and fees. Your sales are the full amount; the commission is a cost. Recording only the payout understates both.
• Takeaway VAT is different. Hot takeaway food is at 9%, but cold takeaway food is generally 0% and drinks stay at 23%. Delivery without serving staff counts as takeaway, not catering (Crowe).
• Separate channels, separate reports. When online sales sit in their own category, you can see whether that channel actually pays once commission is taken off.

We connect online ordering to your business software the same way as the till, so everything lands in one place.

Knowing where you make money (if any) and what to do about it

Once sales arrive sorted by category and channel, QuickBooks can answer the questions that keep owners up at night:

• Are we making money this month? Not at year end, when it’s too late to act, but now.
• What are we making on food, and on drink? Sales by category set against what you spend on stock show your gross profit on each.
• What are wages costing us? Payroll as a share of sales, week by week, tells you whether the rota matches the trade.
• Which channel pays? Dine-in, takeaway and online, each after its own costs, including delivery commission and card fees.
• Where is money leaking? Rising supplier prices, waste or a card fee creeping up show in the figures before they show in the bank.

That is the point of getting the till and QuickBooks right. When the numbers are reliable, you can act on them: change a supplier, reprice a dish, adjust the rota, or rethink a delivery app that costs more than it brings in.

How one of our hospitality clients uses it

[Client example to be supplied: one of QuickWorks’ hospitality clients. Suggested shape: what the business is and where; what was going wrong before (for example lump-sum takings, VAT not matching, no view of margins); what we set up (till connection, VAT rates, card fees, tips, online orders); what the owner can now see or decide. Anonymise unless the client agrees to be named.]

Getting your till tuned into QuickBooks

QuickWorks works only with QuickBooks, and we already look after a number of Irish hospitality businesses. Here is what we do:

• Tune your till into QuickBooks, with sales mapped by VAT rate, category and payment type
• Set up the VAT rates properly, including the 9% and 23% split and meal deals
• Connect your online ordering and delivery apps, so commission and fees are recorded correctly
• Account for card fees and tips, so your sales figures are real and your staff are paid out properly
• Show you or your manager how to use it, through QuickBooks training, with monthly support if you want a hand keeping it right

If you’re moving from another package, we handle the migration to QuickBooks too.

Want to know what your business is really making? Book a free discovery call and we’ll look at how your till and QuickBooks work together.