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DoorDash
DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub reconciliation guide
Ryan
Short answer: Every delivery platform pays you net of fees on its own schedule, and every one of them names the same things differently. Reconciliation works when you stop reading deposits and start reading statements: pull the platform statement for the period, take gross sales from it, break out commission, processing, marketer funded and merchant funded promotions, refunds, adjustments and taxes, then prove the remainder against the deposits that hit your bank. This guide covers what to look for platform by platform and how to run it monthly without it eating a day.
If you have not set up the accounting treatment yet, start with how to reconcile DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub fees, which covers the entries themselves. This one is the operational guide: where the numbers live and what trips people up.
What is in a platform statement?
The labels differ, the structure does not. Every statement contains some version of these:
| Component | What it is | Where it belongs in your books |
|---|---|---|
| Gross food sales | Menu price times quantity, before anything is taken out | Revenue, delivery channel |
| Commission | The platform's percentage, which varies by the plan tier you signed up for | Operating expense, not a reduction of revenue |
| Payment processing | Card processing on the order | Merchant fees |
| Promotions and ads | Discounts you funded and marketing spend you authorized | Marketing expense, separated from commission |
| Refunds, adjustments, error charges | Order errors, cancellations, customer credits, charged back to you in whole or part | Contra revenue or expense, consistently applied |
| Taxes | Sales tax, which in most states the platform collects and remits as a marketplace facilitator | Tracked, not filed twice |
| Driver tips | Pass through to the driver on marketplace orders | Not your revenue and not your liability |
What is different about each platform?
Enough to matter, not enough to justify three separate processes:
- DoorDash. Payouts arrive on a weekly cycle by default, with faster options available, and the merchant portal separates order level detail from the payout summary. Watch error charges: disputes have a time limit, and unchallenged charges become permanent.
- Uber Eats. Statements separate marketplace orders from orders you delivered yourself, and the fee structure differs between them. If you run both, they need separate treatment or your delivery margin is an average of two very different things.
- Grubhub. Promotions and marketing charges are frequently the largest non commission line, and they are easy to mistake for commission if you only look at the total deduction.
- All three. When you run your own drivers through a platform's white label offering, the fee profile changes completely, and it should be tracked as a different channel.
What does a monthly reconciliation look like?
- Pull each platform statement for the period on the same day each month. Put it on the close calendar with a named owner.
- Record gross sales by platform from the statement, not from the POS if the two disagree. Investigate the disagreement separately.
- Post each deduction to its own account. One lump sum called "delivery fees" makes the next step impossible.
- Tie net payouts on the statement to deposits in the bank, by date. Timing differences at period end are normal, unexplained differences are not.
- Check the tax lines: if the platform remitted the tax, you should not be remitting it again on those sales.
- Record any error charges or adjustments, and flag anything still inside the dispute window.
What are the three most common errors?
- Booking the deposit as the sale. Revenue understated, every cost of delivery invisible, food cost percentage wrong all year.
- Double counting sales tax on marketplace orders where the platform already remitted it.
- Treating merchant funded promotions as commission, which makes your marketing spend disappear and your platform fees look worse than they are.
How do you know delivery is actually profitable?
Once the above is in place, the math is available: take delivery gross sales, subtract the food cost on those orders, then subtract commission, processing and any promotions you funded. Compare that margin against dine in. Most operators find delivery is profitable at a lower margin, which is a decision to make deliberately rather than discover by accident. Fee negotiation is a real lever too, covered in negotiating with third party delivery apps.
Frequently asked questions
How often should I reconcile delivery?
Monthly at minimum, as part of close. Weekly if delivery is more than about 20 percent of sales, because error charges have dispute windows that monthly review will miss.
Do the POS integrations handle this?
They bring orders into the POS, which helps operations. They generally do not reconcile fees and payouts to the bank, which is the accounting work. The integration is not the reconciliation.
Who owes the sales tax?
In most states the platform is a marketplace facilitator and collects and remits on those orders. Confirm it per platform and per state rather than assuming, keep the documentation, and make sure the same sales are not also being reported on your own return.
What about driver tips?
On marketplace orders, tips pass through to the platform's driver. They are not your revenue and not your tip liability, which is different from tips left for your own staff.
Can I just net it out at year end?
You can produce a tax return that way. You cannot manage delivery that way, and you will not know which platform is worth keeping.
Want to check whether your delivery numbers are being recorded correctly right now? Take the FIXE Health Score quiz.
