Restaurant Year-End Books Checklist: 7 Fixes Before 2027

Short answer: before 2026 closes, close your open months in order, reconcile every bank and card account, match your delivery app payouts to the sales they came from, clear out the "uncategorized" pile, check your sales tax and tips, and list what you owe. Do that and your CPA gets a clean year, your 2027 budget starts on real numbers, and your P&L finally agrees with your bank account.

By Ryan Handel, co-founder and CEO of FIXE. October 2026.

Key takeaways

• Year-end is when messy books cost the most: your CPA needs a full year that ties out, and your 2027 plan is built on 2026.
• Close months oldest first. Every month's ending balances are the next month's starting point.
• Most "my P&L says profit but my bank is empty" questions come down to timing: delivery payouts, vendor bills, sales tax, tips and loan payments.
• If you're several months behind or have more than one location, this is a project, not a weekend.

Why year-end is the time to clean up

I talk to hundreds, if not thousands, of restaurants, and they all have the same question. My P&L shows I'm making a ton of money, I look at my bank account and it's not growing.

The answer is almost always in the books. Not in the big decisions, in the small stuff nobody had time for: a delivery payout that never got matched, a vendor charge sitting in the wrong category, a card the GM uses that nobody reconciled since summer. Each one is small. Together they're the reason you don't trust your numbers.

Year-end is when that catches up with you. Your CPA files from your books, so a messy 2026 turns tax season into a scramble. And whatever you plan for 2027 is built on 2026, so if those numbers are off, the plan is too.

The year-end cleanup checklist

1. Close your months in order, oldest first

Don't start with December. Every month's ending balances are the next month's starting point, so fixing a later month on top of an open one just moves the mess forward.

1. List every month of 2026 and mark it closed or open.
2. Start with the oldest open month and work forward.
3. Call a month closed only when every bank and card account for that month is reconciled.

2. Reconcile every bank and credit card account, month by month

This is the step that makes everything else trustworthy. If the books and the bank don't agree, nothing built on them is right.

1. List every account the restaurant touches: operating, payroll, savings, and every credit card, including the one only the GM uses.
2. For each month, match the statement's ending balance to the ending balance in your books.
3. Track down every difference. The usual suspects: a missing transaction, a duplicate, or a transfer between your own accounts booked as an expense.

3. Match delivery app payouts to the sales they came from

If you're on DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub or any of the hundreds of others, they don't deposit on a routine cadence every single day. Sometimes it's weekly. Some even pay monthly. And the deposit is what's left after fees, refunds and adjustments, not your sales.

1. Pull each app's payout report for the month.
2. Record the full sale, then the commissions, fees, refunds and adjustments as their own lines, so sales minus those lines equals the deposit.
3. Check that every payout actually landed in the bank, and in the month you think it did.

More detail in our DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub reconciliation guide.

4. Empty the "uncategorized" pile

Every set of books has a bucket where transactions go when nobody knows where they belong. By December it can hide thousands of dollars of food cost, repairs or supplies, which means your P&L lines are wrong in both directions.

1. Export everything sitting in uncategorized or "ask my accountant."
2. Sort by vendor. Most of it will be the same 10 or 20 vendors.
3. Recategorize by vendor in bulk, then set bank rules so the same vendors land in the right place next time.

5. Check your pass-throughs: sales tax and tips

Sales tax and tips are money you collect every day but pay out on a different schedule. Depending on your state, the sales tax goes out somewhere around the 15th to the 24th of the following month. Neither one belongs on your P&L, but both move your bank balance a lot.

1. Compare the sales tax you collected this year to what you've filed and paid. The difference should match what you still owe.
2. Compare the tips you collected to the tips paid out through payroll.
3. If either one doesn't tie out, flag it for your CPA now, not in March.

6. Write down what you owe

If you're buying from Sysco or US Foods and one month your bill is $10,000, then you decide to pay down a little more and it drops to $6,000, that's $4,000 out of your bank account with no impact on your P&L. Same with loans from your POS company or a cash advance you're paying back daily or weekly.

1. List every open vendor bill as of Dec 31.
2. List every loan and advance with its balance at year-end.
3. Make sure loan payments are split into the part that pays down the loan and the interest, instead of all of it landing as an expense.

7. Gather what your CPA will ask for

1. Your 2026 P&L and balance sheet, after steps 1 to 6.
2. December statements for every bank, card and loan account.
3. Year-end payroll reports.
4. A list of big purchases this year, like equipment or a buildout.

Want the deadline-by-deadline version for tax season? Read the restaurant book cleanup deadline calendar and how to clean up restaurant books for tax season, step by step.

When to hand it off

If you're one location and a month or two behind, the checklist above is a weekend. If you're several months behind, you have more than one location, or the bank and the P&L still won't agree after you've tried, it's a project. That's the point to bring in someone who only does restaurants.

That's all FIXE does. Our team includes people who have run restaurants, and 600+ restaurant locations trust us with their books. We clean up the year you're in, then keep the books every month so next December doesn't turn into another cleanup.

New customers only. Credit of up to $1,000 on cleanup invoices when you sign a 12-month FIXE agreement by 11:59 PM PT Dec 15, 2026. Not tax filing, never cash. Full terms on the page.

Frequently asked questions

What does a restaurant bookkeeping cleanup include?

Catching up the months that never got closed, reconciling every bank and credit card account, matching delivery app payouts to the sales they came from and fixing miscategorized expenses so the P&L is accurate. Tax filing is separate. That's your CPA's job, and it goes much faster once the books are clean.

How far back should a year-end cleanup go?

Back to the last month your books were fully reconciled and closed. For year-end, the goal is the whole tax year, so all of 2026 has to tie out before your CPA starts.

Why doesn't my bank balance match my P&L?

Timing. Delivery apps pay out weekly or even monthly, vendor bills get paid on their own schedule, sales tax and tips are collected daily and paid out later, and loan payments leave the bank without touching the P&L. None of that is a mystery once the books are reconciled.

Should I clean up my books myself or hand it off?

If you're one location and a month or two behind, the checklist above is a weekend project. If you're several months behind, have more than one location or can't make the bank and P&L agree, hand it to a restaurant bookkeeper.

What is 86 Your 2026?

FIXE's year-end offer. New customers who sign a 12-month FIXE agreement by 11:59 PM PT on Dec 15, 2026 get a credit of up to $1,000 on cleanup invoices. Details are on hub.getmyfixe.com/86-your-2026.

More on cleanup and tax season

• Restaurant book cleanup before tax season
• Delivery app reconciliation for restaurants
• How to read your restaurant P&L and reports