--- title: "Sales + Bank Deposits Are Different: Account For Tax, Tips + Fees" description: "Why restaurant bank deposits never match sales: sales tax, tips, card fees and delivery app commissions, chargebacks and payout timing, plus how to book each." image: https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/FIXE-Sales-and-bank-deposits-2-1.jpg --- [Skip to content](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/sales-bank-deposits-different-account-for-tax-tips-fees#main-content) [![FIXE Logo](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/FIXE-2@2x.png?width=333&height=200&name=FIXE-2@2x.png)Homepage](https://www.getmyfixe.com/) - [How FIXE Works](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/) - [Restaurant Types](https://www.getmyfixe.com/restaurant-types/) - [Pricing](https://www.getmyfixe.com/pricing/) - [FAQs](https://www.getmyfixe.com/faqs/) - [Communal Table](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table) [Book a demo](https://www.getmyfixe.com/book-a-demo/) - [How FIXE Works](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/) - [Restaurant Types](https://www.getmyfixe.com/restaurant-types/) - [Pricing](https://www.getmyfixe.com/pricing/) - [FAQs](https://www.getmyfixe.com/faqs/) - [Communal Table](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table) [Book a demo](https://www.getmyfixe.com/book-a-demo/) ![](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/FIXE-Sales-and-bank-deposits-2-1.jpg?width=1500&height=1000&name=FIXE-Sales-and-bank-deposits-2-1.jpg) 3rd Party Apps Bookkeeping FIXE # Sales and bank deposits are different: Account for tax, tips + fees ![Olivia](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hubfs/FIXE-mark-ocean-icon.svg) Olivia June 24, 2024 **Short answer:** Your bank deposits aren’t your sales. A card deposit is sales minus discounts, plus sales tax and card tips that belong to someone else, minus processing fees. Delivery app payouts land separately, on their own schedule, net of commission, promotions, refunds and chargebacks. Book the gross sale, put sales tax and tips in liability accounts, record each fee and deduction on its own line, and let the deposit clear what the processor or platform owes you. Then your P&L shows what you really earned, and your bank balance stops looking richer than you are. A common point of confusion and frustration for business owners is the fact that their bank account balance seems completely misaligned with their Profit & Loss. I get calls all the time from distressed FIXE customers, and they say, “I don’t understand how I lost $30,000 last month when my bank account balance has been above $100,000 the whole month. What is going on?” There’s a lot more to your bank account balance and to your profitability. The two are somewhat related, but they’re different. This misunderstanding can lead to not having enough money in your account to function. Or to pay taxes. If a big deposit hits your bank account, that’s not just for yesterday’s food and drink sales. It is also for your taxes, which will be collected on those sales. For most of my customers, which are in California, that is about 10%. A big chunk of that is not yours. That’s going to CDTFA (CA Department of Tax and Fee Administration) next month. The other portion is employee tips received through credit cards. Depending on the location, that could be a sizable chunk of your deposit. So if you’re looking only at your bank account to try to determine how much money you’re making, you’ll get a really distorted image because your deposits are not all your money. The other thing that can happen is people will not understand the math. “Here were my sales yesterday. How do I break apart what actually got deposited?” The main elements of what gets deposited to your bank account is going to be your sales, minus discounts, plus sales tax collected, plus tips collected, minus credit card processing fees, for most points of sale. Some POS systems take credit card fees out separately, but the overwhelming majority take them out each day with their deposits. In every point of sale where you integrate with 3rd party apps, for example Toast, look at the deposit for that day’s worth of sales in your bank account. This number might be dramatically lower than expected. A lot of sales recorded in Toast that day might be coming through on a totally separate cadence because they’re from Uber Eats, DoorDash or Grubhub. It can be difficult to define exactly how sales translate to deposits in the bank account because there are a lot of different factors that impact it. That’s why it’s better to just look at your financial report to understand how much money you actually brought in that day. Deposits from 3rd party app sales come in separately from point of sale deposits. That’s another thing that can totally confound the picture. For example, you integrated DoorDash, Uber Eats, and GrubHub in your point of sale. Say you made 100k in sales yesterday. If you look at the breakdown of where those sales came from, your point of sale deposits are only going to be sales in-person at your business. DoorDash, GrubHub and Uber Eats sales are going to come through separately on their own cadence. Typically, once a week, but I see varying times that they deposit. You can typically choose daily, weekly or monthly deposits within the third party app. That can also really throw off a picture. At FIXE, we separate out sales, sales tax, tips, and fees. You can pull a P&L for a single day, and you would be able to see your true sales for that day. Operationally, if you’re trying to understand if you can afford to take out a loan and buy a new piece of equipment, be careful how you’re analyzing your cash flow and make sure that you’re interpreting it correctly. ## Why delivery app deposits never match your delivery sales Card deposits are confusing enough. Delivery payouts are worse, because DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub take their cut before the money ever reaches you, and they pay on their own schedule. Here's one week of delivery orders on one platform, line by line. The numbers are illustrative round figures, not real rates. Your commission tier, promotions and tax treatment will be different. | Statement line | Amount | How to book it | | --- | --- | --- | | Gross food sales | $1,000.00 | Delivery sales (revenue), by platform | | Sales tax collected and passed to you | $95.00 | Sales tax payable (a liability, not revenue) | | Commission | ($200.00) | Delivery commission expense | | Payment processing | ($30.00) | Merchant processing fees | | Promotion you funded | ($50.00) | Marketing expense, kept separate from commission | | Chargeback for a missing item | ($20.00) | Delivery chargebacks (contra revenue) | | Customer refund charged to you | ($25.00) | Delivery refunds (contra revenue) | | **Net payout** | **$770.00** | Cash, when the deposit lands | | Driver tips | Not in your payout | Nothing to book on marketplace orders | So the platform reports $1,000 in sales and your bank gets $770. Nothing is missing. The $230 gap is $325 of deductions (commission, processing, promotion, chargeback and refund), less the $95 of sales tax that came through with the payout and isn't yours either. ### How to book it Treat each platform like a customer that owes you money. When the statement closes, record the whole thing in one entry: - **Credit** delivery sales $1,000 and sales tax payable $95. - **Debit** commission $200, processing $30, marketing $50, chargebacks $20 and refunds $25. - **Debit** a receivable (or clearing account) for that platform $770, the amount it owes you. When the $770 hits the bank, debit cash and credit the platform receivable. If the receivable goes back to zero, you're reconciled. If the deposit comes in short, the difference stays in the receivable where you can see it and chase it, instead of disappearing into "fees." Two things change the picture. First, the labels: DoorDash calls chargebacks "error charges," Uber Eats calls them "order error adjustments," and Grubhub shows customer refunds under "order adjustments." Same money, different words. Second, sales tax: in many states the platform collects and remits the tax as a marketplace facilitator, so it never shows up in your payout and you shouldn't remit it again. California is different. Under the state's Marketplace Facilitator Act, as [CDTFA explains it](https://www.cdtfa.ca.gov/industry/MPFAct.htm), delivery network companies aren't marketplace facilitators unless they elect to be, so on many California delivery orders the tax comes through to you and it's yours to remit. Rules vary by state and by platform, and they change, so check what each statement shows and confirm the treatment with your CPA. For the full monthly process, platform by platform, see the [DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub reconciliation guide](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/doordash-uber-eats-grubhub-reconciliation-guide). If you run several locations, [chargebacks and receivables for restaurant groups](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/chargebacks-and-receivables-for-restaurant-groups) covers how to keep delivery receivables clean across all of them. **OPTIONS TO CLEAR UP CONFUSION FROM MISMATCHED NUMBER**S ## 1. USE FIXE FIXE can help by breaking down the sales figures each day. For FIXE customers, this is already part of the program, and if you get confused, your account manager can walk you through it. ## 2. MOVE MONEY I have some customers who guesstimate how much their sales are going to be every week. They say, “Okay, I’m going to move 10% of my estimated sales each week as an automatic transfer to my savings account. That way, when sales tax comes around, I’m not going to be shell shocked. I’m going to have roughly enough money already in my savings account set aside. So it’s not this giant hit to my cash flow once a month.” That’s a good approach. ## 3. USE TAX COMPLIANCE SOFTWARE When people are concerned about cash flow, and feeling stressed out by the effects of these large monthly sales tax payments, there’s a software called [Avalara](https://www.avalara.com/us/en/index.html) (fka DAVO) that I set a lot of customers up on. There’s another software called [TaxJar](https://www.taxjar.com/), which I’ve used less. Basically these sales tax compliance softwares plug into your point of sale. Automatically, every single day, you’ll see your Toast profit, and you’ll see a withdrawal from this company for the sales tax collected that day. So it mitigates that over depositing effect. Your bank account balance is truer to how much money you really have to work with. You’re not inflating your bank account balance with what’s essentially a liability. That’s what sales tax collected is until you pay it, a liability. Avalara doesn’t pay the sales tax every day. They withdraw money that you collected the previous day. So instead of just having that money in your bank account and accidentally using it for payroll, to pay rent, or to pay vendors, they take it away and hold on to it. Then they automatically file your sales tax and your prepayments for you every month. It's also why [we handle monthly sales tax](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/) for FIXE customers, so that money never gets spent by accident. ## Frequently asked questions ### Why is my DoorDash deposit less than my DoorDash sales? Because the payout is net. The platform takes commission, processing, any promotions you funded, and chargebacks or refunds out before it pays you, and depending on your state it may add sales tax it collected for you. Pull the statement for the payout period and every dollar between gross sales and the deposit should have its own line. If the deposit is still lower than the statement's net payout, that's a short pay to chase with the platform, not a fee. ### Should I record delivery sales at the gross amount or the deposit amount? Gross. Record the full sale as revenue and each deduction as its own expense or contra revenue line. If you book only the deposit, your sales are understated, your commission and promotion costs are invisible, and your food cost percentage is wrong. You also can't tell which platform is actually worth keeping. ## More on Delivery Apps and Deposits This post is part of our [Delivery Apps and Deposits](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/delivery-app-reconciliation) guide. Keep reading: - [DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub reconciliation guide](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/doordash-uber-eats-grubhub-reconciliation-guide) - [How to reconcile DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub fees in your restaurant books](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/how-to-reconcile-doordash-uber-eats-and-grubhub-fees-in-your-restaurant-books) - [Chargebacks and receivables for restaurant groups](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/chargebacks-and-receivables-for-restaurant-groups) - [Demystifying restaurant sales misalignment](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/demystifying-restaurant-sales-misalignment) Want a quick read on your own books? [Get your Restaurant Financial Health Score](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/health-score?src=blog). ## Share this post [mailto:https%3A%2F%2Fhub.getmyfixe.com%2Fcommunal-table%2Fsales-bank-deposits-different-account-for-tax-tips-fees](mailto:https%3A%2F%2Fhub.getmyfixe.com%2Fcommunal-table%2Fsales-bank-deposits-different-account-for-tax-tips-fees) ## Keep reading ### [![The Complete Guide to Restaurant Payroll Reconciliation](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/FIXE-The-Complete-Guide-to-Restaurant-Payroll-Reconciliation.jpg?width=1672&height=941&name=FIXE-The-Complete-Guide-to-Restaurant-Payroll-Reconciliation.jpg) Tipping Bookkeeping FIXE The Complete Guide to Restaurant Payroll Reconciliation](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/the-complete-guide-to-restaurant-payroll-reconciliation) ### [![Best Restaurant Bookkeeping Firms for Multi-Unit Groups](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/FIXE-Best-Restaurant-Bookkeeping-Firms-for-Multi-Unit-Groups.jpg?width=1672&height=941&name=FIXE-Best-Restaurant-Bookkeeping-Firms-for-Multi-Unit-Groups.jpg) 3rd Party Apps Franchises Bookkeeping Best Restaurant Bookkeeping Firms for Multi-Unit Groups (2026)](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/best-restaurant-finance-partners-for-operators) [![FIXE-2@2x-1](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/FIXE-2@2x-1.png?width=150&height=90&name=FIXE-2@2x-1.png "FIXE-2@2x-1")](https://www.getmyfixe.com/) - SOLUTIONS - [How FIXE Works](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/) - [Fresh Financial Reports](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/#reports) - [A/P Automation](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/#automation) - [3rd Party App Intelligence](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/#3rd-party-intelligence) - RESOURCES - [Restaurant Types](https://www.getmyfixe.com/restaurant-types/) - [Pricing](https://www.getmyfixe.com/pricing/) - [Book a demo](https://www.getmyfixe.com/book-a-demo/) - [Glossary](https://www.getmyfixe.com/fixe-restaurant-bookkeeping-glossary/) - COMPANY - [FAQs](https://www.getmyfixe.com/faqs/) - [Communal Table](https://www.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/) - [Sign in](https://www.fixebookkeeping.com/) - [Contact us](https://www.getmyfixe.com/contact-us/) © 2026 FIXE. All rights reserved.   [Privacy policy](https://www.getmyfixe.com/privacy-policy/) --- {{ footer\_js() }} {{ js\_integration\_body\_end() }} ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Olivia", "url" : "https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/author/olivia" }, "dateModified" : "2026-10-28T21:39:32.416Z", "datePublished" : "2024-06-24T19:54:11.000Z", "headline" : "Sales + Bank Deposits Are Different: Account For Tax, Tips + Fees", "image" : [ "https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/FIXE-Sales-and-bank-deposits-2-1.jpg" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/sales-bank-deposits-different-account-for-tax-tips-fees", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hubfs/FIXE-2@2x.png" }, "name" : "Fixe Inc." } } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "FAQPage", "mainEntity" : [ { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Because the payout is net. The platform takes commission, processing, any promotions you funded, and chargebacks or refunds out before it pays you, and depending on your state it may add sales tax it collected for you. Pull the statement for the payout period and every dollar between gross sales and the deposit should have its own line. If the deposit is still lower than the statement's net payout, that's a short pay to chase with the platform, not a fee." }, "name" : "Why is my DoorDash deposit less than my DoorDash sales?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Gross. Record the full sale as revenue and each deduction as its own expense or contra revenue line. If you book only the deposit, your sales are understated, your commission and promotion costs are invisible, and your food cost percentage is wrong. You also can't tell which platform is actually worth keeping." }, "name" : "Should I record delivery sales at the gross amount or the deposit amount?" } ] } ```