What should a checklist for a financial audit of a restaurant business contain?

What has to be settled before the first step?

Three facts set the depth of every step and the wording of the result: who requires the examination, its level and its period. Take them from the document that creates the requirement, such as a loan, purchase or franchise agreement or the owner's written instruction, and put them on the cover sheet.

Under AICPA standards, the AR-C glossary defines a review's limited assurance as less than the reasonable assurance of an audit, and AT-C section 215 describes an agreed-upon procedures engagement as reporting findings from specific procedures without an opinion or conclusion, on procedures the engaging party agrees to before the report is issued.

The purpose sets the rest:

The completed checklist concludes which records exist, which agree and which exceptions remain open; whether a pay practice, tax position, license or report complies belongs to the adviser.

What does the checklist contain, area by area?

Run rows 1 and 2 first: they fix the population. Log each exception with its amount, date, location, terminal and employee.

How is the sales record proved complete?

Start from the point-of-sale record, never the bank deposit: a deposit shows what reached the bank, not what was rung up, reduced or never deposited.

Toast's Sales Summary FAQ (updated Jul 27, 2026) says voids, paid outs and refunds processed after the Z report was printed appear on the Sales Summary but not on the printed Z report, so on Toast the business-date Sales Summary is the record. The same FAQ says a sale is recorded when its check is first opened, not when payment is processed, and that a Sales Summary changing weeks or months later usually reflects a later void, refund or correction. On another system, use its vendor's documentation.

Then establish completeness for each location:

• List every calendar day and mark each business date with a saved export; a missing date needs a closure reason supported outside the point of sale, such as payroll.
• Agree each date's shift or drawer reports to the schedule, so a shift worked but never closed out shows up.
• List every terminal and card reader from the device list, the processor's merchant accounts and what is on site.
• Re-run the period at cut-off and compare each date with its saved export, explaining any day whose total moved before reconciling it.

With more than one location, or a catering or mobile operation, fix the population per location, treating each catering or mobile operation as a location. Then add steps for stock moved between locations, where every transfer out must appear as a transfer in, and for shared invoices, split on a stated basis.

How are voids, comps, discounts and no-sale opens tested?

Reductions lower recorded sales with no cash consequence, so nothing later would surface an improper one. Toast's Cash and Loss Management Reports Overview (updated Jul 2, 2026) reports voids, discounts and no-sale transactions by approver, and removed items, meaning menu items removed from an order before it is fired to the kitchen. The same page limits what those reports prove: depending on setup, discounts may not need approval; an employee with the No Sale permission needs no approval for a no-sale; the Removed Items report is enabled by selecting Audit removed items; and Toast doesn't track a drawer opened with a key.

Run the tests in this order:

1. Obtain the permission list and settings for the period, including whether discounts needed approval, whether removed items were audited and who held drawer keys. Anyone who can both ring and approve a reduction can approve their own.
2. Log each reduction type that needed no approval, and each period without the removed-items audit, as an exception marked not tested.
3. Trace a sample of the remaining reductions to an approver other than the employee who rang them and to a reason that fits.
4. Trace each balance open at close on the saved Unpaid Orders report to the payment that cleared it, and log any cleared by a discount.
5. Sort every reduction and no-sale by employee, terminal, day and hour, and compare each employee's rate with colleagues on the same shifts.
6. Follow up clusters: reductions after payment or near close, no-sales followed by voids, and one approver clearing most of one server's reductions.

The result states that drawer opens made with a key were outside the test. Run these weekly from saved exports rather than assembling a year at once.

How does one day's sales tie to the bank?

Gross sales never equal a day's deposit, so the test explains each difference with a document. Toast's Sales Summary FAQ says gross sales are the regular price of all non-deferred items and all service charges, not including tax or tip; net sales are gross sales less discounts and refunds; and a gift card redemption shows as a gift card payment. Toast's Cash and Loss Management page says the Unpaid Orders report shows checks with a balance due, positive or negative, and updates as checks are later settled by payments or discounts, so save it at each close with the Sales Summary export. Toast's Reconciliation Report and Payout Details Overview (updated Sep 17, 2026) says sales usually settle one to two business days later.

A worked example for one location's Tuesday, with invented figures:

This invented day sold no gift cards, had no paid-outs and paid card tips through payroll, and its one payout carries only Tuesday's card sales. Where paid-outs or cash tip-outs leave the drawer, the cash deposit falls by that amount and each needs its own line. Toast's Compare Deposits and Credit Card Sales page (updated Jul 30, 2026) says a single deposit can group sales from two days, and puts chargebacks on their own line of the Payouts Overview report.

The Reconciliation page says Payout Details, which opens from a report in limited release, breaks a payout into card payments, refunds, card processing fees and withholdings for separate products, such as Toast Capital loan repayments and Easy Pay equipment leases. Without it, the Sales Summary FAQ says to compare the Net Deposits column on the Settled Deposits Daily Breakdown report to the bank statement. Characterize each difference before acting on it:

How is cash tested from drawer to deposit?

Toast's Cash Drawer Reports Overview (updated Jun 29, 2026) computes expected closeout cash from starting cash and the cash taken in and out of a drawer, shows which employees have access to each drawer, and sets expected deposit as actual closeout cash less starting cash. Its Drawer History report shows each drawer's pay outs, such as vendor payments or employee reimbursements, tips paid in cash, and overage or shortage between expected and actual closeout cash. It also says a drawer's balance can be adjusted from the report to fix a discrepancy between expected and actual amounts, that cash collected moves a server's cash in hand into a cash drawer, and that cash sales will not match cash in hand where a server splits cash between a register and their own bank. Toast's Cash and Loss Management page says a server's cash voided on a bar terminal with a drawer is treated as pulled from that drawer.

Test each handoff:

• Each drawer is assigned to named employees, and each count sheet is signed by the counter and a witness.
• Actual closeout cash agrees to the signed count sheet, and every post-close adjustment is listed with who made it and why; one clearing a difference without a logged exception is itself an exception.
• Each drawer's daily overage or shortage on the Drawer History report agrees to the ledger's over-and-short entries; every overage and shortage is logged with drawer, employee and date, as is any over-and-short entry without a drawer difference.
• Where servers hold cash, each server's cash collected agrees to their cash payments, less any put directly into a register drawer, and to their tip-out sheet.
• Cash voids entered on another device are checked before a drawer difference is logged.
• A safe log runs from drop to bag, the deposit slip agrees to the bank credit, and each paid-out has a receipt.

Which tip, service-charge and payroll records are examined?

Record how the operation classified each customer charge and the evidence behind it: menus, receipts, event contracts and the point-of-sale setting that adds it. The IRS's Rev. Rul. 2012-18 applies the criteria of Rev. Rul. 59-252 to decide, for FICA tax purposes under section 3121, whether a payment is a tip or non-tip wages: the absence of any of four factors creates a doubt as to whether a payment is a tip and indicates it may be a service charge. The factors are that the payment is made free from compulsion; the customer has the unrestricted right to determine the amount; it is not negotiated or dictated by employer policy; and, generally, the customer decides who receives it. The ruling adds that all the surrounding facts and circumstances must be considered, that the employer's characterization is not determinative, and that any portion of a service charge distributed to an employee is wages for FICA tax purposes. Log each charge lacking a factor for the adviser; the checklist does not classify it.

Then examine the tip records:

• For each tipped employee whose wages are determined under section 3(m) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Department of Labor's 29 CFR 516.28(a) requires the general payroll records plus a pay-record notation identifying the employee; the weekly or monthly tips the employee reported; the amount by which wages were deemed increased by tips; a written report to the employee each time the hourly amount taken as a tip credit changes from the preceding week; and hours worked each workday, with straight-time pay, separately for occupations with and without tips.
• For employees for whom no tip credit is taken, where the employer collects tips to operate a mandatory tip-pooling or tip-sharing arrangement, 29 CFR 516.28(b) requires the general payroll records plus a notation identifying each employee who receives tips and the weekly or monthly tips each reported.
• For any pool, agree tips collected with tips paid out each pay period, and trace recipients to the distribution sheets.

For payroll, the Department of Labor's Fact Sheet #21 says every covered employer must keep certain records for each non-exempt worker, including hours worked each day and total hours worked each workweek, and the IRS's employment tax recordkeeping page lists dates of employment for each employee and amounts of tips reported to you by your employees. Add any records your state or city labor agency requires. Draw the sample from everyone paid in the period, using the payroll register and the hire and termination list, because a current-staff sample misses everyone who left; trace time records and schedules to hours paid, and termination dates to final paychecks.

How are cost of sales and purchasing supported?

The IRS's Form 1125-A, attached to Forms 1120, 1120S and 1065, computes cost of goods sold as opening inventory plus purchases, labor and other costs, less closing inventory, and lists alternative inventory methods for certain small business taxpayers, so whether the return needs counts is for the preparer. For the examination, counts make cost of sales testable; without them, the result says it was not tested, and purchases are tested only for receipt and price.

Where the operation counts, the steps are:

1. Observe or re-perform the period-end count, with sheets signed and dated by area and food, beer, wine and spirits counted separately.
2. Price the count on the stated valuation method, used consistently with the opening count, and recompute cost of sales.
3. Compare actual usage with recipes or pour sizes times items sold, and sample where the variance is largest.
4. Examine waste and spoilage logs, comps and staff meals as named reductions of usage.

For purchasing, agree sampled invoices to signed receiving records and agreed prices, check standing orders against usage, and trace shorts, returns and rebate programs to recorded credits and rebates. For any new vendor or changed bank details, look for evidence that someone other than whoever entered them confirmed the details before payment through a channel independent of the one they arrived by, such as a phone number on file before the request; a number, link or address from the invoice, the request or any email or message does not count.

In California, Business and Professions Code section 25752, as published by the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, bars a licensee from selling alcoholic beverages other than wine unless it keeps records at its licensed premises that include all expenditures incurred, and lets a licensee with more than one premises keep them at one. Agree sampled alcohol invoices to receiving and to those records, and check that bar purchases and sales are kept apart from the restaurant's, as CDTFA's Tax Guide for Restaurant Owners advises. Elsewhere, the state's alcohol control agency sets the record rules.

How are delivery platforms, gift cards and sales tax reconciled?

Obtain every platform's own statements. DoorDash's guide to its payout and monthly statement (Dec 8, 2025) gives the formula Net Total = Sales – (Commission & Fees + Marketing Spend) + Amendments; its marketing spend includes discounts, its amendments include error charges reimbursing customers for missing or incorrect items, and it passes customer fees, subtotal tax and customer fee tax to you. Reconcile each DoorDash statement on that formula and agree subtotals and customer fees to recorded channel sales. Then trace discounts you funded, error charges, commissions, fees and marketing to wherever the books record them, logging any not recorded, and net totals to the books and bank; how each line is presented is for the preparer. For any other platform, reconcile on the formula in that platform's own statement documentation. A ledger holding only net payouts leaves nothing to agree commissions to.

DoorDash's US Merchant Marketplace Facilitator FAQ (Jun 29, 2026) says that where it acts as a marketplace facilitator it remits certain taxes, typically state-level sales taxes, but includes certain local taxes, typically food and beverage taxes, in payouts to eligible restaurant merchants, and will not remit any tax included in a payout. It shows remitted tax in a column headed Subtotal Tax Remitted by DoorDash to Tax Authorities and gives each tax's remittance responsibility, DoorDash or Merchant, in a Monthly Subtotal Tax Breakdown report. It says that where a POS or middleware integration cannot receive and display local taxes, the POS tax reports may not match DoorDash's, and to rely on DoorDash's Transactions and Payouts reports. That is DoorDash's account of its own practice: the FAQ says laws in some jurisdictions shift remittance to the platform and that DoorDash cannot give tax or legal advice. Outside California, take the rule on which party owes the tax on a platform order from the state and local tax agencies.

For sales tax, build the tax collected for each return period and jurisdiction from the point-of-sale tax report plus tax each platform passed to you, and agree it to tax reported and paid. Count integrated platform orders once: where the integration cannot receive and display local taxes, take the tax on DoorDash orders from DoorDash's Transactions and Payouts reports and remove them from the point-of-sale figure. Treat as platform-remitted only what the platform's own report shows it remitted, and log passed-through tax missing from a return. On Toast, the Sales Summary FAQ says Marketplace Facilitator Taxes Paid were remitted by the platform for you and you may still be responsible for those Not Paid; leave Paid amounts the platform's report confirms out of the build, and log Not Paid amounts for the adviser. In California, CDTFA's Tax Guide for Restaurant Owners says that when an online ordering provider acts as your agent you owe tax on the meals' full selling price without deducting its commission; otherwise the provider is the retailer and you must obtain its resale certificate. Record which case each agreement describes. CDTFA's guide does not address an order on which the platform's report shows it remitted the tax; log those orders for the adviser rather than adding them to or removing them from the return.

For gift cards, roll the point-of-sale balance forward: opening balance, plus cards sold, less redemptions, plus or minus adjustments, equals the closing balance. Agree it to the ledger's gift card liability where the books carry one; otherwise record that it exists only in the point-of-sale record. Age it by issue date or last activity, noting whether each dormant balance has a known owner name and address, and list for the adviser every adjustment that removed an unredeemed balance, such as an expiry, breakage or write-off, with card, amount, date and approver. In New York, for example, the Office of the State Comptroller's reference sheet for all business entities says Section 1315 of the Abandoned Property Law requires corporations to report unclaimed amounts, including gift certificates and cards, at face or remaining value once the five-year dormancy period is met, even where the card shows an expiration date, and that unknown accounts are reportable if the company is incorporated in New York. Record the state in which the business is incorporated or organized; the reporting decision is the adviser's.

What license, lease, asset, franchise and owner evidence is gathered?

Obtain every permit and license in force for the period and check the holder, location, activity and dates. In California, Health and Safety Code section 114381 says a food facility shall not be open for business without a valid permit, and that a permit is valid only for the person, location, type of food sales or distribution activity and, unless suspended or revoked for cause, the time period indicated, and is nontransferable; Business and Professions Code section 23300 bars anyone from acting under a license's authority without holding one issued under that division. Elsewhere, use each state's and locality's licensing authorities.

Agree rent to the lease and its amendments, including rent computed on sales, and trace asset and smallwares additions to invoices and disposals to the register.

Under a franchise, obtain the agreement's definition of the sales on which royalties and fund contributions are computed, the sales reports sent to the franchisor and the fee invoices, and recompute the fees from recorded sales.

For owners and related parties, trace owner and family meals to approved comps and record whether their cost was removed from purchases or booked another way; the tax treatment is for the preparer. Test family members on payroll like any employee, trace how draws and personal spending were authorized and recorded, and compare related-party leases, loans and supply terms with their documents.