Hospitality & Restaurants

Hospitality is operationally the hardest sector we serve: GP margins moving with every supplier price and menu change, tips governed by tronc rules that went statutory in 2024, payrolls full of variable hours and student visas and auto-enrolment churn, VAT split across eat-in, takeaway and accommodation, and a failure rate that punishes anyone managing on last quarter's accounts.

Acumon runs hospitality accounting at operating tempo: weekly flash numbers where the business needs them, tronc and payroll done properly at scale, VAT treatments right across the menu, and margin reporting that catches the drift while the menu can still be reprinted.

Margins, Watched Weekly

Hospitality profit is made in percentage points: theoretical versus actual GP by category, wastage and shrinkage isolated instead of dissolved into 'cost of sales', labour percentage against covers, and menu engineering that prices dishes on their real costed contribution. We integrate your EPOS data with the accounting, set up weekly flash reporting — sales, GP, labour — and monthly management accounts that reconcile the flash to reality, so a drifting food cost is a fortnight's problem rather than a year-end autopsy.

Tips and Tronc, Done Legally

The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act made fair, transparent tip allocation a legal duty: qualifying tips passed to workers in full by the end of the following month, a written policy, records workers can request. Run through a proper independent tronc, tips also escape National Insurance — worth thousands per year in a tipped operation — but the NI exemption depends on genuine troncmaster independence and correct payroll mechanics. We set up and run compliant tronc arrangements inside our payroll service, policy and records included.

Hospitality Payroll at Scale

Feeding and housing people generates the most operationally intense payrolls we run: variable hours and split shifts, high churn with mid-period starters and leavers, students and visa-hour limits, holiday pay on irregular hours done to the current law, NMW compliance where uniform and till-shortage deductions create technical breaches, and auto-enrolment churning with the workforce. Our CIPP-qualified team runs it weekly or fortnightly with the tronc integrated — payroll being the hospitality function that most repays doing properly.

VAT Across the Menu

Hospitality VAT is treatment-dense: standard-rated eat-in versus the cold takeaway zero-rating and its hot-food boundary tests, accommodation rules, deposits and no-shows, service charges (whose VAT and tip treatments differ by how they are levied), vouchers and delivery-platform commissions. Errors compound daily across thousands of transactions in both directions. We configure the EPOS treatments correctly once, then keep them right as the menu and the law move — and reclaim what past errors overpaid.

What You Get With Acumon

• Weekly flash reporting: sales, GP and labour while you can still react
• EPOS integrated with the accounts — one version of the numbers
• Theoretical vs actual GP with wastage isolated and visible
• Statutory-compliant tronc schemes run inside payroll, NI savings kept
• High-churn payroll with holiday pay on irregular hours done to current law
• NMW technical compliance — uniforms, deductions and unpaid time checked
• VAT treatments configured right across eat-in, takeaway and rooms
• Cashflow forecasting through the seasonality every operator knows

Why Acumon for Hospitality & Restaurants?

• CIPP-qualified payroll team running high-volume hospitality payrolls
• Statutory tronc schemes operated inside the payroll service
• VAT specialists in-house, several previously with HMRC
• All 90 of the firm's professionals are based in the UK

Get a Fixed-Fee Quote

Tell us what you need and we'll come back within one business day with a clear scope and a fixed price — no hourly-rate surprises. Call 020 8567 3451 or use the form and we'll be in touch.