How to streamline restaurant sales tax through your POS platform

Tax season comes once a year, but restaurant sales tax season lasts all year long. If you are like many restaurant owners, sales tax is time consuming and frustrating as you try to stay on top of it throughout the year. 

Beyond simply paying and filing sales tax, it is your responsibility to make sure you understand your state and local tax rates so that you can accurately collect sales tax from each transaction, and then pay and file multiple times a year with a report of all your taxable sales. 

The more of the sales tax process that you can streamline and ultimately automate, the better – for your bottom line and your sanity.

Make time for an annual restaurant sales tax checkup

Although you might be deep in piles of paperwork, tax season is a good time to assess your sales tax methods to make sure you are accurately and efficiently collecting and processing your restaurant sales tax. 

Tips for sales tax automation and optimization

Here are a few simple, but effective solutions that you can implement with your Revel Systems® POS now in order to optimize and automate restaurant sales tax, and ultimately make sales tax easier all year long.

1. Sync your accounting software with Revel for easy and accurate bookkeeping

Direct all of your sales, expense, discount, and tax data to your accounting software (like Xero or QuickBooks) simply by syncing it with Revel using an integration like Amaka or POS Accounting. 

Setting this up can help reduce inaccuracies and save you a lot of time, especially during tax season. Some integrations will also sync your inventory, track expenses, mileage, and create invoices to help you make better business decisions.

2. Use native online ordering and delivery tools to ensure accurate records and avoid double paying sales tax

Consider a switch from third-party online ordering and delivery apps like Grubhub and Uber Eats to Revel’s built-in tools that enable you to accept, manage, optimize, and track online and delivery orders from your POS. 

If you are using 3rd party apps, it’s important to make sure that your POS is correctly set up to be the official record of all your sales by running these apps through it. Doing so can make it much easier to get a total and accurate sales number. 

Running these apps through your POS also helps to keep track of sales tax and can keep you from double paying sales tax. If you use native online ordering and delivery tools, you don’t need to worry about setting this up correctly.

3. Add sales tax automation software to your POS and never worry about sales tax again

Set DAVO Sales Tax up on your Revel POS, and you won’t need to manually manage sales tax again – ever. DAVO by Avalara sets your restaurant sales tax aside for you daily. Come tax time, it files and pays your sales tax for you in full and on time. It’s a set-it-and-forget-it solution.

There are so many moving parts when it comes to restaurant sales tax – mistakes are easy to make and deadlines can easily be missed, which can mean costly fines and increased audit risk. Restaurant sales tax automation can eliminate the entire complicated process.

Benefits of restaurant sales tax automation software

Automating a complicated business process like sales tax, saves so much time – something that is in very short supply for many busy restaurant owners. Beyond the major benefit of time and resource savings, there are many other benefits of restaurant sales tax automation:

• Eliminate missed payments and late payment penalties. Taxes are automatically filed and paid automatically, on time and in full. You don’t need to keep track of payment deadlines.
• Automatically receive on-time filing discounts where available. If you operate in one of the 26 states that offer on-time filing discounts, your discounts are automatically calculated, collected, and refunded. (Note that restaurant sales tax by state varies – to find specific sales tax information for your state, click here.)
• Know that you have the correct funds set aside daily for when it comes time to pay – and avoid mistakenly spending the funds.
• Completely remove the burden of restaurant sales tax from your plate so you never have to worry about it again.

With DAVO you also get a user-friendly dashboard to access reports at tax time. Use DAVO’s robust reporting tools to track your sales and sales tax data by day, month, and year. Set up is simple and takes a mere five minutes. Plus, the first month is free to try.

Streamline time-consuming back office tasks and spend more time on food

Restaurant owners have more than enough on their plates. Thankfully POS platforms like Revel offer native technology and integrations that can help streamline and automate the tasks you don’t need (or want) to spend time on. Take a little time now to review these tasks, like sales tax, and implement solutions that ease or completely remove the burden. You’ll have more time for important things – like focusing on food and running your restaurant.

About the Author

David Joseph is a self-proclaimed sales tax evangelist at DAVO by Avalara, a sales tax automation platform that integrates directly with the point of sale.