Hospitality accountants for London restaurants. Tronc-ready, multi-site, EPOS-integrated.
Single-site café or three-venue restaurant group? We run hospitality bookkeeping, weekly payroll, multi-site consolidation, Tipping Act 2024 tronc schemes, and licensing-ready accounts. Built for owner-operators who don't have time for a 9-to-5 accountant — open Mon-Sat 10am-7pm with same-day responses.
Hospitality runs on margins most accountants don't understand. We do.
Food cost percentage. Labour cost percentage. Average spend per cover. Z-report reconciliation. Tronc compliance. EPOS multi-rate VAT splits. The four problems below are universal to London hospitality and almost never handled correctly outside specialist firms.
"My tips are taxed at full PAYE — staff are losing 30%+."
Tips distributed via payroll trigger employer NIC (~13.8%) and employee NIC (~12%) plus PAYE. Tips distributed via a properly constituted tronc with an independent troncmaster save the NIC entirely — that's around 26 percentage points clawed back, split between the business and the staff. Most pre-Tipping Act venues never set up a real tronc.
"My books are months behind because EPOS doesn't talk to Xero."
Hospitality EPOS systems generate daily Z-reports with sales by category, multi-rate VAT splits, voids, comps, staff meals, and tips. Generic bookkeepers manually re-enter them weekly or worse, drop them into Xero as one-line entries — losing all the margin analysis. We integrate Square / Lightspeed / Toast / Tevalis / Zonal / ICRTouch with daily automatic import.
"I run three sites and I don't know which one's losing money."
Multi-site groups need per-site profit and loss, not a single rolled-up management account. Without site-level visibility you cannot see which venue carries the group, which has slipping food cost, which is over-staffed. We run per-site P&L with branch KPIs (food cost %, labour cost %, average spend, covers per service) plus group consolidation.
"I need certified accounts for a premises licence and my accountant is 'busy'."
Alcohol licensing applications, premises transfers and personal licence renewals all require certified accounts. Generalist firms either don't know how to produce them or charge £500+ per copy. We produce premises-licence-ready accounts certified on chartered headed paper for £195 one-off — usually within 48 hours of request.
Setting up a tronc scheme. Why every venue should.
If you collect any tips, gratuities or service charges and run them through normal payroll, you're paying NIC you don't need to. Here's the maths — and how the Tipping Act 2024 made it mandatory anyway.
Tips distributed via tronc are exempt from National Insurance.
When tips come in through customer card payments and are pooled, then distributed by an independent troncmaster (not the business owner) under a written tronc policy, HMRC accepts that the distribution is not "paid by the employer" for NIC purposes.
The result: employer NIC of ~13.8% drops to zero on those tips. Employee NIC of ~12% drops to zero too. Both sides keep more of the tip.
Since October 2024, the Tipping Act 2024 has made a written, fair tipping policy mandatory for any business collecting tips. The Act also bans deductions other than statutory ones. Setting up a tronc both saves NIC and meets the legal requirement in one step.
Everything a hospitality business needs. Under one roof.
Click any service to read the dedicated page. All services delivered in-house by chartered accountants who specialise in hospitality.
Hospitality Bookkeeping
EPOS-integrated daily reconciliation, multi-rate VAT splits, staff meal adjustments. From £195/month.
View service →Weekly Payroll
Weekly RTI for shift teams, holiday and SSP tracking, tronc integration. From £12/employee/week.
View service →Hospitality VAT
Mid-complexity VAT Plus tier handles food/drink rate splits and partial recovery. From £295/quarter.
View service →Annual Accounts & CT600
Limited company year-end accounts and corporation tax filing from £1,200/year.
View service →Tax Planning Workshop
Bespoke £1,200 strategy — pricing, multi-site structures, capital allowances on fit-out, R&D.
View service →Business Mentor
Free for every client. Pricing strategy, supplier negotiation, marketing direction, growth review.
View service →Find the right hospitality service mix and fee. Five questions, one minute.
Answer five quick questions about your venue, turnover and team. We'll show you the right service mix, an estimated annual fee, and where the typical profit gaps are for venues like yours. Send the result to our chartered team via WhatsApp for a written quote.
Your hospitality position
Based on your answers, here's the right setup.
The fees a hospitality venue actually pays. Standard, transparent.
Below is the typical service mix and standard fee for hospitality businesses. Quotes are issued in writing within 24 hours of the call — request one to see what discounts and seasonal offers are available in the current period.
Hospitality service fees
All prices exclude VAT. From the master service-fee schedule.
| Service | Description | Fee |
|---|---|---|
| Tronc Scheme Setup Tipping Act 2024 compliant — troncmaster, written policy, HMRC registration |
One-off setup including HMRC scheme registration | £395one-off |
| Tronc Ongoing Administration Weekly or monthly distribution, payslip integration |
NIC-saving optimisation, allocation, audit trail | from £95/month |
| Hospitality Bookkeeping EPOS integration, daily Z-report reconciliation |
Lightspeed / Square / Toast / Zonal integration, multi-rate VAT split | from £195/month |
| Multi-Site Consolidation 2+ venues with branch reporting |
Per-site P&L, group consolidation, KPI dashboard | from £245/site/month |
| Weekly Payroll Shift-pattern teams |
52 RTI submissions, weekly payslips, holiday + SSP, tronc integration | from £12/employee/week |
| VAT Plus (Mid-Complexity) Food / drink rate splits, e-commerce side |
Multi-rate handling, partial recovery, MTD filing | from £295/quarter |
| Limited Company Accounts Tier 1 — solo director restaurant or café |
FRS accounts, CT600, Companies House, confirmation statement | from £1,200/year |
| Premises Licence Accounts Alcohol licensing, premises transfer, personal licence |
Certified accounts on chartered headed paper | £195one-off |
What our hospitality clients actually got back. Real numbers.
Three recent examples from a single-site restaurant, a multi-site café group and a gastropub. Names changed, numbers real.
Tronc setup saved £8,400/yr in NIC for a Camden restaurant
Lina ran an 8-staff Italian restaurant in Camden processing roughly £40K of tips per year through normal payroll. Both employer and employee NIC were being deducted on every tip. We set up a fully compliant tronc with an independent troncmaster, written policy and HMRC registration (£395 one-off), then took on monthly tronc administration at £95/month. Year one NIC saving was £8,400 split between the business and the team — the staff felt the take-home increase immediately.
Per-site P&L revealed one loss-making site in a 3-venue chain
A 3-site coffee group came to us with rolled-up management accounts that showed group-level profitability of about 4%. We rebuilt the books with per-site P&L (£245/site/month) and KPI dashboards. Site #2 was running at -8% net margin — masked by a strong site #3 that was carrying the group. The owner closed site #2 in month four, freed up rent and labour budget for a delivery-only ghost kitchen, and group margin moved to 11% within six months.
Pricing-strategy session lifted private events margin by £30K/yr
A gastropub running roughly £900K of food and drink wanted to expand the private events offer (Christmas parties, weddings, corporate). The Mentor session reframed pricing around per-head minimum spend tiers tied to room hire and audited the supplier costs feeding the events menu. Average ticket up 22% with no drop in conversion, supplier costs down 6% from re-tendered drink contracts. The accounting fee paid for itself in the first event of December.
Hospitality-specific quote, in writing within 24 hours.
Tell us your venue type, turnover, sites and team size. We'll send a written fixed-fee quote covering exactly the services you need — and any current discounts or offers in the period.
Frequently asked questions.
If your question isn't here, message us on WhatsApp or book a free 15-minute call.
Hospitality accountants in King's Cross, London.
Our office sits at 39-41 North Road, London N7 9DP — five minutes from Caledonian Road tube and ten from King's Cross St Pancras. We work with hospitality venues across Islington, Camden, Hackney, Westminster, Tower Hamlets, the City of London, Soho, Shoreditch and Hoxton, plus our secondary presence in Wickford / Basildon, Essex.
Most engagements are delivered remotely via video call, WhatsApp and our client portal — but for owner-operators who prefer to meet, the King's Cross office is open Monday to Saturday 10am to 7pm. No appointment fee, no travel charge.
London N7 9DP
10am to 7pm
Ready for a hospitality-specialist accountant?
Book a free 15-minute call. We'll quote your engagement in writing within 24 hours including any current discounts or seasonal offers. If LOYALS isn't the right fit we'll tell you that too.
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