Restaurant books that actually balance.
PlateBooks keeps a real double-entry ledger for independent restaurants — bank feed, receipts, payroll and point-of-sale in one book, with food cost, labor cost and prime cost read straight off the journal.
Runs in the browser. No install, no spreadsheet kept on the side.
Every figure traces to an entry
Most restaurant tools show you a number and ask you to trust it. PlateBooks posts a balanced journal entry for every transaction and derives the reports from those entries at read time, so a figure on the profit and loss can always be opened and read back to the receipt it came from.
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| 5010 Food & beverage | 148.76 | — |
| 6620 Cleaning & supplies | 53.07 | — |
| 1010 Operating checking | — | 201.83 |
| Balanced | 201.83 | 201.83 |
What it does
The parts of restaurant bookkeeping that eat an evening, done by the software and checked by arithmetic rather than by hope.
-
Bank feed
Import CSV, OFX or QFX from any bank. Columns are detected automatically, even on exports with no header row. Overlapping statement windows are de-duplicated, and repeat vendors categorise themselves after you file them once.
-
Receipts by email
Photograph a receipt and send it in. PlateBooks transcribes it, then checks the line items against the printed subtotal and total. Anything that does not reconcile is held for review instead of filed, so a misread digit never reaches the ledger quietly.
-
Sales, from every channel
Square syncs nightly after close in your own timezone. Delivery marketplace revenue is recognised when the sale happens and cleared when the payout lands, so a slow deposit never looks like a slow week.
-
Payroll that includes employer tax
Read the register your payroll provider produces and post it whole — wages, withholding, and the employer share of Social Security, Medicare and unemployment in its own account, where it belongs in labor cost.
-
Menu and recipe costing
Cost recipes to the portion from ingredient prices, through sub-recipes and yield loss. See the plate cost and the margin on every item next to what it actually sells for.
-
Checks that read the book
Control accounts are tested against what they should hold. A clearing account that only ever grows, or a tax liability that never clears, is reported by name and amount rather than discovered a year later in a trial balance.
How it works
-
Bring in the money that moved
Import a bank statement, connect Square, and forward receipts to your books' email address.
-
Say what things are, once
Categorise a vendor and the rule is remembered. The review queue groups the same merchant together, so a statement of 248 lines is usually 70 decisions.
-
Let the arithmetic decide
Receipts are checked against their own printed totals, entries must balance, and control accounts are tested every time a report is built.
-
Read the numbers that matter
Food cost, labor cost and prime cost by period — derived from the journal, so they agree with the profit and loss by construction.
Questions
What is PlateBooks?
PlateBooks is bookkeeping software for independent restaurants. It keeps a real double-entry general ledger, imports your bank statements and receipts, syncs point-of-sale and delivery revenue, and reports food cost, labor cost and prime cost from the ledger rather than from a spreadsheet kept alongside it.
Does PlateBooks use real double-entry accounting?
Yes. Every transaction posts a balanced journal entry, and the reports are derived from the journal at read time. Nothing is stored as a summary figure that can drift away from the entries beneath it, so the trial balance, profit and loss and balance sheet always describe the same book.
Can I import my bank statement?
Yes. PlateBooks reads CSV, OFX and QFX exports and detects the columns automatically, including exports with no header row. QFX and OFX are preferred because they carry a bank-assigned transaction id, which makes duplicate detection exact when statement windows overlap.
How does receipt capture work?
Photograph a receipt and email it in. PlateBooks transcribes it, then checks the arithmetic against the receipt's own printed subtotal and total before filing anything. A transcription that does not reconcile is held for review rather than posted, so a misread digit never reaches the books unnoticed.
Does PlateBooks connect to Square?
Yes. Square sales sync nightly, after close, in each restaurant's own timezone. Card processing fees are booked out of the clearing account they are actually deducted from, not recorded as a separate payable.
Does PlateBooks handle payroll taxes?
PlateBooks reads the payroll register your provider produces and posts it, including the employer share of Social Security, Medicare, FUTA and state unemployment. Employer tax is booked as an expense in its own account rather than folded into wages, so labor cost is stated correctly.
Can PlateBooks cost my menu?
Yes. Recipes cost to the portion from ingredient prices, including sub-recipes and yield loss, so you can see the plate cost and the margin on every menu item and compare it against what the item actually sells for.
Who can see my books?
Your books are tied to your account, not to the browser you happen to be using. Each restaurant's data is isolated at the database level, sessions are self-hosted with no third-party auth script on the page, and passkeys are supported alongside passwords.
Open your books
Create an account and import a statement. Nothing posts to the ledger until it balances.