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#point-of-sale

Point of Sale

POS system selection, pricing, hardware, and reconciliation for restaurants and retail businesses

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Gas Station and Convenience Store Bookkeeping: Where Your Pennies Per Gallon Actually Go

How to keep the books for a gas station with a convenience store — splitting fuel from inside sales, tracking tank inventory in gallons, booking lottery as an agency arrangement, recording tobacco buydowns, and keeping card fees off the revenue line. U.S. convenience stores rang up a record $341 billion of in-store sales in 2025, yet NACS found the average in-store basket lost roughly seven cents per transaction after expenses.

mike

bookkeepingretailinventory

Ireland's 9% VAT Rate Is Live: What Restaurants, Cafés, and Hairdressers Should Update in Their Books

Since 1 July 2026 food, catering, and hairdressing in Ireland are taxed at 9% VAT instead of 13.5% — worth about €3.63 per €100 of sales if prices hold. Alcohol stays at 23% and accommodation at 13.5%, so this guide covers the pricing decision, till and tax-code updates, deposits that straddle the change, and how to split mixed bills correctly.

mike

vattax-compliancerestaurant

Pour Cost, Keg Yields, and Shrinkage: Bar Bookkeeping That Catches What Walks Out the Door

Pour cost is beverage COGS divided by beverage revenue — target 15-20% on spirits, 20-25% on draft, and 25-35% on wine by the glass. This guide covers how to compute usage and variance weekly, why a half-barrel keg yields about 112 pints instead of the theoretical 124, and how to split revenue, COGS, comps, and keg deposits so the leak is visible in the ledger.

mike

restaurantinventorycost-of-goods-sold

Shift4's $2,000 Annual Service and Maintenance Fee: What Landed on Your August Statement

Shift4 folded the $250-per-device Annual Program Fee and the $325-per-device Regulatory Assurance Fee (capped at $975) into one roughly $2,000 Annual Service and Maintenance Fee starting with August 2026 statements. Here is how to reconstruct your baseline, dispute it within the 30-day window, price the exit before switching, and book the charge as merchant account fees accrued at about $167 a month.

mike

paymentspoint-of-salejunk-fees

Alabama's Grocery Tax Is Back: A POS and Bookkeeping Checklist for the July 1 Snap-Back to 2%

Alabama's two-month grocery tax holiday ended June 30, 2026, and the 2% state tax on food resumed July 1 — with city and county food taxes never having paused. This is the register-by-register POS checklist and month-end bookkeeping routine that keeps the straddle-period July return tying out, covering cutoff transactions, prepared-food classification, SNAP tender confusion, and the uncollected-tax exposure retailers owe themselves.

mike

sales-taxalabamapoint-of-sale

Florida's 2026 Sales Tax Holidays: New Dates, Item Caps, and a Retailer Compliance Checklist

Florida's 2026 omnibus tax bill (H7031E) moved the back-to-school sales tax holiday to July 20–August 20, added a September 1–December 31 hunting, fishing and camping holiday with no price cap on hunting supplies, and permanently exempted propane tanks of 20 lbs or less. This guide lists every item cap and location exclusion, explains the university-contractor and home-hardening refund programs, and gives Florida retailers a register-programming and bookkeeping checklist to stay audit-ready.

mike

sales-taxtax-complianceretail
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