#point-of-sale
POS system selection, pricing, hardware, and reconciliation for restaurants and retail businesses
Illinois SB 618 makes cocktails-to-go permanent July 1, 2026, requiring tamper-evident sealed containers, four-element labeling, a seven-day fill clock, employee-only delivery, and age verification, with ABV-based gallonage tax and separate POS bookkeeping to keep the channel profitable and audit-ready.
Florida SB 606 amends Statute § 509.214 effective July 1, 2026, requiring restaurants to disclose every mandatory operations charge—its amount and purpose—on menus and receipts before the order, on its own line separate from tax and tips. Includes the payroll treatment (service charges are wages, not tips), sales-tax exposure, and a chart-of-accounts setup to book each fee cleanly.
Illinois' Interchange Fee Prohibition Act bans swipe fees on the sales tax and gratuity portions of card transactions starting July 1, 2026 — the first US law of its kind. Learn how to prove tax and tips per transaction, choose between the real-time exemption and the 180-day rebate, and structure a chart of accounts that captures every dollar either way.
Mecklenburg County's combined sales tax rose to 8.25% on July 1, 2026 — the highest rate in North Carolina. This is the point-of-sale, invoicing, filing, and bookkeeping checklist Charlotte-area businesses need to collect and remit the new rate correctly.
A comic shop is three businesses sharing a register—non-returnable new issues, long-tail back issues, and consignment—so split them in your chart of accounts, book prepaid pull lists as deferred revenue, and capitalize grading fees into inventory instead of expensing them.
Starting November 4, 2026, SNAP-authorized small stores must stock 7 varieties in each of 4 staple food categories — 84 units total, up from 36 — with perishables in 3 categories, or risk losing EBT authorization. How to map varieties, track depth, flag perishables, and file invoices in your books before an FNS inspection.
Seventeen states run back-to-school sales tax holidays in summer 2026, from Florida's 32-day window to Iowa's Friday-Saturday weekend, each with its own price caps — $75 clothing in Ohio, $300 in Connecticut, $40 on Maryland backpacks. Participation is mandatory for most registered retailers, and destination sourcing means online sellers with nexus must honor the holiday of the delivery state.
Paint-and-sip and candle studios ring one ticket that is three revenue types, two tax treatments, and a deferred liability. Here is how to split ticket, beverage, and retail revenue at the POS, book gift cards and deposits as deferred revenue, and track pour cost so month-end takes 30 minutes.
A mandatory service charge fails the IRS four-factor tip test, so it is wages rather than tip income — you owe both FICA shares on it, lose the Section 45B credit on Form 8846, and it is excluded from the new OBBBA qualified-tip deduction. Covers the four-factor test, the journal entries that keep Service Charge Revenue separate from Tips Payable, and the payroll, tip-credit, sales tax, and fee-disclosure changes a restaurant hits the day it switches.
Percentage rent by vendor (8–15% of gross sales, booked as ASC 842 variable lease income), CAM pools with annual true-ups, and one POS settlement split across a dozen merchants — the account structure a food hall operator needs, plus the benchmarks (revenue per square foot, bar share, occupancy) that show a hall is working.
Nonprofit thrift store bookkeeping covers the fair value and sold-price methods for donated inventory, IRS Publication 561 receipt thresholds, the roughly 85% volunteer-labor and donated-merchandise UBIT exclusions, and when Form 990-T filing is required.
Alabama's state 2% grocery tax was suspended May 1–June 30, 2026 via Act 2026-604. Learn what qualifies as SNAP-eligible food, how retailers must still report gross sales, and the county/city tax that remains.
