P&L template for a restaurant
A free, self-calculating profit & loss spreadsheet set up for a restaurant: type your statement lines on one tab and the monthly P&L builds itself, with guidance for the categories this trade actually uses.
- Free Excel file preloaded for a restaurant; works in Google Sheets and Numbers too.
- Type transactions once; twelve monthly P&L columns calculate themselves.
- Category guidance for this trade: food & beverage (cogs), payroll, rent & occupancy, and more.
- Transfers, card payments, and owner draws get an excluded section so they never inflate or deflate profit.
- Prefer not to type? RapidPnL builds the same P&L from your statement PDFs in minutes, reconciled to the penny, for $49.
Excel format (.xlsx), about 25 KB, free, no email required.
Download the templateWhat income looks like for a restaurant
Card settlements from Toast, Square, Clover, or a traditional merchant processor arrive daily, net or gross of fees depending on the processor. Delivery platforms (DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub) pay on their own weekly cycles, each under its own name. Catering often arrives as separate checks or ACH. Each stream is a recurring pattern that gets categorized once, so dozens of deposits become one revenue line, with processor fees broken out separately wherever the statement itemizes them. Cash sales appear only when deposited, which for many stores is a weekly trip to the branch.
In the template, every deposit gets entered as a positive amount and categorized as Sales & Services Revenue (or Other Income when it genuinely is not sales). The monthly columns then show your revenue pattern at a glance, which is the first thing a lender reads.
The expense categories that matter
Sysco, US Foods, Restaurant Depot, local purveyors. This line drives food-cost percentage, the number every operator watches weekly.
Gusto, ADP, or Paychex debits, or direct payroll checks. Labor is the other half of prime cost.
Rent, CAM charges, utilities. The fixed amount the month has to clear before anything else counts.
Processor fees and delivery-platform commissions, kept visible instead of buried in net deposits wherever the statement allows.
Hood cleaning, refrigeration repair, plumbing. Irregular but never optional, and worth a reserve.
The part most templates get wrong
Transfers between your own accounts, credit card payments made from checking, owner draws, and loan principal are cash movements, not income or expenses. A homemade P&L that counts them reports the wrong profit, and it is the first thing an experienced reviewer notices. This template gives those categories a dedicated excluded section below the P&L: the cash stays tracked, the profit stays honest.
The honest test of any hand-built P&L is reconciliation: for each account and month, the beginning balance plus every line you entered must equal the printed ending balance. The Start-here tab walks through the check. If typing and checking a year of statements is more weekend than you want to spend, the restaurant P&L guide shows what the finished product looks like, and RapidPnL builds it from your statement PDFs in minutes.
Upload the PDFs and get a management-use profit & loss in minutes, with every statement reconciled to the penny. $49 for 3 months, then $9 each additional month. Full refund if we can't reconcile.
The free statement is read, categorized, and reconciled on screen before you pay anything. One per person; no card required.
Common questions
Food & beverage (COGS), Payroll, Rent & occupancy, Merchant & platform fees do most of the work on this trade's P&L. The template's Start-here tab explains each one, and the dropdown carries the full chart of accounts so nothing gets forced into the wrong bucket.
Record what actually lands on the bank statement. Card settlements from Toast, Square, Clover, or a traditional merchant processor arrive daily, net or gross of fees depending on the processor. Enter each deposit as a positive amount under Sales & Services Revenue; processor fees that appear as separate debits get their own expense line.
Same engine and formulas, tuned for a restaurant: the Start-here tab lists the categories that matter for this trade and why, and the Transactions tab opens with example entries that look like this business's real statement lines.
Other industries
- Cleaning business →
- Contracting business →
- Food truck →
- E-commerce business →
- Landscaping business →
- Trucking business →
- Salon →
- Consulting practice →
- Handyman business →
- Photography business →
- Auto repair shop →
Written by a licensed CPA. This guide is general information, not tax, legal, accounting, or financial advice, and does not create a professional relationship. Lender requirements and bank websites change; confirm specifics with your lender and financial institution. RapidPnL reports are cash-basis summaries generated from customer-provided data for management use only, not audited or CPA-reviewed. © 2026 RapidPnL LLC.