Booking Toast sales in QuickBooks Desktop

How to record Toast daily sales in QuickBooks Desktop

By Aaron, a restaurant owner who books his own stores on Toast and QuickBooks Desktop. Updated October 8, 2026.

Where the numbers come from

In Toast Web, open Reports, then Sales, then Sales summary. Pick a single day and a single location. Book a day the morning after it closes, not while the store is still open, so late checks are in.

The report is made of cards. These are the ones you need:

• Sales Category Summary: net sales by category, like Food and Beverage.
• Tax Summary: the sales tax you collected.
• Tip Summary: tips added to payments. Gratuity shows in the Revenue Summary and the Payments Summary.
• Service Charge Summary: service charges, if you use them.
• Payments Summary: what came in, by payment type: cash, each card type, gift cards, and other types such as DoorDash or Uber Eats.
• Deferred Summary: gift cards sold. It only shows on days you sold some.
• Unpaid Orders Summary: orders that weren't paid yet.

What goes where

Account names vary from one set of books to another. These are common ones.

Toast's net sales are after discounts and refunds. If your books keep discounts or refunds in their own accounts, credit gross sales and debit Discounts and Refunds instead.

When Toast's card deposit reaches the bank, record it out of the card clearing account, with Toast's processing fees in an expense account. The clearing account then goes back to zero. Do the same with each delivery partner's payout.

A worked example

Here is one store's day, with sample numbers. Credits are sales, tax and tips. Debits are the payments. The two sides match to the penny.

If the two sides don't match, the difference is almost always a timing gap: an order not paid yet, or a payment for another day's order. Here's how to book that gap.

Enter it as a journal entry

1. In QuickBooks Desktop, open Company, then Make General Journal Entries.
2. Set the Date to the sales day, not the day you're typing it in.
3. In Entry No., use something you'll recognize later, like the store and the date.
4. Add one line per account: debits in the Debit column, credits in the Credit column.
5. On the Sales Tax Payable line, pick your tax agency in the Name column. QuickBooks needs it there.
6. If you track stores with classes, pick the store's class on every line.
7. Check that total debits equal total credits, then Save & Close.

Or book the day in Make Deposits

Many restaurants book the whole day as one Make Deposits instead, so the cash lands in the bank in the same step.

1. Open Banking, then Make Deposits. If the Payments to Deposit window opens first, click OK without ticking anything.
2. In Deposit To, pick the bank. Set the date to the sales day, so the sales land on their own day. Your bank statement will show the deposit a day or two later.
3. Add what came in as positive amounts: each sales category from its income account, sales tax from Sales Tax Payable (with your tax agency in Received From), and tips from Tips Payable.
4. Take out what didn't come in as cash, as negative amounts: card payments to Card Clearing, DoorDash to DoorDash Clearing.
5. The total is now the cash Toast counted: $612.18 in the example. If the deposit slip says $610.00, add a line to Cash Over/Short for -$2.18.
6. Check the total against the deposit slip, then Save & Close.

More on deposits and shortages: how to record daily cash deposits and over/short.

Mistakes that throw the books off

• Counting sales twice. If you book daily sales, don't also record Toast's card deposits as income. Record them out of the card clearing account.
• The wrong day. Use Toast's business day. Sales after midnight but before your closeout hour belong to the day before.
• Leaving out the tax agency. QuickBooks needs it on every Sales Tax Payable line.
• Mixing stores. Book one entry per store per day, each with its store's class, or each store in its own company file.