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CSV: hospitality accounts with default QBO codes (GST, Z, E, Out of scope) and notes.
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The Alberta restaurant ledger has one boundary worth respecting and very little else in the way: zero-rated groceries become 5% menu items, and everything else in the province stays refreshingly single-tax. This QuickBooks Online chart of accounts pins that boundary into account defaults, using the codes an Alberta file actually has.
Cost of sales, drawn like a kitchen
Food stock and ingredients takes Z, since basic groceries are zero-rated in every province; the note lists the distributor items that flip to GST (snack foods, carbonated drinks, ready-to-eat). Alcohol stock takes GST outright, with the full input tax credit that attaches to resale inventory, and a note explaining why the AGLC markup never appears as a tax line: it is priced into the wholesale cost before the invoice exists. Kitchen and bar equipment anchors the capital claims in fixed assets.
Food and beverage sales carries GST on the way out, because prepared food sold in Alberta is a 5% taxable supply whether it is plated, bagged, or delivered.
Operating accounts with local texture
- Liquor and business licences:
Out of scope. AGLC fees and municipal permits carry no tax and hide no credits. - Cleaning and laundry, smallwares and consumables:
GST, claimable, perpetual. - Meals and entertainment and staff events: the 50% ITC limitation, flagged where it applies, on consumption rather than resale.
- Insurance:
E, and genuinely nothing else in this province.
Delivery apps sell your food and bill you fees
Third-party delivery platforms fold two transactions into one payout, and the books need them separated again. The food sold through the app is still your 5% supply at full menu value, posted to food and beverage sales; the platform’s commission is your cost, arriving with its own tax treatment depending on where the platform bills from, and it belongs in its own expense line rather than netted out of revenue. Reconcile each platform’s statement monthly the way you reconcile the POS: gross sales, tax collected, fees deducted, payout received. Netting the payout straight to revenue understates both sales and costs and leaves the GST filing arguing with the platform’s paper trail.
Two files, divided labour
The import CSV builds the account list through Settings, Import data, Chart of accounts; QuickBooks attaches no tax in an import, by design. The readable CSV is the standard the team codes against: per-account default, exceptions, and one-line reasons written to be read mid-shift. Enable sales tax before importing so GST, Z, E, and Out of scope exist.
The weekly loop
- Post the POS daily summary with its GST; keep tips out of revenue.
- Enter distributor invoices line by line, splitting Z from GST as the delivery slip dictates.
- Reconcile bar purchases to alcohol stock even when they arrive on mixed statements.
- Before filing, scan the stock accounts for miscoded lines; ingredient drift is quiet and compounding.
- Keep supplier statements filed against their entries for the six-year retention window.
Periodic stock counts belong in the routine too: counting the walk-in and the bar monthly, and adjusting cost of sales for what vanished, keeps waste and staff meals from silently living inside food cost, which is the number every menu decision leans on.
The volume of supplier paper in food service is the real adversary. Dext stabilizes the regulars through rules. ExpenseFlow reads each invoice, splits zero-rated from taxable lines on the same document, respects the licence and consumption cases, and posts coded entries into QuickBooks against exactly this chart. Hubdoc keeps the originals filed against the entries.
Same kitchen, Xero instead? Use the Alberta hospitality chart of accounts for Xero. The code list itself is documented in the Alberta QuickBooks sales tax reference.