CHECKLIST
Year-End Checklist for Hospitality
About an hour, best started a month before the year end, because half of this list is only fixable while the year is still open. The theme throughout: hospitality’s balance sheet is full of other people’s money, tips, vouchers and deposits, and the year end is where that gets proven rather than assumed.
- Five sections, seventeen checks, about an hour
- The counts, the tronc, the vouchers and the deposits, proven
- The reliefs that expire with the year, claimed in time
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Who this checklist is for
Venue owners a month or two from their year end, and anyone whose last year end turned into a three-month email chain with the accountant.
Your year end is a date, not a plan
Two things must happen on the date itself and cannot be reconstructed later: the full stock count, wet and dry, valued at cost, because that number moves profit pound for pound; and the cash count everywhere it lives, tills, safe, petty cash, the float nobody mentions. Book both now, and the equipment register check alongside, because capital allowances follow that list.
Your balance sheet is full of other people’s money
Three proofs the accounts cannot be signed without: the tronc reconciled, received equals allocated for all twelve months, because undistributed tips are a liability and a compliance failure at once; gift vouchers sold but unredeemed listed as deferred income, not revenue; and function deposits for next year’s events held as liabilities, with the VAT already carried on any kept for no-shows.
You remember the reliefs in February
By then they have expired. The annual investment allowance covers the year’s kitchen kit in full for almost every venue, and December purchases beat January ones by a whole year of relief. The £150 a head annual function exemption has a cliff edge, a penny over and the whole amount is taxable. Trivial benefits under £50 count only if the rules were kept. Bad debts and dead stock reduce profit only if written off before the year closes.
FACTS
The £150 cliff edge
The annual function exemption covers £150 including VAT per head across the year’s events, all staff invited. It is an exemption, not an allowance: spend £151 and the entire amount becomes taxable, not the pound over. Splitting the budget across a summer and Christmas event works only while the combined per-head total stays under the line.
17 checks
Five sections, started a month early
£150
Per head, VAT inclusive, with a cliff edge rather than a taper
FACTS
The file that makes the accounts cheap
Fifty-two weekly closes in one folder, the three payroll schemes, PAYE, pension and tronc PAYE, reconciled to the ledger, the VAT returns tied to the till’s channel split, and a questions list written while you still remember the odd month. Bring that and the accounts are an assembly job; the alternative is archaeology at hourly rates.