By Hemaxi Kared
The sales report says one number. The bank statement says another. For restaurant finance teams, this is a familiar and frustrating gap, usually dismissed as “third-party fees.” But that answer is often wrong and can be costly.
Sales, a platform settlement, and a bank deposit are three distinct records. Even with perfect record-keeping, they won’t match dollar for dollar. In my work reviewing reconciliations for a multi-brand franchise group, I’ve found that “fees” is rarely the whole answer.
The easiest way to see why is to follow a single order from the moment a customer taps “place order” to the moment the money reaches the bank. The figures below are hypothetical, but every stop along the way is real.
Friday, 7:42 P.M.: The Order
A customer places a $40 dinner order through a delivery app. If the app is connected to your POS, the order should appear in the system at the correct menu price. An integration failure or a wrong item mapping, though, can leave the POS record incomplete or wrong.
The Platform Takes Its Share
For this hypothetical order, assume the restaurant’s agreement carries a 20% platform commission, or $8. Actual rates vary by agreement, but 20% is typical. In a National Restaurant Association survey released in May 2026, two out of three restaurants using third-party delivery said they pay an average fee of 15% to 29.9% per order.
This order also carried a $3-off promotion. The restaurant agreed to fund it months ago as part of a campaign, and few people remember it’s still running. That $3 comes out of the payout too.
The Tax Question
The customer paid sales tax on top of the $40 meal total. Depending on the state, the transaction and the platform’s role, the platform may collect and remit that tax, in which case it never reaches the restaurant’s payout. Check how your POS and accounting system record the order so the same tax isn’t counted twice. Rules differ by jurisdiction, so consult a tax advisor for each location.
So far, everything has happened on Friday night. The next deduction arrives days later, after the sale has been booked and mostly forgotten.
Tuesday: The Adjustment
Later that Friday night, the customer reported a missing side dish, and the platform issued a $6 partial refund charged to the restaurant. The customer saw the refund right away, but the restaurant usually won’t. The deduction may not appear until a settlement several days later, often as a separate line that isn’t clearly tied to Friday’s sale. If nobody checks it before the platform’s dispute deadline, you may lose the chance to challenge it, whether or not the side item was actually missing from the order.
The Following Week: The Deposit
The platform bundles settlements with many other orders, and the refund may come out of a different payout than the original sale. Across those settlements, this $40 order leaves $23: that is, $40 less the $8 commission, the $3 restaurant-funded promotion, and the $6 refund. Not all of that $17 is lost profit. The commission is a cost of selling through the platform, while the promotion and refund reduce the sale itself, so your accountant may record them differently.
The bank statement shows none of this. The accountant sees deposits that cover many orders and several settlement periods. What looks like a single difference labeled “fees” may actually be a combination of commissions, promotions, refunds, and timing differences.
Doing This for Every Order
Nobody can trace every order by hand, but the same path can be followed in bulk. Most major platforms offer transaction-level settlement reports built for exactly this, though many operators rarely open them.
You need to find out which reports each of your platforms provides and reconcile them to POS sales and bank deposits every week, store by store and platform by platform, while the records are fresh and dispute deadlines are still open.
One number worth tracking is your net effective commission rate: total platform deductions divided by gross sales, calculated for each platform. If it runs well above the rate in your agreement, the extra is coming from promotions, refunds or adjustments, and each of those deserves a look.
A few habits make the biggest difference:
1. Tie each refund and adjustment to an order before accepting it.
2. Keep a list of open disputes with their deadlines.
3. Confirm that each store agreed to the promotions it’s being charged for.
4. Keep one master record that links every store’s number, legal entity, merchant account and platform IDs.
The pattern I see most often is a steady drip of small items: a refund here, a promotion charge there, an adjustment nobody questioned. Each one is easy to explain away. Across many stores and several platforms, week after week, they add up. Looking at the deductions behind the deposit changes the question from “Did we get paid?” to “Did we get paid what we should have?”
It’s tempting to count every deduction as lost profit, but delivery also brings in customers many restaurants couldn’t reach on their own. The point is to measure what each channel contributes after its deductions. That gives you a sounder basis for decisions about pricing, promotions, and platforms.
Try It With One Order
Next week, pick one store and one delivery platform. Choose a single order and follow it the way this article did, from the app to the settlement reports to the bank. If you can’t explain the difference between the sale and the cash received, it’s worth taking a closer look at every order.
The gap between what you earn and what you deposit comes from a series of events you can identify. Follow the money, and you can reclaim the profit that’s quietly shrinking on its way to your bank account. The clarity you gain from that one order will be worth the effort.
Hemaxi Kared is a financial analyst at a multi-brand franchise group and an independent researcher.
