Restaurant P&L Tracker for India: Margin per Category, GST Filing Built In

A generic P&L template ignores the reality of running a bar or restaurant in India: GST applies differently to food vs alcohol vs packaged items, and your effective food cost % means nothing without knowing your beverage margin separately. This tracker is built for India F&B operators who need margin visibility at the line level, not just a net profit number at the bottom.

Why Generic P&L Templates Fail India F&B

Three reasons a standard restaurant P&L template does not work for India:

1. GST rate complexity: GST on food varies (5% AC restaurants, 12% on certain categories, 0% on some staples). Alcohol is taxed by state excise plus GST. A template that lumps all revenue together gives you the wrong effective tax rate.
2. Beverage vs food margin separation: In most bars and full-service restaurants, beverage (especially alcohol) carries a 60-75% gross margin vs 60-65% for food. Blending them gives you a number that is directionally useless for purchasing decisions.
3. Petty cash and cash-heavy operations: India F&B operations often have significant cash transactions. A template without a petty cash reconciliation section gives a P&L that never matches actual bank balance.

What the Tracker Measures (Line by Line)

The tracker is structured in six sections:

• Revenue by category: Dine-in food / Dine-in beverages / Takeaway / Delivery / Events/catering -- each with GST collected, net of GST, and day/week/month view
• Cost of Goods (COGS) by category: Food purchases / Beverage purchases / Packaging -- with food cost % and beverage cost % calculated automatically per category
• Labour: Kitchen staff / FOH staff / Management -- broken into full-time, part-time, and contract with PF/ESI loading toggle
• Fixed overhead: Rent / electricity / water / insurance / maintenance -- monthly actuals vs budget
• Variable overhead: Delivery platform commissions / marketing / printing / consumables
• GST summary tab: Output GST collected by rate (5% / 12% / 18%) and Input GST credit available, giving net GST payable per filing period

The Three Ratios That Matter for Indian F&B

The tracker auto-calculates and surfaces these three ratios on a dashboard tab:

• Food cost %: Food COGS / Food revenue. Target range: 28-35% for most Indian restaurant categories. Above 35% and you are either over-purchasing, wasting, or under-pricing.
• Beverage cost %: Beverage COGS / Beverage revenue. Target range: 20-30% (lower is better; spirits carry higher margin than food). This ratio tells you whether your bar pricing is working.
• Labour cost %: Total labour / Total net revenue. Target range: 25-35% for full-service restaurants. Many India operators run this at 40%+ because they do not track it monthly -- by the time they notice, the problem is structural.

The tracker flags any ratio that moves outside the target band so you see the problem in the current month, not when you do an annual review.

How GST Filing Works in the Tracker

The GST tab is designed to produce the numbers you hand to your CA or enter directly into the GSTN portal. It does not replace your CA but it replaces the monthly scramble to reconstruct revenue numbers.

• Revenue automatically splits into GST-liable and exempt categories based on what you configure at setup
• Input credit is tracked by vendor invoice (you enter purchase invoices; the tab aggregates by GSTIN for GSTR-2B matching)
• Output generates the headline numbers for GSTR-3B: total taxable supply by rate, total tax collected, total ITC claimed, net payable
• The tracker does not file -- it organises. You or your CA take the summary tab numbers and enter them into the portal. The summary tab is formatted to match GSTR-3B field order so the transfer is direct.

FAQ