Accounting for multi-unit restaurant franchisees
From the register to the bank, every tender, every night.
Every POS tender and delivery payout followed to the bank. Royalty and ad fund on weekly sales as your agreement defines them, the clause quoted beside every charge, on your brand’s 4-4-5 calendar.
AI agents do the work overnight. A named accounting lead owns your books.
$350 per location a monthno add-ons
Kite· Meridian Restaurant Holdings07:00Needs your attention · everything else has already been handled
- Open
A $4,102.11 DoorDash payout has not reached the bank
- Chase
WST-1045 has 3 unreported days
Draft vendor bill
Royalty and ad fund · week 36
$4,030.50
posted · JE-10422
Already in hand
14 overnight
41 bank lines matched
Weekly sales journal drafted for 6 stores
- JE-10422Royalty payable · week 362,418.30
Posted, because a person said so. The agent drafted; the approval is the authorization.
Meridian Restaurant Holdings, on one night in its books.
Operators of these brands run their back office on Kite
Reads from the systems you already run
Where the money moves
Followed to the deposit, and every fee booked where it lands.
Every night, not at month end. The books are current when you open them, not when somebody closes them.
Running every night, not at month end
WST-1045 · Meridian Restaurant Holdings.
The payout that never landed
$4,102.11DoorDash says it paid on Tuesday. The bank shows nothing. Raised the morning after, not found at month end.
The fee netted before the deposit
$612.40Taken out before the payout reached the bank, so the deposit is smaller than the sales. Kite reads it off the marketplace’s own statement and books it as the cost it is, instead of letting it hide in net sales.
The restated day
WST-2210Tuesday’s sales restated after the royalty was billed. A delta is raised for the difference; nothing already posted is edited.
The workflows, in your words
Five workflows. One store at a time, and all of them together.
01
Money in
Every POS tender to a settlement batch to a deposit. Every delivery order to a marketplace payout to a deposit, with every fee booked as its own cost. Cash over and short booked as the fact of running tills that it is.
02
Money out
Food distributors, linen, hood cleaning, pest control, the POS subscription: dropped in the inbox, read, coded against how you coded that vendor last time, and drafted for approval. One vendor file across every entity.
03
Bank
Three tiers of reconciliation. Proof matches by itself. Evidence is suggested and waits. Interpretation is one pass of the model over the fuzzy remainder, with its confidence shown, posting nothing.
04
Contracts
The franchise agreement and the lease, read into rules with a clause cited for every number. Royalty and ad fund settled per week in arrears; percentage rent by the cumulative breakpoint; a restated sales day raises a delta, never an edit.
05
Close
Weekly sales journals per store. Depreciation, loan interest and period recognition drafted when the period closes. A close package whose clean state reads: nothing open, every queue empty.
Obligations from the contract
- Royalty at a percent of the weekly sales figure your agreement defines, with that definition quoted beside every charge
- Ad fund and local marketing co-op, each on its own basis
- Percentage rent over a natural or artificial breakpoint, settled in arrears
- CAM, tax and insurance recoveries reconciled to the landlord’s annual statement
- Technology and platform fees per store per period
Compliance and audits
- Health permit
- Food service license
- Liquor license
- Grease trap and hood cleaning
- Fire inspection
- Music license
Steritech and EcoSure reports read into scored findings with an owner and a deadline each; repeats and the same standard failing across stores surfaced as one problem.
The calendar
A 4-4-5 or 13-period year, closing on the weekday your brand closes on, so the royalty week and the accounting week are the same week.
Proactive insight
The morning after, not the month after.
A monthly report tells you a location ran hot last month. Kite tells you this morning, naming the store, the amount and the next action.
Delivery payout
A $4,102.11 delivery payout has not reached the bank
The marketplace says it paid on Tuesday; the statement shows nothing yet.
Unreported days
WST-1045 has 3 unreported days
Royalty waits on a complete week; a closed day is an explicit zero, not a gap.
Restated sales
WST-2210 restated Tuesday after the royalty was billed
The royalty changes by the difference. Kite raises a delta charge; it never edits a posted bill.
Delivery off-register
WST-1045 has $960 of delivery sales not on the register
Marketplace orders with no register twin — sales missing from the royalty basis and the tax return.
Missing bill
Hood cleaning has not billed WST-2210 this month
It has come on the 4th for six months. The month reads better than it was until it is accrued.
Lease expiring
The lease at WST-3120 expires in 90 days
The renewal-notice window from the lease itself, not a calendar someone forgot to keep.
Permit expiring
The health permit at WST-2210 expires in 21 days
Until it is renewed the location is operating without it.
Repeat finding
Hand-wash sink blocked — cited again at WST-1045
Repeats are what a franchisor escalates on; the first fix did not hold.
Sync stopped
The POS has stopped syncing at WST-4402
Two days without a pull. Every figure downstream is waiting on the reconnect.
What matched overnight is already handled; these are what did not.
Start with a few storesHow we charge
$350
per location per month. An agentic software platform and a named accounting lead.
- The same rate at four locations and at four hundred. From twenty, the team working your books becomes yours alone at no extra cost.
- Only operating locations count. A store in development or closed costs nothing.
- Pilot a few stores, on your real data, at the same rate.
- No add-ons for payables, a faster close or franchisor reports.
Questions
Questions restaurant operators ask first.
Which POS do you connect to?
Toast, live. Square, Clover and NCR Aloha by daily export. Anything that exports a day of sales by store can come in as a file.
Do you reconcile delivery?
Yes. Uber Eats over its API; DoorDash and Grubhub from the statements they email. Orders are matched to payouts and payouts to deposits, and an order with no register twin is raised, because it is missing from the royalty basis.
Do you do inventory or prime cost?
Not today. Food, beverage and paper cost come from the bills and the register; a perpetual inventory ledger is not built.
Who actually works our books?
A named accounting lead, the same person all month. Under twenty locations your lead works with a qualified team shared across a few operators; from twenty, that team works only on your books, so they learn your brands, your entities and your franchisor’s reporting calendar rather than switching between groups. The lead is the same person all month: the bank on Monday, the bills daily, the close the week after period end.
Do we have to move every location at once?
No. Start with two to five stores through one full month-end close, beside your current bookkeeper, at the same price. The pilot has proved itself when that close ties to your bookkeeper’s to the dollar, with every difference explained. Then move the rest.
Start with a few stores.
Four fields. A person replies within one business day.