Playbook, restaurant
The person asking has to get this past a finance department
The guest who wants an invoice is not querying the bill. They paid it happily and now have to claim it back, and the thing in their pocket is a card slip with a total on it, which their finance team will reject. What they need is a document with the company name they specify, an itemisation, the tax properly shown and the service charge on its own line. That is a different piece of paper from the one your till printed, and knowing which one they are asking for is the whole of this page.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for billing and invoices holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A restaurant issues its receipt at the table and the guest leaves, so unlike almost any other trade the request always arrives after the fact and refers to a transaction that has already been closed and reconciled.
- The name on the invoice is usually not the name of the person who ate, because the diner is claiming on behalf of an employer, and getting that name right is the difference between a document that works and one that comes back.
- Service charge has to appear as its own line rather than folded into the total, since a discretionary payment is treated differently by a finance team from the food and drink it sat under.
- Private hire and large parties are frequently settled after the event against an invoice rather than on a card at the end of the night, which is a completely different billing route from the one every other guest uses and has its own terms.
How it arrives
- can i get a vat receipt
- can you send an itemised bill
- we need an invoice with the company name on it
- can we put the private hire on account
- can you split the bill across two cards
- can you reprint last nights receipt
What has to be indexed for this to work
| What your card slip shows and what it leaves out | Spell out that the slip is a payment confirmation rather than a tax document, and what has to be requested separately. Guests do not know these are different things and ask for the wrong one, then come back a week later having been sent away by their own accounts team. |
|---|---|
| How to request an invoice after the visit | The address, what the guest must supply, which is the date, the time, the table name and the total, and the company name and address the invoice should carry. Also how long after a visit you will still do it, because there is a limit and it should be stated. |
| How the bill can be split at the table | Whether you split evenly, by item, across how many cards, and whether that changes for a large party. Say it in advance, because the moment to discover your policy is not with a queue of people holding cards at the end of a long dinner. |
| Account and private hire billing terms | Whether you invoice a company for an event rather than taking payment on the night, what you need to set that up, the payment terms and whether a deposit still applies. This is asked by the person organising, weeks before, and answering it is often what wins the booking. |
The reply
The slip from the card machine is a payment confirmation rather than a tax invoice, which is why finance teams usually send it back [1]. We can issue a proper invoice for a visit. Send the date, roughly what time you were in, the name the table was under, the total and the exact company name and address it needs to be made out to, and it will be raised from the till record [2]. Service is shown on its own line on it, because it is a separate item from the food and drink. For a private hire we can invoice the company instead of taking payment on the night, and the terms for that are on the events page.
The first sentence names the confusion the guest has not identified yet, which is why their document was rejected. The list asked for is the minimum needed to find a closed transaction and raise a correct document in one pass. Private hire is mentioned last because the person asking about an invoice is quite often the person about to organise one.
Where it stops
The trigger. The guest asks for an invoice to be issued or corrected, wants to set up an account, or is querying how something has been itemised on a bill they have already paid.
I cannot raise an invoice or see a bill from here, so this needs the office rather than me. Leave me your name, an email, the date you were in and the company name it needs to be made out to, and whoever does the billing will send it over.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never state a tax figure or a tax rate for a bill, because the split between food, drink and a discretionary service charge is not something an assistant can work out from a total.
- Never confirm that an invoice has been raised or sent, since nothing has been produced and the guest will wait for a document that does not exist.
- Never describe the card slip as a receipt without saying what it is not, when the entire reason for the question is that it was refused.
- Never agree account terms or a payment period for a company, as that is a commercial decision and it is being asked before anybody has agreed the event.
Questions
- Can it produce the invoice itself?
- No. It has no view of the till, no record of the table and nothing to raise a document with. Its job here is to say clearly which document the guest needs, gather the details that let it be raised in one go, and route it.
- How far back should we agree to reissue?
- Pick a period and publish it. Most of these requests arrive within a month because that is when expenses are filed. Having a stated limit stops the awkward reply to somebody asking about a dinner from last spring.
- Does this matter for a small restaurant?
- It matters wherever business diners eat, which is most weekday lunches in a town. It is a short document that prevents a slow email exchange, and the guest asking it is the one most likely to book again next month.
Keep reading
- Everything for a restaurantHours, last orders, deposits and dietary options are safe ground. Confirming a dish is free of an allergen never is.
- Handling billing and invoices in generalInvoice copies, tax numbers, purchase order references. Nearly all of it is account specific, so the honest handling is process plus a clean handover.
- Nobody is by the phone, and it is not only because you are closedThe phone goes unanswered mid service and again on the dark day. What is safe to answer at midnight, and what has to wait for a person.
- Deciding whether this is the right place for the occasionDress code, how long you get the table, whether a toddler works at eight, and whether three courses are compulsory on a set menu.
- The menu that travels is not the menu on the wallThe collection window, the platform that draws its own radius, and the shorter menu, because some dishes do not survive a box.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.