Wet and dry sales split. Drinks margin protected. Tips done right. Specialist accounting for UK pubs, bars, gastropubs and licensed venues. Wet & Dry Sales Drinks Margin & Stock Tronc & Tips Gaming Machine Income Shift Payroll & NMW Fixed Monthly Fees
Most licensees come to AccTek — specialist pub accountants — wrestling with one or more of these.
Drinks and food behave very differently — but your accounts lump them together, hiding your real GP.
Cellar losses, stocktake variances and tied-supply terms quietly eat your gross margin.
No tronc, or one run by the owner — so tips and service charge cost you National Insurance.
Gaming and fruit machine income has its own tax treatment — and it’s easy to record it wrong.
Shift patterns, casual staff and NMW rules — a frequent HMRC audit area for licensed trade.
Your current accountant treats a pub like any other company.
Pubs make their money on drinks margin and lose it to leakage, mis-split VAT and tips set up the wrong way. AccTek is built for licensed trade — an ACA-qualified team that reads a stocktake and a tronc as fluently as a P&L.
A dedicated, ACA-qualified accountant who understands wet/dry, stock, machine income and tronc.
Drinks and food tracked separately for margin, stock and VAT — so you see your true GP.
Purchases, stock and sales reconciled so cellar losses and variances surface early.
A compliant, independent tronc so tips are free of NI and meet the 2024 Tips Act. See our guide.
Gaming-machine and ancillary income recorded and treated correctly, apart from your VATable sales.
Casual and shift payroll run cleanly, with minimum-wage compliance kept watertight.
Nella is the AI assistant inside the AccTek Finance Lab. Message her like you'd text a colleague and she answers from your real, reconciled Xero numbers — in seconds, any time. She understands UK limited company tax, director remuneration, and SME financial management, and she knows exactly where her job ends and your accountant's begins.
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Real questions directors ask — answered from your own live numbers.
Illustrative examples · Nella answers; your chartered accountant signs off.
“They split our wet and dry properly and found margin we were losing in the cellar. Worth it many times over.”
Licensee — Free house
“Tips were running through payroll and costing us. AccTek set up a proper tronc and handled the Tips Act side.”
Owner — Gastropub
“Machine income, stock, payroll — it’s all finally in order and I get figures I can actually use.”
Director — Town-centre bar
Drinks (wet) and food (dry) behave very differently, so we track them separately for gross margin, stock and VAT. We reconcile purchases, stocktakes and sales so cellar losses, wastage and tied-supply terms show up in your GP rather than disappearing — the single biggest lever on a pub’s profit.
Drink and food carry different VAT treatment, and alcohol duty sits as a separate layer on top of VAT again. Drinks — including all alcohol — are standard-rated at 20%. Food eaten on the premises is standard-rated too, while most cold takeaway food is zero-rated. Getting the split right across the bar and kitchen — and reviewing whether the VAT Flat Rate Scheme (currently 6.5% for pubs) suits you — matters on every return. We handle the VAT and account for alcohol duty separately.
Income from gaming and fruit machines has its own tax treatment, separate from your bar and food sales, and needs to be recorded distinctly. We make sure machine income, room hire, functions and other ancillary income are captured and treated correctly so nothing is muddled with your VATable takings.
If tips and service charge are allocated by an independent troncmaster rather than the pub, they are not earnings for National Insurance, so they carry income tax only — removing the employer’s 15% and the employee’s 8% NICs (2026/27). Income tax still applies, and the tronc must meet the 2024 Tips Act (see our tronc guide). We run your shift payroll within National Minimum Wage rules, and for 2026/27 model director extraction — salary around the £12,570 personal allowance plus dividends (£500 allowance; 10.75% / 35.75% / 39.35%), company profits at 19% up to £50,000 tapering to 25% over £250,000.
We work across the licensed trade and structure your accounts around how you operate:
Part of our wider hospitality accounting service — see also restaurant accountants and hotel accountants.
An ACA-qualified accountant who understands wet/dry, stock, machine income and tronc.
Till, supplier and stock data reconciled into Xero, with GP tracked by category.
Wet/dry VAT, shift payroll and NMW, a compliant tronc and MTD filing.
A pub has issues a generalist rarely handles well: splitting wet and dry sales, controlling drinks margin and stock, the VAT and duty layers on alcohol, gaming-machine income, setting up a tronc so tips are free of National Insurance, and shift-based payroll within minimum-wage rules. A specialist captures the savings and keeps you compliant, tied house or free house.
We split takings into wet (drinks) and dry (food) and track gross margin and stock on each. Tied-house terms, cellar losses and stocktake variances all hit drinks margin, so we reconcile purchases, stock and sales so you see your true GP and spot leakage early.
Drink and food can carry different VAT treatment, and alcohol duty is a separate layer again on top of VAT. Getting the split right across bar and kitchen, and reviewing whether the Flat Rate Scheme suits you, matters on every return. We confirm the correct treatment for your sales mix before filing.
Income from gaming and fruit machines has its own tax treatment, separate from your normal bar and food sales, and needs to be recorded distinctly in your accounts. We make sure machine income is captured and treated correctly so it is not muddled with VATable sales.
If tips and service charge are allocated by an independent troncmaster rather than the pub, they are not earnings for National Insurance, so they carry income tax only — removing the employer’s 15% and the employee’s 8% NICs (2026/27). Income tax still applies and the tronc must meet the 2024 Tips Act. Our tronc and tips guide explains it in full.
A common 2026/27 structure is a salary around the £12,570 personal allowance topped up with dividends, mindful of the £500 dividend allowance and rates of 10.75% / 35.75% / 39.35%. Company profits are taxed at 19% up to £50,000, tapering to 25% over £250,000. We model the optimal split for you.
Fixed monthly fees • Dedicated ACA accountant • Wet/dry & stock • Tronc, VAT & payroll
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Godwin Pinto ACA is a chartered accountant and founder of AccTek with 20+ years of experience accounting and tax for contractors, startup and SME .
AccTek is a member firm of the Institute of Certified Practising Accountants (ICPA). Our accountants have a wide range of qualifications and accreditations from trusted professional bodies such as the AAT, ICPA, and ACCA.
