Hospitality annual accounts: restaurant, café and hotel

The short answer

Many hospitality businesses are a sole proprietorship or vof. They do not prepare annual accounts under Title 9 and file nothing with the KVK, but they do prepare a balance sheet and profit and loss account for the income tax return. A hospitality BV prepares annual accounts and files them. In both cases the closing revolves around stock, till, gift vouchers and VAT.

Updated 30 October 2026

Key facts

Sole proprietorship, vof or BV: what must you prepare?

A café, restaurant or lunchroom is often run as a sole proprietorship or vof. For those forms Title 9 of Book 2 DCC does not normally apply, and you do not submit annual accounts to the KVK. You do keep records and, within six months after the financial year, prepare a balance sheet and a statement of income and expenditure (art. 3:15i DCC and art. 2:10(2) DCC). You use those figures for the income tax return; see the annual figures of a sole proprietorship or of a vof.

If the business is a BV, the board prepares annual accounts and you file them with the KVK; the example below assumes this. For a sole proprietorship the same items apply, but you calculate using the tax profit rules.

Whether your hospitality BV is micro, small or medium-sized, and whether an accountant must audit, follows from the figures and not from the type of business: see the size criteria and the audit requirement check.

Counting stock and writing off spoilage

On the last day of the financial year, count what is in the cold storage, the cellar and the warehouse and value it at purchase price. If a product has spoiled or is past its date, its current value is lower than the purchase price and you value it at that lower value (art. 2:387(2) DCC). For similar items, such as kegs of beer or cases of wine that you bought at varying prices, you may use weighted average prices or fifo (art. 2:385(2) DCC). The methods are set side by side at valuing inventories.

Turnover from till, delivery and gift vouchers

Turnover belongs to the financial year in which the guest ate or stayed overnight, even if the money comes in earlier or later (art. 2:362(5) DCC). For orders via a delivery platform you receive the selling price minus the commission. If you prepare and deliver the meal yourself and are responsible for it towards the guest, the full price is your turnover and the commission is a cost item (RJ 270, paragraphs 105a and 105b; for a small BV RJk B13.110).

A gift voucher that has been sold is not turnover but an obligation: you have the money, the guest is still entitled to a dinner. Only on redemption do you book turnover. Until then the amount is shown under accruals and deferred income.

Worked example: restaurant BV on 31 December

A restaurant BV counts stock with a purchase value of € 18.000 on 31 December: € 9.200 drinks, € 5.300 non-perishable ingredients and € 3.500 fresh products. Of the fresh products, € 1.400 is past its date and unsaleable. In December 120 gift vouchers of € 50 were sold, of which 45 were redeemed before the turn of the year. VAT is left out of consideration in this example.

Without these two corrections the profit comes out € 5.150 too high: € 1.400 of stock that is no longer worth anything and € 3.750 of turnover that has not yet been earned.

Mistakes that are common in hospitality

• Booking the net payout from the delivery platform as turnover, so that turnover and commission costs are both too low.
• Counting sold dinner vouchers as turnover straight away.
• Still remitting 9% VAT on hotel overnight stays in 2026.

What BVs in this sector file

Hotels, restaurants, cafés and caterers fall under SBI section I, accommodation and food service activities (SBI 55–56). That section corresponds almost exactly to hospitality.

In the small balance sheet class, section I had a median solvency of 49,8% for financial year 2024, lower than the 73,4% of all balance sheets in that class together; the median current ratio was 1,45, lower than nationally (3,28). The national figure is high because of the many holding companies.

The balance sheet class follows only the balance sheet total, not the statutory size class. The dataset does not state a legal form; it covers all filings in XBRL with this SBI section, mostly from BVs. Source: KVK Business Register Open Dataset of annual accounts, processed by Jaarrekening.io, CC BY 4.0. Data downloaded and processed on 2 November 2026. Explanation and all sectors: solvency by sector and current ratio by sector.

Jaarrekening.io and hospitality

For a hospitality BV you read in an XAF audit file or a trial balance in Excel or CSV in Jaarrekening.io and prepare the annual accounts. The count, the write-off of spoilage and the gift voucher obligation you determine yourself; the software sends nothing to the KVK or the Belastingdienst. If your hospitality business is a sole proprietorship or vof, the annual accounts route does not fit; the bookkeeping and tax part of the software does.

Sources

• Dutch Civil Code, Book 2, Title 9
• Dutch Civil Code Book 3, art. 3:15i: record-keeping obligation
• KVK: file annual accounts or not?
• RJ 270 Revenue (RJ-Uiting 2020-15, appendix 2, final)
• Belastingdienst: VAT rate for foodstuffs, also in hospitality businesses
• Belastingdienst: VAT rate for drinks
• Belastingdienst: from 1 January 2026 VAT rate on accommodation to 21% (30 October 2025)

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