NZ Hospitality Chart of Accounts for QuickBooks: Entertainment + GST on Food

Run a cafe, restaurant or catering business and the books are dominated by food, drink and the cost of serving them. New Zealand makes the selling side easy (a flat 15% GST with no GST-free food) and the deduction side nuanced (the 50% entertainment limit). This is a New Zealand hospitality chart of accounts for QuickBooks Online that handles both, as a readable reference CSV plus an import CSV for the structure.

First, set up GST in QuickBooks

QuickBooks Online does not provision New Zealand GST codes automatically, so before any of this maps cleanly you turn on GST under Taxes, create the GST agency, and add the rates (GST on Income, GST on Expenses, Zero Rated and No GST). The chart-of-accounts import then builds the structure, and you assign the GST codes from the CSV mapping afterwards, because the import itself has no tax column.

Selling food is uniform

There is no zero-rating of basic groceries in New Zealand, so a registered business charges 15% GST on all the food and drink it sells. That keeps the income side plain: sales and services income use GST on Income. On the cost side, food and beverage purchases and liquor and beverages sit in dedicated accounts on GST on Expenses, which lets you read kitchen margin against bar margin and reconcile input GST without untangling a single combined cost line.

The entertainment half-deduction

Entertainment with a private element, staff functions, client hosting, hospitality that is not strictly business travel, is only 50% deductible for income tax in New Zealand, and the GST claim is capped at the deductible half. The adjustment is made once a year, usually with the income tax return. The chart gives entertainment its own account mapped to GST on Expenses, with a note on the limit, so the spend needing adjustment is collected in one place rather than buried across general costs. A meal while genuinely travelling on business stays fully deductible and belongs elsewhere.

Equipment, above and below the threshold

Hospitality buys gear constantly, so the chart separates kitchen and fit-out equipment (a fixed asset that you depreciate) from low-value assets written off (expensed immediately). Anything under the NZ$1,000 threshold can be claimed in full in the year of purchase, and splitting the two keeps the asset register and the immediate write-offs each easy to total.

The daily small spend

Cleaning and laundry and crockery and consumables capture the constant low-value purchases of running a floor and kitchen, both at 15% GST and fully deductible. Pulling them out of general office costs gives an honest read on operating cost. A venue that also runs off-site catering still charges 15% on the food it sells, so there is no separate GST treatment by channel; you only need separate revenue accounts if you want to read dine-in, takeaway and catering as distinct streams.

How to use it

1. Open the CSV: each account is mapped to its QuickBooks GST code, with alternatives and a note.
2. In QuickBooks Online go to Settings, then Import data, then Chart of Accounts, and upload the CSV for the structure.
3. Turn on GST, create the New Zealand rates, then bulk-assign the codes from the CSV.
4. Train the team to keep private-element entertainment off the fully deductible accounts so the annual GST adjustment is clean.

Coding each receipt correctly through service is the ongoing work:

• Dext extracts GST and supplier from photographed receipts.
• ExpenseFlow reads each receipt and bill, codes food, liquor and entertainment to the right account at 15% GST, and posts it into QuickBooks Online, so the entertainment account is ready for the year-end adjustment.
• Hubdoc brings recurring supplier invoices into the file.

On Xero instead? See the NZ hospitality chart of accounts for Xero. For the detail on the entertainment rule, see the New Zealand hospitality expenses guide.