Cash Flow Insights – Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Cash Flow Insights and why should I use it?
Cash Flow Insights helps you understand where your money is going, what’s coming in, and when you might need to take action. It gives you a clear, cash-based view of your business by analyzing transactions from your connected bank and credit accounts — no spreadsheets or accounting jargon needed.

2. Where does the data come from?
We securely connect to your business bank and credit accounts to pull transaction data. Toast doesn’t move your money — we just use your history to help you analyze your cash flow.

3. What if I have multiple bank accounts?
 Link them all. We’ll give you a complete cash picture across all your business accounts — and improve transaction matching and transfer detection.

4. How is this different from my POS data or accounting software?
 POS data shows your sales. Accounting tools usually use accrual-based rules. Cash Flow Insights is cash-based — it shows only real money moving in or out of your business bank accounts.

5. How accurate is the data?
 We apply smart categorization and matching based on Toast knowledge and restaurant-specific patterns. You can always review, adjust, or correct your transactions to ensure they reflect your actual cash movement.

6. How does transaction categorization work?
Toast automatically assigns categories like Labor, COGS, or Utilities to your transactions. You can review or correct them at any time. You can also:

• Create rules to apply a category to all similar transactions (past and future)
• Toast will learn over time — the more you use the tool, the less you’ll have to do

7. What are the available categories and how should I use them?
Categories are standard and grouped into three types of activities:

Operating

1. Sales – Revenue from food, drink, and catering sales.
    Example: Daily Toast POS deposits.
   
   
2. Other Income – Non-core income.
    Example: Retail income, interest income.
   
   
3. COGS – Inventory costs.
    Example: Sysco, produce suppliers.
   
   
4. Labor – Employee wages and related expenses.
   Example: Paychecks, taxes, tips paid.
   
   
5. Sales Tax Paid – Payments made to tax authorities.
    Example: State sales tax payment.
   
   
6. Occupancy – Space-related costs.
    Example: Rent, property tax, property insurance
   
   
7. Utilities – Monthly service bills.
    Example: Gas, water, internet.
   
   
8. General and Administrative – Admin or office tools.
    Example: Accounting software, office supplies.
   
   
9. Repairs and Maintenance – Equipment and facility fixes.
    Example: Oven repair, plumbing.
   
   
10. Marketing – Promotions and advertising.
     Example: Yelp ads, Facebook.
    
    
11. Operating Expenses – General daily expenses.
     Example: Cleaning supplies, disposables, uniforms
    
    
12. Non-Operating Expenses – Financial or interest costs.
     Example: Loan interest, franchise fees.
    
    

Financing

1. Loan Disbursements – Incoming loan funds.
    Example: Toast Capital Loan received.
   
   
2. Loan Repayments – Paying back a loan.
    Example: Daily Toast Capital deductions.
   
   
3. Shareholder Contributions – Owner puts money into the business.
    Example: Owner deposits $5K.
   
   
4. Shareholder Distributions – Owner withdraws cash from the business.
    Example: Owner takes out $2K.
   
   

Investing

1. Purchase of Assets – Large equipment or long-term items.
    Example: New walk-in fridge.
   
   
2. Sale of Assets – Selling business property.
   Example: Selling old espresso machines.

8. Can I edit the merchant name on a transaction?

Yes. Toast does its best to identify the merchant name based on your transaction data, but sometimes it needs a little help. You can edit the merchant name if it looks off — this helps improve your merchant-level insights.

Merchant names are used to group transactions by vendor or payee so you can track how much you’re spending with each over time.

9. When should I mark a transaction as an internal transfer?
 Mark it when money moves between your own business accounts (e.g., from checking to savings). This isn’t cash in or out of the business — it’s just relocating funds.

Note: Internal transfers are excluded from cash flow analysis.

If Toast didn’t catch both sides of a transfer, link all your accounts so we can match them.

10. When should I exclude a transaction?
Exclude anything not related to your restaurant's operations — like a personal expense accidentally charged to a business card. Excluded transactions are left out of all calculations so they don’t distort your cash flow view.