SINGAPORE · PRACTICAL RESTAURANT GUIDE

GrabMerchant Settlement Review: Sales, GST and Restaurant Costs

Read Singapore restaurant sales and settlements without confusing insights, invoices and bank cash. Original SGD examples and a manual GST/service-charge model.

By Anurag · Updated 12 October 2026 · Original fictional examples, with linked official sources

Sales, insights, settlements and invoices have different jobs

Grab's Singapore finance overview refers to order history, payments, settlements and invoices. Use the official GrabMerchant payment-report guidance as the platform starting point. This overview does not establish every current control, file format or permission. The explanations below are a reader's evidence framework, not an invented list of official column names.

Order history: what happened to the transaction

An order record is useful when you need to investigate a particular transaction, status or item. It can help connect a charge or adjustment to the original event. It does not necessarily show every invoice cost, bank-transfer detail or kitchen cost associated with the business. Before treating a record as completed revenue, check which status the report includes and how cancellations or refunds are represented.

For a fictional example, an owner counts every order that appeared on a busy screen during lunch. Some were later cancelled and others fall outside the financial period being reviewed. Copying that count into a final sales model can exaggerate activity. The fix is not to distrust all dashboards; it is to use the report definition that fits the question and reconcile the included statuses.

Insights: patterns that may need investigation

An insights view can help you notice changes in demand, item popularity or service performance. A pattern is a starting point for a question, not a complete explanation of profit. More orders may come with higher offer costs, lower-value baskets or a different item mix. A sales chart cannot know your private recipe cost merely because it knows which dishes were ordered.

Ask what the chart measures, which stores it includes and when it was updated. If the available insights export is a spreadsheet or PDF, do not assume it is a settlement CSV or that our analyser can parse it. The format matters, but the purpose matters first. A perfectly readable file can still be the wrong evidence for explaining a bank deposit.

Settlement: how amounts become payable

A settlement view helps trace the financial result for the covered transactions and adjustments. Read its scope and signed amounts before reconstructing a total. Some lines reduce money payable, while others can add it or relate to an earlier event. Do not treat every number labelled fee, discount or adjustment as a new deduction that must be subtracted again.

The manual method in this guide is to copy a small number of relevant lines into a private worksheet, preserve their meaning and match the expected transfer. It does not assume that all Singapore merchants have identical payout timing or report layouts. Your actual agreement and current report determine those details. Keep unresolved items visible instead of forcing the total to match by adding an unexplained balancing line.

Invoice: evidence for a charge and its treatment

An invoice can explain a service charge to the business, the period it covers and any tax treatment shown. It is not automatically another expense to subtract from a settlement if the same charge has already been included there. Connect the invoice to the settlement line and classify it once. When tax recoverability or accounting treatment is uncertain, keep the issue for a qualified adviser rather than treating the bank deduction as the whole answer.

A beginner-friendly folder can contain one sales report, the related settlement evidence, the relevant invoices and the bank-transfer record. The files need not all share a format. They need to answer different parts of the same question. Write a short purpose beside each file so a colleague knows why it is included instead of looking at an unexplained stack of downloads.

Set the scope before adding amounts

Choose the outlet, period and currency. If there is more than one store, state whether the review covers one store or the combined operation. If the period is based on orders, do not silently switch to transfer dates halfway through the calculation. If a report uses a timezone or cutoff different from the team's usual shift record, note that before comparing totals.

The purpose of this preparation is not to make a spreadsheet more formal. It prevents reasonable people from arguing about figures that actually answer different questions. A bank deposit on a Monday and a sales report ending on Sunday can differ because of the covered period or timing. A report covering two stores will not necessarily match the kitchen record for one of them.

Write an included-and-excluded note

For a fictional review, the owner writes “Store A; completed transactions in the selected seven-day report; SGD; adjustments kept separately until matched; no other platform sales.” That sentence gives the model a boundary. If the owner later adds dine-in receipts, the note must change. A combined restaurant result can be useful, but it should not emerge accidentally from copying a convenient total.

Also identify missing evidence. An invoice may be unavailable, an adjustment may be disputed or a bank transfer may not yet have arrived. Mark those items as pending. A pending amount is not zero, and an estimate is not confirmation. If the missing amount could reverse the conclusion, postpone the conclusion or show a clear scenario range instead of presenting a precise final result.

Keep one currency throughout a calculation

This guide's examples are in SGD. A supplier or software invoice in another currency cannot be added to them as if the number already means SGD. If you need a conversion, use a documented method appropriate to the records and keep the conversion evidence outside this simple model. The currency labels on our manual tools do not fetch exchange rates or convert money.

When someone sends you a screenshot with an unlabeled dollar sign, ask which currency it represents. Singapore, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand can all appear in restaurant discussions, and their dollar amounts are not interchangeable. Naming the currency is a small habit that saves a large error, especially in a community with owners from several countries.

A fictional settlement bridge, step by step

Imagine a fictional restaurant with SGD 10,000 of the revenue included in a selected settlement worksheet. The worksheet shows SGD 200 of restaurant-funded offers and SGD 1,500 of included platform and payment charges. It also has an SGD 80 credit and an SGD 120 deduction. These are invented signed amounts, not official Grab fields or actual commercial rates.

The arithmetic is 10,000 minus 200 minus 1,500 plus 80 minus 120, giving SGD 8,260. Before calling that a payable amount for a real report, check that the starting revenue is before the stated deductions, the credit belongs to this bridge and no total already includes a listed line. A worksheet can be arithmetically correct and still use the wrong interpretation of a report.

Now compare the bank evidence

Suppose the bank record being compared shows SGD 8,050. The difference from the invented expected amount is SGD 210. That difference is a question, not proof of underpayment. Check the transfer reference, whether it covers the same outlet and period, whether another part arrived separately, and whether the current report has been finalised. Keep the difference as unresolved until the evidence explains it.

If you discover that the bank record relates to a different settlement period, change the comparison rather than changing the worksheet to fit the wrong deposit. If a line was omitted, identify it and explain its treatment. Do not insert “miscellaneous SGD 210” solely to make the file balance. A balanced worksheet with an invented explanation is less useful than an honest unresolved difference.

Use signed adjustments without reversing them twice

A downloaded value may already carry a negative sign. If your worksheet convention says “add signed adjustments”, adding minus SGD 120 correctly reduces the balance. If you instead put that negative amount in a field labelled “deduction to subtract”, you can accidentally add it back by subtracting a negative. Decide the convention, label it and use it consistently.

A simple hand check is to explain each line aloud: this increases the amount, this reduces it, this is already included or this is information only. If the explanation does not match the arithmetic sign, stop and correct the mapping. Teaching this check to a colleague is often more valuable than adding another hidden formula to a complicated workbook.

Why the payout is not your restaurant's profit

A transfer can still need to pay suppliers, staff, rent, utilities or other costs outside the platform's records. It can also include money or adjustments that belong to a different sales period. The platform does not know the full cost of the food you used merely because it processed the order. A bank deposit is evidence of cash movement, not a complete measure of operating performance.

Use a separate contribution view for pricing or channel decisions. Start with restaurant revenue on a consistent tax basis, then subtract the variable costs relevant to the question. Subtract fixed costs at business level when assessing whether the period covers them. Keep this view distinct from the settlement bridge, which explains the transfer. The same document may support both views, but the purposes differ.

A fictional single-order model

Imagine SGD 16 of net restaurant revenue for an order, with SGD 6 food cost, SGD 1 packaging, SGD 3 of included channel costs and SGD 2 of restaurant-funded promotion cost. Contribution is SGD 4, or 25% of the SGD 16 revenue. That SGD 4 still has to help cover fixed costs. It is not a published platform rate or a promise that a Singapore restaurant should aim for that percentage.

If the revenue you copied already has the SGD 2 offer removed, do not subtract it again. If a channel cost contains a tax amount, use the treatment appropriate to the business rather than assuming the full deduction is always an unrecoverable operating expense. Document the model's basis and the evidence for each included cost. A useful contribution calculation is one you can repeat and explain.

Keep a daily cash question separate

A profitable period can still have a cash shortfall if bills arrive before transfers. The owner therefore needs a short cash calendar as well as the contribution view. List expected receipts and required payments by their likely dates, and label estimated timing. A platform's published general schedule does not guarantee every deposit arrives on a particular day under every agreement.

Do not borrow a US payout calendar because an overseas tutorial has a familiar-looking dashboard. Use the current Singapore account and agreement for the timing question. If the date is uncertain, plan a realistic alternative scenario and confirm it through official support. Our cash-flow guide explains a manual planning method with a clearly stated US/Canada currency scope; its dates are fictional, not Singapore payout instructions.

Understand the service-charge example before using a tax number

For a GST-registered food business, IRAS explains that GST applies to the value including a service charge. The commonly used ten per cent service charge is not compulsory. Its food-and-beverage guidance also explains price-display conditions. Check that source and the business's registration and actual bill. Do not assume every restaurant is GST registered or every order attracts a service charge.

The manual model below illustrates arithmetic only. It does not decide whether your business must register, which supplies are taxable, whether a charge is permitted by your agreement or how to file a return. Those are separate questions. If a figure copied from a merchant report already includes tax or service charge, do not add the illustrative percentages on top merely because the model offers those fields.

Work through an original eighty-dollar example

For a fictional bill before service charge and GST, enter SGD eighty. Assume a service charge of ten per cent and GST of nine per cent solely for this practice case. The service charge is eight dollars. The assumed GST base is then eighty-eight dollars. Nine per cent of eighty-eight is seven dollars and ninety-two cents. The illustrated total is ninety-five dollars and ninety-two cents.

If someone calculates GST on eighty only, they get seven dollars and twenty cents, which is seventy-two cents less than the illustrated tax on the amount including the service charge. This exercise is useful for understanding the base of a percentage. It is not evidence that a particular takeaway receipt should have a service charge. For a bill with no such charge, use zero in that field and first confirm the actual tax basis.

In the same fictional case, changing the assumed service charge to zero makes the illustrated total eighty-seven dollars and twenty cents. Do not mistake that difference for extra restaurant profit. A customer bill, a tax liability, a settlement transfer and the cost of delivering the meal are different records. The model helps explain the bill arithmetic; the contribution worksheet helps explain the business result.

Use the interactive model safely

Read the currency label first: this page uses SGD, not INR or an automatically converted amount. The first field is the bill before the assumed charges. The next two fields are percentages, so enter ten for ten per cent rather than zero point one. Press calculate to display the amounts. Then change one input and calculate again to see why the base matters.

Try an invalid case as part of learning. Clear a field or enter a negative amount. The model should ask for valid inputs instead of treating the missing information as free service or zero tax. Do not work around a warning by making up a number. Restore the fictional defaults if you only want to practise, or stop until you have the actual evidence for a real bill.

No data is downloaded from GrabMerchant by this model. There is no account connection, no upload and no saved application. A result exists in the page while you work; it is not an official receipt. If you need a reproducible working paper, record the verified inputs, the purpose and the date privately. Keep a separate note for any legal or accounting question the arithmetic cannot answer.

More orders can produce less contribution

Consider a fictional lunch item that leaves SGD six per order before a new offer. Seventy orders in the chosen period provide four hundred and twenty dollars of contribution. The owner considers an offer that reduces contribution to four dollars per order and expects one hundred orders. That larger order count gives four hundred dollars, which is twenty dollars less despite thirty extra orders.

The comparison is not a prediction of how Grab ranks restaurants or how customers will react. It simply exposes the decision the owner must test. At four dollars of contribution per order, the restaurant needs one hundred and five orders to equal the original four hundred and twenty dollars. If preparation time, extra staff or waste also increase, the owner must include those relevant changes before calling the offer a success.

Write the decision before starting the offer

A useful question is “Will the offer increase contribution from this item during the chosen lunch window without harming service?” That is clearer than “Will this make the dashboard greener?” Define the item, period and cost treatment. Say how the restaurant-funded discount will be counted and whether an advertising cost is additional. Assign someone to stop the test if the available evidence is incomplete or service deteriorates.

Choose a comparison period with a similar operating pattern. A public holiday, closed lunch shift or supplier shortage can distort the result. If the comparison is not like for like, explain the limitation instead of silently calling the entire increase an offer effect. An owner does not need a complicated experiment to be honest about what a small restaurant test can and cannot prove.

Include the item mix, not only the average basket

Suppose a second fictional lunch sells a mix of bowls and drinks. Bowls leave five dollars each and drinks leave two dollars each after the included variable costs. A period with eighty bowls and twenty drinks contributes four hundred and forty dollars. A later period with sixty bowls and forty drinks contributes three hundred and eighty dollars. Both have one hundred item units, but the contribution is different.

The example counts item units, not customer orders: a customer may buy more than one item. Keep that distinction when comparing it with an order report. The lesson is to look at what was sold and the relevant costs, not to assume every unit or order has the same value. If a promotion changes the mix, a higher count can conceal a weaker business result.

Look for additional work the report cannot see

An offer can change packing effort, batching, waste and the time needed at the pass. A platform record may not show those kitchen effects. Ask the shift lead whether the new demand required extra paid hours, more damaged packaging or discarded prepared food. Record the evidence instead of inventing a blanket percentage for all operating costs.

Some staff costs are fixed within the existing roster until volume reaches a point that requires another shift. Others can change with the test. Describe the actual decision. Do not count every salary as a new cost of each order, and do not assume labour never changes. A useful review separates the cost of serving one more order from the cost of running the business over the period.

Run a short weekly review with four separate questions

A weekly meeting does not need to open every report on every screen. Prepare four questions: what sold, what became payable, what cash arrived and what remained after the relevant costs. Each question has its own evidence. Give one person responsibility for assembling the files and another for checking a sample. The aim is a repeatable explanation, not a display of impressive charts.

First question: what sold?

Check the selected outlet and period, the included transaction statuses and the report's definition of sales. Compare the item mix with the kitchen's understanding of the week. If the report shows a surprising jump in a dish, verify its name and whether it was part of a bundle. An item name changing in a menu can make a spreadsheet look like a new product appeared.

Record the sales question in ordinary words. For example: “Our lunch bowl count rose, but our total contribution did not rise with it.” That sentence guides the next checks: recipe cost, restaurant-funded offers, packing and channel charges. It is more helpful than copying a percentage with no explanation of the decision it is supposed to support.

Second question: what became payable?

Review the settlement bridge independently of the kitchen cost model. Check the signed adjustments and confirm which totals already include which charges. Match invoices to the included charges once. If an adjustment belongs to an earlier event, note that timing instead of pretending the current week's orders caused it. The financial record can be correct while needing a careful explanation of scope.

For unresolved items, record the amount, evidence, question and next action. Avoid a vague note such as “platform problem.” A precise note is “This credit appears in the settlement, but the related reference has not been matched; finance lead to check the current account and request clarification.” That gives the next reviewer something to do without asserting a fault the evidence has not proved.

Third question: what cash arrived?

Match bank transfers using references and covered periods where available. Do not classify an absent transfer as lost simply because the sales report is ready. Check the actual account schedule and whether the transfer is pending, split or for a different scope. If a due bill needs paying before an uncertain receipt arrives, put that issue in the cash plan as well as the support queue.

Be clear about cash availability. Money in a personal account, restricted deposit or unconfirmed receivable should not silently become restaurant operating cash. If the owner plans to add funds, mark that as a proposed financing action, not sales. A small restaurant can manage uncertainty more safely when it separates “we earned this,” “we expect this” and “we can use this today.”

Fourth question: what remains after costs?

Use the contribution view for the same period and scope. Include recipe usage rather than blindly using every supplier payment made during the week. A stock purchase can support more than one period. State whether labour and other costs are variable for the decision or included in the fixed allocation. Keep estimated costs visible so readers do not mistake the result for fully reconciled accounts.

End the meeting with one manageable action and a named owner. Examples include verifying one invoice mapping, weighing a recipe portion or matching one bank reference. Do not change price, suppliers, advertising and staffing together merely because the result disappointed you. Too many simultaneous changes make it difficult to know what helped and can overwhelm a small team.

Avoid false comparisons between outlets

For a business with more than one outlet, start with one outlet before combining records. Check whether the report, bank destination and invoice scope are individual or shared. A head office can receive a combined transfer while each kitchen keeps separate sales notes. The spreadsheet needs an explicit allocation method; it should not assign the whole transfer to the outlet that happened to download it.

A fictional two-outlet example

Imagine Outlet A has six thousand dollars of included revenue and Outlet B has four thousand. An invoice charge of one hundred dollars covers both, but the evidence does not establish how it should be allocated for management review. The owner could use a documented revenue-based illustration: sixty dollars to A and forty to B. That is an internal assumption, not a platform instruction or a statement about tax treatment.

If the business has better evidence showing the charge belongs wholly to one outlet, use that evidence instead. If the allocation could change a decision, show the alternatives. A combined total can be correct while the outlet comparison is misleading. Do not describe one manager as inefficient on the basis of a shared expense allocated without agreement.

Keep names and time windows consistent

Use a simple private mapping between each official outlet identifier and the team's short name. Keep old and new menu names connected where they refer to the same dish. State whether a week means a report-defined period or a calendar period. If staff use different labels or cutoffs, fix the mapping before comparing performance. This is ordinary housekeeping, but it protects decisions built on the figures.

When consolidating, add amounts first and calculate the combined percentage from the combined totals. Do not average outlet percentages without considering their denominators. A small outlet and a large outlet should not automatically carry equal weight in a revenue-based ratio. Explain the calculation so someone can repeat it with a calculator rather than trusting a hidden spreadsheet formula.

Ask support a narrow question with safe evidence

Use the official support route available in your current GrabMerchant account or help centre. We do not provide a verified private-account support button path for every Singapore merchant. A clear request names the relevant outlet and period, states the expected and observed amounts, identifies the reference and asks one answerable question. Keep the tone factual; an unexplained difference is not proof of dishonesty.

A fictional request could say that the selected worksheet gives eight thousand two hundred and sixty dollars while the compared bank record shows eight thousand and fifty, and ask which settlement scope or additional adjustment explains the two hundred and ten dollar difference. Attach only what the official process needs. In a public community discussion, remove merchant references and use invented numbers instead.

Separate three help routes

For a missing or unclear platform line, ask the platform through its official support channel. For tax registration, filing or recoverability, use IRAS guidance and a qualified adviser where needed. For a tool feature request, contact Food Data Extractor about the desired workflow, not a payment dispute we cannot resolve. These routes can work together, but one does not replace the others.

Describe a feature request with safe details: country, platform, task, available file type and the decision you want to support. For example, ask for a future manual review of a Singapore settlement format without sending the real file. Our currently supported extension workflows are Zomato and Swiggy; GrabMerchant extraction is not a released feature. A contact message does not create access to your account.

Protect credentials and customer information

Never share a password, OTP, session token or unrestricted account access in a support comment or public post. Keep customer names, phone numbers, addresses and order-level private details out of examples. Cropping a screenshot can leave sensitive text elsewhere in the image; inspect the whole copy before sending it. When an official support process requires private evidence, use that secure route and limit the material to the issue.

Maintain a private record of the request, date and answer. Once the answer arrives, connect it to the original worksheet and update the conclusion. If the answer changes the period or meaning of a line, revise the mapping instead of only adding a note below an incorrect result. The next person reviewing the restaurant should be able to follow why the conclusion changed.

Questions beginners often ask

Can I upload a Grab export to the main settlement analyser?

Do not assume that you can. The main analyser is designed around the supported Zomato and Swiggy workflows. A file being called CSV does not make its columns compatible. This guide uses a manual Singapore method and a bill-arithmetic model, not an automatic Grab parser. If support for another format is developed, its scope and instructions should be stated explicitly before you rely on it.

Does a settlement deduction mean I should add it again as an expense?

Not automatically. First identify which calculation you are doing and whether the starting amount already reflects the deduction. The transfer bridge and the revenue-to-contribution view use different starting points. Count each relevant cost once within its chosen view. If an invoice confirms a deduction already included in that view, it can be evidence without being another subtraction.

Can I use last month's percentage for every new order?

You can use a clearly labelled estimate for a preliminary scenario, but it is not a verified current cost. Changes in basket size, items, offers or agreements can change the effective result. Test whether the estimate matters to the decision. If a small change turns a proposed price from positive to negative, obtain better evidence before committing to the offer.

What if the bank amount is higher than my worksheet?

Investigate a positive difference with the same care as a negative one. It may be a credit, another covered period, an omitted line or a scope mismatch. More cash does not prove the model is right or that all of it belongs to current sales. Keep the amount unresolved until the evidence explains it, and update the worksheet rather than treating the difference as free profit.

How often should I review the records?

Choose a rhythm the restaurant can sustain and add checks when an unusual event occurs. A short weekly management review can work alongside accounting and tax obligations, but it is not a substitute for those obligations or an official retention schedule. The most useful frequency is one that produces timely action and reliable evidence without asking staff to maintain a second restaurant inside a spreadsheet.

Sources and limits of this guide

A final practice check before using your own records

Give a colleague the invented settlement bridge without its answer. Ask them to identify the starting revenue, the two deductions, the credit and the other deduction. Then ask them to calculate the expected amount and explain why the bank difference is unresolved. If they reach the same total but describe the credit as an expense, review the sign convention together. Correct arithmetic without correct meaning is not enough.

Next, give them the lunch-offer case. Ask whether one hundred orders at four dollars of contribution beats seventy at six. The answer is no: four hundred is below four hundred and twenty. Ask what additional evidence could change the decision, such as a verified change in costs or a different comparison period. This checks that the worksheet supports a decision rather than merely repeating a slogan about order growth.

Finally, ask them to show where the actual Singapore contract and tax treatment would enter the real review. Those details are deliberately absent from the fictional numbers. If a person treats the example as a platform's actual commission schedule, stop and relabel the worksheet. The exercise has succeeded when a new reviewer can distinguish known evidence, arithmetic, assumptions and unresolved questions without needing to guess which is which.

The linked GrabMerchant overview establishes the broad purpose of finance records, not a tested export workflow for every account. The linked IRAS food-and-beverage page supports the limited GST and service-charge explanation. Both were checked on twelve October twenty twenty-six. The settlement tables, restaurant cases, review process and exercises are original teaching examples; they are not copied merchant data or published earnings benchmarks.

Before using the method with real figures, confirm your outlet scope, report definitions, actual agreement and the business's tax treatment. If an official page or your account changes, use the current instruction and tell us which guidance needs review. A thorough guide should help you ask a better question and avoid double counting, not persuade you to ignore the authority or pretend that unknown information is settled.

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