Written by: JJ Tan, Founder, Jelly | Last updated: 30 October 2026
Key Takeaways
- The Cohesion Toast integration automates the flow of sales, labour and tip data from Toast POS into supported accounting and payroll systems, which speeds up month-end reporting.
- UK operators must verify Xero support and confirm that payroll platforms meet UK PAYE, RTI and tronc compliance requirements before connecting.
- Cohesion operates at the ledger level only and does not provide dish-level costing, supplier price tracking or live gross-profit reporting.
- Setup requires admin access to both Toast and the destination system, followed by careful account mapping and an ongoing review-and-approve workflow.
- Jelly turns the same Toast item-level data into live dish costs, supplier price alerts and daily GP reporting for a flat £129 per month per location.
How The Cohesion Toast Integration Moves Your Data
The integration follows four steps.
- Connect – Link Toast POS and Toast Payroll alongside the destination accounting or payroll system through Cohesion’s platform, using admin credentials on both sides.
- Collect – Cohesion collects daily sales totals, tips, labour accrual journals, sales taxes and payroll/time entries from Toast POS and Toast Payroll. Each transaction goes through a submit, review, accept or reject workflow before only reviewed and approved data is published to financial and payroll systems.
- Review – Mapped batches are presented for approval across sites before anything is posted. This gives a finance manager or bookkeeper a checkpoint to catch mapping errors or anomalies.
- Publish – Once approved, balanced journal entries and payroll figures are pushed to the destination accounting or payroll system.
The review-and-approve step matters most for multi-site operators. Instead of data flowing straight into the ledger unchecked, Cohesion holds each batch for human sign-off. For a three-site group where a single mapping error could corrupt three sets of accounts simultaneously, that gate often makes the difference between faster books and faster mistakes.
For context on how Toast manages its broader integration partner ecosystem, Toast’s integration guide explains that most integrations are managed through Toast Partner Connect, accessible from the Toast back end. Some integrations also require credentials from the third-party platform before the connection can be tested and activated.
For a broader view of what Toast integrations are available to UK operators, see Best Toast POS Integrations For UK Restaurants 2026 and What Is Toast Integration For Restaurant POS Systems?
Accounting And Payroll Systems Cohesion Supports
According to Cohesion’s published information, the integration supports the following accounting and payroll platforms.
- QuickBooks Online
- QuickBooks Desktop
- Sage Intacct
- Sage 300
- ADP Workforce Now
- Dayforce
- Paychex Flex
- Paycom
- Paycor
- Paylocity
UK operators should note what this list includes and omits. Most UK restaurants use Xero, QuickBooks, Sage or FreeAgent as their accounting platform, and Xero is the dominant choice among independent and growing multi-site operators. Xero does not appear on Cohesion’s published accounting list. UK operators on Xero should verify directly with Cohesion whether a supported connection exists before proceeding.
The payroll list skews heavily towards US providers. ADP Workforce Now, Dayforce, Paychex Flex, Paycom, Paycor and Paylocity are all US-headquartered platforms. UK hospitality payroll typically involves PAYE, RTI submissions, pension auto-enrolment compliance and tronc allocations, which US payroll platforms do not always support. UK operators should confirm with Cohesion which payroll systems are supported for UK PAYE and tronc workflows before automating any payroll data flow.
For a detailed walkthrough of the Toast and QuickBooks connection specifically, see Toast QuickBooks Integration: Step-by-Step Setup Guide and QuickBooks Toast Integration UK: Complete Setup Guide.
Cohesion Pricing For Each Site
Cohesion publishes per-site monthly pricing, with optional add-on modules and a free trial period available, according to Cohesion’s published pricing information. The base subscription covers the core data-mover functionality, including sales, labour and tip flows into the connected accounting or payroll system. Add-ons for additional workflows or integrations carry separate fees, per Cohesion’s published pricing.
For a three-site group, the per-site model means the monthly cost scales directly with location count. Three sites pay three times the per-site rate, plus any add-ons applied per location. Operators evaluating Cohesion for a multi-site group should request a full quote that itemises the base fee per site, any per-workflow add-on costs, and the total across all locations before committing. Specific pricing figures should be confirmed directly with Cohesion, as published rates are subject to change.
Setup Walkthrough: What The Cohesion Toast Integration Actually Requires
Cost is only part of the commitment, and setup is where most operators hit friction. Setup involves four distinct steps, and friction appears at predictable points: Toast access, accounting access, workflow and account mapping, and the ongoing review cycle.
On the Toast side, the operator must have admin access to their Toast account and ensure Toast Partner Connect is configured to allow the Cohesion connection. Toast’s integration setup process runs in four stages: log in to Toast, open the integrations section, select the partner, and test the connection before going live. Some partners also require credentials from their own platform before the connection can be tested.
On the accounting side, the operator or their bookkeeper must have admin access to the destination system, such as QuickBooks or Sage Intacct, to authorise the connection and configure account mapping. This step often creates friction. If the person setting up Cohesion does not have admin rights to both systems simultaneously, setup stalls until the right credentials are obtained.
Once connected, the operator selects which workflows to activate, such as sales journals, payroll data and tips, and configures how Toast data maps to the chart of accounts in the destination system. Getting this mapping right is the most consequential part of setup. A misaligned account code will produce incorrect journals every day until it is corrected.
The ongoing routine is the review-and-approve cycle described above. A finance manager or bookkeeper must log in, review each batch, and approve it before it posts. For operators who want to speed up month-end, this step makes the process faster and more consistent, although it still requires human oversight.
What The Cohesion Toast Integration Does Not Do
The Cohesion Toast integration moves finance and payroll data. It does not cost recipes, track supplier price changes or report dish-level gross profit.
The practical consequence for a multi-site operator is straightforward. The books close faster, and the accountant gets cleaner data. Nobody in the business, however, sees which dish is losing margin this week.
A supplier quietly raising the price of a key protein, a dish whose food cost has crept from 30% to 38% over three months, or a menu item that looked profitable in January but is now a Plowhorse will not surface through Cohesion. A two-percentage-point swing in food cost can be the difference between profit and loss for the year, and that swing will not appear in a faster general ledger until it is already too late to act.
Cohesion is a data-mover, and it does that job well. The gap is structural because accounting integrations operate at the ledger level rather than the dish level. Closing that gap requires a different layer of tooling.
Where Jelly Fits: Turning Toast Data Into Live Margin
Closing the dish-level gap starts with the same Toast data Cohesion already reads. Jelly connects to Toast via a real-time API integration, using the same item-level sales data that flows through Toast POS. Setup takes approximately five minutes. Open Jelly, click Integrations, sign in to Toast, grant permissions, and select which POS categories, such as food and beverages, to sync. Only items sold since the connection was made surface for mapping, so there is no legacy menu clutter to work through.
Once connected, Jelly maps each Toast item to a Jelly dish. From that point, every sale updates the dish’s live cost and GP margin automatically. When a supplier raises the price of an ingredient, Jelly’s Price Alert feature flags the change immediately. Chefs and operators then have concrete evidence to negotiate with suppliers, claim credit notes, or adjust menu pricing before the margin erosion compounds.
The Flash Report delivers a daily, weekly or monthly view of gross profit margin, calculated from invoice costs and POS sales. The Sales Mix report shows which dishes are most popular and most profitable, which supports data-driven menu engineering decisions. Connecting a POS automates 2–5 hours of weekly admin and gives real-time margins and sales mix data.
The results are documented across very different operators. Populu lifted GP from 68% to 72% across 16 locations using Jelly. One operator moved from 65% to 72% GP within 12 weeks on approximately £500,000 in revenue. At the kitchen level, Stuart Noble, Head Chef at Cairn Lodge Hotel, cut food costs by 5% in a month after switching to live dish costing. Ruth Seggie, owner of The Howard Arms, reached 80% gross profit after her accountant had said 60% would be a good result.
Jelly costs a flat £129 per month per location, with no per-user or variable charges. For a three-site group, that is £387 per month for live dish costs, supplier price alerts, daily GP reporting and sales mix analysis across every location.
Jelly also integrates directly with Xero for one-click push of digitised invoices into accounting, which is the accounting platform most UK multi-site operators actually use.
See Which Dish Is Losing Margin This Week
UK Compliance Checklist Before You Automate
Before automating any flow of Toast sales, tips or service charge data into accounting or payroll systems, UK operators should work through the following questions with their accountant or bookkeeper. Three of these directly affect what Cohesion can safely automate: VAT treatment of tips, tronc distribution and the Tips Act. The other two, National Minimum Wage and Making Tax Digital, act as background checks.
VAT On Tips And Service Charges
HMRC guidance distinguishes clearly between optional tips and mandatory service charges. An optional tip freely chosen by the customer is outside the scope of VAT. A mandatory service charge is treated as part of the sale and 20% VAT must be added. The till must distinguish between the two at the point of sale, and any automated accounting flow must preserve that distinction, otherwise VAT returns will be incorrect.
Tronc And Service Charge Distribution
HMRC confirms that a tronc scheme can only be used for tips and cannot be used for mandatory service charges. The troncmaster must be a member of staff or an external person, and the business owner cannot act as troncmaster. The troncmaster sets up a separate PAYE scheme and keeps separate records for tips. Tips then run through PAYE so Income Tax is deducted before staff are paid.
The main benefit of a properly run tronc is that National Insurance contributions do not need to be deducted from the tips in most cases, so staff take home more. Tronc administration must be kept correctly aligned with payroll to satisfy the Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023.
The Employment (Allocation Of Tips) Act 2023
Since 1 October 2024, UK employers must pass on 100% of qualifying tips, gratuities and service charges to staff, allocate them fairly and transparently, and pay them no later than the end of the month following receipt. A written tipping policy is required, and workers can request their own tipping records going back three years.
The statutory code of practice on distributing tips fairly applies to England, Scotland and Wales. The government advises employers to continue following the existing code while a revised version is consulted on.
National Minimum Wage And Tips
Under the National Minimum Wage Act 1998, all workers must be paid at least the National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage. The maximum penalty for underpayment is £20,000 per worker. For pay reference periods starting on or after 1 October 2009, tips, gratuities, service charges and cover charges paid by customers do not count towards National Minimum Wage pay, although for periods before that date tips paid through the employer’s payroll could count.
Wages and tips must be assessed separately, and any automated payroll flow must ensure that base wages meet the minimum before tips are added.
Making Tax Digital
UK VAT-registered businesses must file VAT returns through Making Tax Digital-compatible software once VAT-taxable turnover exceeds £90,000 in any rolling 12-month period. Any accounting integration must produce data in a format compatible with MTD requirements.
Conclusion: Cohesion For The Books, Jelly For The Margin
The Cohesion Toast integration is a well-built finance and payroll data-mover. It closes the books faster, reduces manual re-entry, and gives accountants cleaner data to work with. For UK operators, the key questions before connecting are whether Xero is supported, whether the payroll list covers UK PAYE and tronc requirements, and whether the VAT and tip compliance checklist above has been worked through with an accountant.
Cohesion leaves the margin layer untouched, and for a multi-site UK operator running £500k or more in annual revenue, that layer is where profit is won or lost week by week.
Jelly is the best restaurant margin and food-cost platform for UK operators running Toast because it turns the same Toast item-level sales data into live dish costs, supplier price alerts and daily GP reporting, connects in around five minutes, and costs a flat £129 per month per location. Use Cohesion to close the books faster. Use Jelly to know which dish is losing margin today.
Connect Toast To Jelly And See Your Live Dish Margins
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is The Cohesion Toast Integration?
The Cohesion Toast integration is a connector that moves Toast POS and Toast Payroll data into accounting and payroll systems. It collects daily sales totals, tips, labour accruals, taxes and time entries from Toast, presents them for review and approval, and then publishes balanced journal entries and payroll figures to the destination system. It is designed to close the books faster and reduce manual data re-entry for multi-site restaurant operators.
Does Toast Integrate With QuickBooks And Xero?
Toast integrates with QuickBooks, and QuickBooks appears on Cohesion’s published list of supported accounting systems. Xero is the most widely used accounting platform among UK mid-market hospitality operators, including restaurant groups of up to around thirty sites, though among independent single-site restaurants it shares dominance with QuickBooks. Toast’s own integration partner directory includes Xero as a supported accounting connection. However, Xero does not appear on Cohesion’s published accounting integration list, so UK operators on Xero should verify directly with Cohesion whether a supported connection is available for their setup.
How Much Does Cohesion Cost Per Site?
Cohesion charges per site per month, plus add-ons. See the pricing section above for the full breakdown, and confirm current figures with Cohesion directly.
What Does The Cohesion Toast Integration Not Do For Restaurant Margins?
No. As covered above, it works at the ledger level rather than the dish level. That margin layer needs a separate tool.
How Long Does It Take To Connect Toast To Jelly?
Connecting Toast to Jelly takes approximately five minutes. The process follows the same flow as all of Jelly’s POS integrations. Open Jelly, click Integrations, sign in to Toast, grant permissions, and select which POS categories to sync. The only common friction point appears when the user does not have admin access to their Toast account, and Jelly flags this requirement upfront. Once connected, only items sold since the integration was activated surface for dish mapping, which keeps the setup clean and free of legacy menu clutter.
