Your Swiggy payout never matches your sales. Here is where the money goes

The payout that never matches

Every cloud kitchen owner knows the feeling. The dashboard says ₹14.2 lakh of orders for the month. The bank says ₹10 lakh arrived. Nobody can say, line by line, where the other ₹4.2 lakh went, so the difference sits in a spreadsheet and gets argued about at year end.

It is rarely one thing. It is a handful of deductions that nobody books separately:

The numbers are an example, not a statistic. The point is the shape: if the whole payout is booked as "sales received", your sales, your expenses and your profit are all wrong at once. Upload the platform's settlement file into AawazAI (this import is in Beta) and each deduction lands on its own line, with what the platform still owes you tracked as a receivable until the money arrives. There is no direct Swiggy or Zomato connection today. You upload the file they give you.

A Saturday night, table by table

Table 6 orders. The steward adds two paneer tikkas as an add-on after the first round. At the end, three friends want to split the bill, and one of them leaves a ₹300 tip.

You tell the app, in whichever of the five languages you use: "Table 6, split three ways, tip 300." It shows a card marked Not saved yet, with the items, the add-ons, the GST, the three shares and the total. You check it, tap Confirm, and only then does it reach the books. The tip is recorded as a tip, not folded into food sales. A tip the business keeps is taxed, and your CA will want that line separate.

The bill opens in your phone's WhatsApp, or prints, or saves as a PDF. You press send; nothing goes out on its own.

Every bill is the same three steps. Say it, check it, save it.

5% or 18%: the question every owner asks

A standalone restaurant normally bills food at 5% without input tax credit. A restaurant inside a hotel whose rooms cost more than ₹7,500 a night is in specified premises, and food is billed at 18% with input credit. Which side you are on depends on the premises, not on how much you sell.

For specified premises, AawazAI bills food at 18% on its own. The retired 12% and 28% slabs are refused outright. Confirm with your CA once which rate applies to you, then every bill follows it. For the wider picture of rates, see GST rates after the September 2025 change.

Liquor and the title on the bill

Alcohol for drinking sits under state VAT, outside GST. A bill that carries both food and liquor therefore mixes two tax worlds. AawazAI keeps the liquor on its state VAT line, away from the GST lines, and the bill carries the Rule 46A title. You do not have to remember the title; the bill is built with it.

What changes in your first week

• Day 1. Choose Restaurant at sign-up. The menus, the "+ New" list and Reports reorganise around tables, tips and aggregators.
• Days 2 and 3. Add the menu with its add-ons. Bill one real table by voice and read the card before you confirm.
• Day 4. Upload last month's Swiggy or Zomato settlement file. See the gap explained line by line.
• Day 7. Share the CA pack. Your CA receives sales, tax lines and registers instead of a photo of a register.

The cost of waiting is not dramatic, it is quiet. Another month of payouts booked as one lump is another month your CA has to rebuild. Keeping the books is free in AawazAI; credits (50 free every month) pay only for AI, scans and portal calls, as set out on the pricing page. Every feature behind this post is listed under business types on the product page.

Frequently asked questions