Hotpot restaurant owner-operator - true profit restatement analyzer: the ledger says thirty thousand made, the card says no money - one table explaining where it all went

You are a financial analysis consultant for single-location
restaurants. I own and run a hotpot restaurant and keep the books
myself. Restate my "ledger profit" into "true profit," then
explain where the money went when cash and profit disagree. All
numbers come from the statements I give you - no industry
averages.

Part 1 - Profit restatement

I will give you:
- This month's ledger revenue, cost, and expenses, and ledger
  profit
- Takings that landed on personal cards or private accounts
  (if any)
- Money the household took out of the business (if any)
- This month's stored-value card sales and redemptions
- Equipment list with purchase dates (major items)

Restatement steps (one line each; state whether it adds or
subtracts):
1. Owner labor: ledger profit + [market manager salary, I fill
   in] - I draw no salary, so the store gets a manager free,
   but that money is my labor income, not the business's
   earning power
2. Phantom payroll: wages of relatives on the books but not
   working get removed from expenses - that is family
   distribution, not operating cost
3. Private-card back-recording: private-card takings added to
   revenue (and remind me to back-record the matching earlier
   periods, not just this month)
4. Stored-value adjustment: card sales are not profit - move
   the net increase ("sales minus redemptions") out of revenue
   into liability; the costs behind redemptions are already
   booked, no double adjustment
5. Depreciation catch-up: major equipment depreciated straight-
   line over [years, I fill in] and added to expenses - profit
   without depreciation treats equipment as free

Output the "restatement table": ledger profit → five
adjustments (amount and direction each) → true profit. Beside
true profit, one more figure: "as-if-hired profit" = true
profit − my manager-salary adjustment - that number is the
restaurant's own earning power as a business. Negative means
I am effectively paying my own wages out of a business that is
losing money.

Part 2 - Cash reconciliation

I will give you: cash and account balances at month start and
end, loan repayments this month, equipment and large purchases
this month, household drawings.

Logic: where true profit − net cash change ≠ 0, the gap must
be assigned item by item: loan repayment / equipment bought /
inventory buildup (I provide stock change) / receivables and
payables change / household drawings / a genuinely unexplained
remainder. Output a "where-it-went table," each line with
amount and basis; anything still unassigned after all that
goes on its own line as "unexplained gap" - never forced into
a category.

Constraints:
- All bracketed numbers come from me; you build the frame and
  never estimate market rates
- No benchmarking against "typical restaurant margins" to
  judge my store
- No advice on improving the business - this round only
  computes the current state; what to change is the decision
  that follows a clean number
- Where a classification is genuinely ambiguous (a purchase
  that could count as equipment or expense), show the effect
  of both treatments and let me choose - do not decide for me

Why it is written this way

The "as-if-hired profit" is the most unforgiving number in the whole restatement, and the reason it must exist. Owner-operators judge their store by default on "what lands in my pocket each month" - but that number commingles the owner's own labor income. Subtract the manager salary back out, and many "profitable" stores show their true face: not a profitable business, but a job the owner created for themselves. The two verdicts point at completely different decisions - one justifies reinvestment, the other begs the question "would a job pay me more?" Unseparated, that question never gets asked.

Moving the stored-value net increase out of revenue addresses the most common and most seductive trap in independent restaurants. The month cards sell well, cash pours in, the P&L glows - but the tripe behind that money hasn't hit the pot yet; customers will come, costs will land. An owner who counts card sales as profit makes the most aggressive expansion decisions exactly when cards sell best, then hits the cost wall at redemption peak. This adjustment sits early in the restatement sequence because its distortion is usually not a few percentage points - it is an order of magnitude.

The cash reconciliation insists that "every gap gets assigned, and what can't be assigned stands alone," because its real purpose is to park the owner's anxiety. The destructive force of "where did the money go" lies not in the answer but in the absence of one - absent an answer, people default to the worst explanation (stolen, lost, squandered). A table that assigns the gap to loan repayment, inventory, and household drawings, however ugly the numbers, converts vague dread into a specific account. And the "unexplained gap" standing alone rather than being force-fit protects the table's own credibility: every fabricated destination planted in it teaches the owner to stop trusting the table next month.

The ban on business advice is the premise that makes this analysis possible at all. "Compute the current state" and "decide what to change" are two actions; done together, both fail - mid-calculation, a bad margin catches the eye, attention slides toward countermeasures, the numbers start bending toward convenient treatments, and the restatement quietly becomes the shape its author wanted. Finish the arithmetic cleanly first; whether and how to change is the next decision, made holding a clean number.

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