Fast food restaurant owner-operator - separating shop money from household money checklist - five fixed actions that split "what we earned" from "what we can spend", and you only start the first two in week one

You are a finance coach for small food businesses. Your reader is the owner-operator of a husband-and-wife fast food shop: payments arrive in a personal chat-app wallet, supply runs go on a personal card, household cash comes out of the till, and nobody can say at month's end what the shop earned. Write me a working checklist for separating shop money from household money. Every action must be startable in the shop tomorrow - no software to buy, no bookkeeper to hire.

Five actions (fixed - no additions, no rewording - in execution order):
1. One dedicated deposit entry: register a merchant payment code (or one dedicated bank card); every dollar the shop takes in goes there, and the personal QR code retires the same day - pass mark: 7 consecutive days where every single payment landed in that one entry
2. Capped petty cash: the till float is a fixed [amount], counted at close every day, topped up or drawn down to exactly that number - pass mark: the float is the same number every morning
3. Fixed draw day: on the [Xth] of each month, transfer one fixed amount from the shop account to the household - your salary to yourself - pass mark: no other transfer from the shop to any personal account all month
4. Three-line log: three lines a day - money in, supply spending, draw to self; large household spending (mortgage, tuition) gets its own "draw" line - pass mark: any evening, two minutes is enough to finish it
5. Month-end sweep: once a month, look at the shop balance, subtract next month's rent, payroll, and restocking reserve - only the remainder moves out - pass mark: the transfer amount was computed, not "there seemed to be plenty left"

Rollout cadence:
- Week one runs only actions 1 and 2; action 3 joins once those are stable; 4 and 5 come last - change all five at once and no shop survives the month
- For each action, give the "slipping" signal and the recovery move (example: action 3 gets broken, household spending exceeded the draw - the recovery is logging the excess as "borrowed from the shop" and deducting it first at the month-end sweep)

Output format:
- Checklist table: action / pass mark / typical slipping signal / recovery move
- One paragraph on "why separate at all", aimed at the people inside the shop (spouse, partner) - no "financial discipline" vocabulary; use concrete scenes instead: "no arguments if a relative joins", "nothing to panic over if an inspector asks", "you can actually price a second shop when the time comes"

Constraints:
- Recommend no bank, app, or SaaS product - the simpler the tool, the longer it survives
- "Establish a financial system", "strengthen accounting awareness" and other unverifiable demands are banned - every action needs a pass mark
- Give no tax advice - tax questions get one line: "ask a local bookkeeper", nothing more
- Respect the sole-proprietor reality: no chart of accounts, no vouchers - the three-line log is the entire requirement

Why it is written this way

A sole proprietor's books are not messy, they are blended: revenue into the personal wallet, expenses on the personal card, household cash out of the till. At month's end it feels like profit while the account runs dry - and there is no way to tell whether the shop is weak or the household is heavy. Each of the five actions severs one specific blending path: the intake, the till, the outflow, the record, the sweep. They are written as five fixed actions rather than "some suggestions" because a checklist earns its keep only when it can be ticked and verified item by item.

"Week one covers only the first two" is counterintuitive but load-bearing. Rollouts never fail because the plan was wrong; they fail because changing five habits at once breaks a person by week three. Staging the rollout isolates failures - each action passes on its own, and one lapse gets one remedy instead of total abandonment.

Pass marks are the soul of this checklist. "Seven consecutive days, one entry" and "the float is the same number every morning" are facts you can check tomorrow at opening - not adjectives like "used properly" that nobody can audit. A checklist without pass marks is not a checklist; that is the entire difference between "strengthen management" and something a person can actually execute.

The explanation is written for the spouse or the partner because the first resistance to separation is always internal: "we're family, what is there to split?" Financial propriety wins no argument at a kitchen table; concrete scenes do - no fights if a relative buys in, no panic if an inspector visits, a real number to work with when a second shop becomes possible. The explanation meant for people and the one meant for policy documents were never the same language.

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