House Account

House accounts began as a courtesy and became an operating model. At a private club almost every charge runs through one, billed monthly with dues. In restaurants they are narrower: a handful of regulars, the local law firm that entertains twice a week, an owner’s standing account. Either way, the account carries a name, which turns out to matter more for guest data than it does for cash flow.

What is the difference between a house account, a tab, and a comp?

All three delay or remove payment at the table, and they are different instruments. A tab is open for one visit and closes that night. A house account persists across visits and is invoiced later, so it carries a balance and a billing relationship. A comp is not payment at all; it is revenue the restaurant chose to forgo, recorded against a reason.

The distinction that matters operationally is who is liable. A tab is settled by whoever is standing there. A house account is settled by the account holder, whether or not they were in the room, which is why club charges from a member’s guests still land on the member.

Why is a house account the cleanest guest record a restaurant holds?

Because identity is attached at the moment of payment rather than reconstructed afterwards. Most restaurant checks arrive with no guest attached, and connecting a check to a person means matching it against a reservation by table and time, a join that fails often enough to be worth measuring. A house account charge skips all of that. The account is the identity.

The nuance is that an account is not always one person. A corporate account covers whoever the company sends, and a member’s account absorbs charges made by guests the member brought. So the account is a reliable answer to who is being billed, and a less reliable answer to who was at the table. Groups that care about the second question record the diner separately from the payer.

Can a restaurant run house accounts without a club system?

Yes, and this is where the ground has shifted. House accounts used to require a club management platform or a bookkeeper with a spreadsheet, which is why most independent restaurants ran them informally and wrote off the leakage.

Loyalist supports house accounts and prepaid balances through Stripe, using the restaurant group’s own connected Stripe account, so payouts, disputes, and reporting stay with the restaurant rather than moving to a third party. Each charge is tied to the guest who made it, which means the account produces guest history as a side effect of billing. A group can see that a house-account regular has spent across three of its venues this quarter, and act on it, without anyone reconciling anything by hand.