Bookkeeping and payroll built for restaurants
Thin margins leave no room for guesswork. We keep your sales, food cost, labor and sales tax reconciled so you know what each month really earned.
The restaurant numbers that matter
A restaurant can look busy and still lose money. The difference lives in a handful of numbers most owners never see on time: food cost as a percentage of sales, labor cost as a percentage of sales, and prime cost, the two combined. When your books are reconciled monthly, these numbers show up in your statements and you can act on them: re-price a menu item, trim a shift, renegotiate with a supplier.
POS, processors and deposits
Your point-of-sale system reports one number, your card processor deposits another, and your bank shows a third, net of fees, tips and timing. We reconcile all three so sales, tips, discounts and processing fees land in the right accounts. Whether you use Toast, Square, Clover or another system, we set up the sales-to-deposit workflow so the books tie out to what actually hit your bank.
Tipped payroll done correctly
Tips add real complexity: credit-card tips paid out through payroll, tip reporting, tip pooling policies, overtime calculated correctly for tipped employees, and payroll taxes on reported tips. Our payroll service handles these details so you’re not exposed, and your labor cost in the books reflects reality.
Florida sales tax
Restaurants collect and remit Florida sales tax on prepared food and beverages. We track taxable sales, and keep your reports organized so your filings match your books. (General information only. Confirm your filing requirements with the Florida Department of Revenue or your CPA.)
Inventory, vendors and cash-heavy days
Multiple food and beverage vendors, cash handling and frequent small purchases make categorization and vendor reconciliation important. We track accounts payable so you pay suppliers on time without double-paying, a common and costly mistake.
How we set up your books
- Revenue split into food, beverage, catering and delivery so you see which lines carry the business
- Cost of goods broken out by category (food, beverage, paper goods) for accurate food-cost percentages
- Separate accounts for tips payable, sales tax payable and payroll liabilities
- Third-party delivery platforms tracked as their own income source, with commissions and fees shown separately
- A weekly or monthly prime-cost view (food plus labor) when you want to watch margins closely
Common mistakes we clean up
- Recording daily deposits as sales, which double-counts revenue and ignores fees and tips
- Mixing tips into wages or revenue instead of tracking them as a liability
- Booking delivery-app payouts net of commission, which hides your real cost of that channel
- Paying vendors from the cash drawer without a receipt trail
- Letting sales tax collected sit in the operating account and get spent
If any of these sound familiar, it’s fixable. We review what’s there, tell you what’s wrong and give you a written estimate to correct it, including catch-up work for past months.
What you get every month
- Reconciled bank and credit card accounts
- Accounts payable and receivable managed
- Financial statements with comparisons by the 15th
- Payroll and payroll taxes that reconcile to your books
See the full scope of our bookkeeping and payroll services.
Serving restaurants across South Florida
Restaurants bookkeeping questions
Can you sync with my POS?
We work with the major restaurant POS and payment systems. Tell us which you use and we’ll confirm how the sales data flows into your books.
Do you handle tipped-employee payroll?
Yes: tips, tip reporting, overtime for tipped staff and the associated payroll taxes.
Books that fit how your restaurant business works
Book a free call. We’ll look at where your books stand and give you an honest estimate before we start.