Restaurants
Restaurants run on thin margins. We track food costs, reconcile delivery apps, and handle tip reporting so you know what you're actually making.
The Industry
Restaurant accounting is different from most small business accounting. You have cash and card transactions every day. Tips that need to be tracked and reported correctly. Food costs that fluctuate weekly based on supplier prices and waste. Labor that changes with the schedule. Delivery app deposits that show up days after the order with commissions already deducted. A lot happens before anything hits your books.
Most restaurant owners didn’t open their place because they wanted to manage spreadsheets. You opened because you love food, because you saw an opportunity, or because you wanted to build something for your family. The financial side was never the exciting part. So the receipts pile up, the reconciliations get skipped, and tax season becomes a nightmare. We see this constantly with restaurants across Los Angeles County.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
Restaurants, cafés, coffee shops, bars, boba shops, bakeries, food trucks, and catering operations. Dine-in, takeout, delivery, or any combination. Family-owned single locations or owners expanding to multiple spots across the San Gabriel Valley and LA.
What Makes It Complex
What Makes It Complex
Multiple revenue streams from dine-in, takeout, and third-party delivery apps. Daily cash handling and register reconciliation. Tip reporting requirements from the IRS. Food inventory that spoils. High employee turnover with varying schedules. Seasonal swings in business. It all adds up fast.
What We Handle
We take the bookkeeping off your plate so you can focus on running the restaurant. That means reconciling your POS sales to your bank deposits, tracking food and labor costs as percentages of revenue, categorizing vendor invoices, and handling payroll including tip reporting. We set up QuickBooks to work specifically for restaurants rather than using a generic setup that doesn’t tell you anything useful.
California sales tax compliance is part of the package. We track what you owe, file on time, and keep the documentation organized in case of an audit. For restaurants with employees, we handle payroll processing, tax deposits, and the quarterly filings that come with it. If you’re working with delivery apps, we reconcile those deposits against what you’re actually owed so you can see the true cost of those channels.
Daily Operations Tracking
Daily Operations Tracking
Sales reconciliation from your POS system to your bank. Food cost tracking so you know your actual percentage, not a guess. Labor cost monitoring by pay period. Vendor invoice processing and bill payments scheduled around your cash flow. Reports that show you what’s actually happening each month.
Payroll and Compliance
Payroll and Compliance
Payroll processing for your team with proper tip wage calculations. Tax withholdings and deposits handled automatically. Tip allocation and reporting done correctly to satisfy IRS requirements. Sales tax filings submitted on time. Year-end W-2s and any 1099s for independent contractors.
Common Problems
The biggest issue we see is restaurant owners not knowing their actual food cost percentage. Industry standard is somewhere between 28% and 35% depending on your concept. If your food cost has crept up to 40% because of waste, portion creep, or supplier price increases, you might be losing money on every plate and not realize it. Without monthly tracking, this goes unnoticed until the bank account tells a story you don’t want to hear.
Third-party delivery apps create their own mess. DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub each take different commission rates and deposit money on different schedules with marketing fees and adjustments buried in the statements. Trying to reconcile what you should have received versus what actually hit your account is tedious. Most restaurants give up and just accept whatever shows up. That’s money walking out the door.
Tip Reporting Mistakes
Tip Reporting Mistakes
The IRS has specific rules about tip reporting, tip credits, and allocations. Getting it wrong creates problems for you and your employees. Underpaid withholdings lead to penalties. Improper documentation invites audits. We see restaurants making these mistakes all the time, usually without realizing it until there’s a problem.
Cash Handling Gaps
Cash Handling Gaps
Cash businesses attract extra scrutiny. If your deposits don’t match your register reports, or if you can’t explain the discrepancy, you have a problem. Whether it’s shrinkage, recording errors, or just sloppy tracking, unaccounted cash creates tax risk and makes it impossible to know your real numbers.
What Changes
You finally know your real margins. Food cost percentage tracked monthly. Labor cost visible by pay period. Net profit calculated after everything, including the delivery app commissions and the credit card processing fees. When you decide to adjust menu prices or cut hours on a slow day, you’re making that decision with actual data instead of gut feeling.
The books stay clean, which matters more than most owners realize. If you want to open a second location, the bank wants to see organized financials. If you decide to sell, buyers will pay more for a business with clear records than one with a shoebox of receipts and a QuickBooks file that hasn’t been reconciled in two years. We’ve helped restaurant owners on both sides of those transactions, and clean books make a real difference.
Decisions Based on Data
Decisions Based on Data
Know which menu items actually make money and which ones barely break even. See whether lunch or dinner is more profitable. Track whether that new delivery partnership is worth the commission hit. Stop guessing and start managing based on what the numbers actually say.
Time Back in Your Day
Time Back in Your Day
Stop doing bookkeeping at midnight after the restaurant closes. Stop dreading tax season. Hand off the financial side to someone who understands restaurants and let yourself focus on the food, the customers, and the team. That’s why you opened the place in the first place.
LA's Small Business Bookkeeper
The Next Step:
A Short Conversation
Tell us about your business and what you're dealing with. We'll listen, ask a few questions, and give you a clear price for the work.