Accounting & Tax Services for Restaurants & Bars
Tip reporting, food cost percentage, and daily POS reconciliation for restaurants running on thin margins.
What Makes the Books Different in Restaurants & Bars
Tip reporting is its own discipline. Reported tips affect your FICA tip credit, your payroll tax liability, and your exposure if the IRS ever questions whether tips are being under-reported. Getting this wrong doesn't just cost you the credit - it creates payroll tax risk.
Your food cost percentage is the number that tells you whether the restaurant is actually working, and it only means something if your books pull real numbers from your POS and vendor invoices, not estimates entered at month-end.
The daily sales journal - cash, card, tips, comps, voids, sales tax collected - needs to come out of your POS every day, not get reconstructed from a bank statement weeks later. By the time you're guessing, the numbers are wrong.
Payroll spans tipped servers and bartenders, non-tipped kitchen staff, and often a mix of hourly and salaried management, each with different minimum wage and overtime rules depending on your state's tip credit laws.
Liquor licensing, prepaid rent, and leasehold improvements on a build-out all need to be tracked and amortized correctly - they're not simple expenses, and getting them wrong shows up as an overstated or understated tax bill down the line.
How We Help
Compliance & Licensing
We track liquor license renewals, help you stay current on tip reporting requirements, and file sales tax on schedule using numbers pulled straight from your POS.
Bookkeeping & Clean-Up
Daily sales journal entries from your POS, food cost tracked against vendor invoices, and prepaid rent or leasehold improvements amortized correctly instead of dumped into one expense line.
Tax Planning
We calculate your FICA tip credit, review your entity structure, and plan around equipment purchases and build-out costs before year-end, not after.
Tax Return Preparation & Filing
Returns prepared with your tip credit calculated, food cost and cost of goods sold reconciled, and sales tax filings matched to what was actually collected.
Payroll
Payroll built for tipped and non-tipped staff under your state's tip credit rules, with overtime calculated correctly across mixed pay structures.
CFO Advisory & Consulting
Monthly food cost percentage and labor cost reviews, menu pricing checks, and cash flow planning around slow seasons and lease obligations.
Choosing the Right Entity
Most restaurants and bars operate as an LLC or S-corp, and the right one usually comes down to how many owners there are and how much of the profit is being taken as compensation versus distribution. If you're opening a second location, we'll also help you think through whether it should sit under the same entity or its own.
Explore S-Corp ElectionFrequently Asked Questions
How does the FICA tip credit actually work?
It lets you claim a federal income tax credit for the employer-side Social Security and Medicare tax you pay on tips your staff reports above minimum wage. We calculate it from your actual reported tip data, not an estimate.
What's a healthy food cost percentage, and how do I know mine?
It varies by concept - a bar with high liquor margins runs differently than a steakhouse - but it only means anything if it's calculated from real vendor invoices against real POS sales, not guessed at month-end.
Do I need to reconcile my POS every day, or is monthly enough?
Daily. Monthly reconciliation means voids, comps, and tip adjustments pile up and get harder to trace back, and errors compound instead of getting caught early.
How should I handle the cost of my restaurant build-out?
Leasehold improvements typically get capitalized and depreciated over time rather than expensed all at once. We'll walk through what qualifies and set up the right depreciation schedule.
Ready to Talk About Your Books?
Tell us where things stand and we'll tell you honestly what needs attention first.