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Know Your Food Cost While You Can Still Fix It
Food and beverage cost against sales, prime cost, payroll with tips and a close built around how a kitchen and a floor run, so problems surface while you can still fix the menu or the schedule.
Restaurant Accounting In Michigan
A restaurant can have a record Saturday and still lose money on the week. Food cost creeps up with one supplier's price change, a new schedule quietly adds overtime, and nobody sees it until the month is closed and the chance to fix it has passed. This engagement is built to show you those numbers while they still matter.
It is part of our industry-specific accounting services and covers restaurants, cafes, bars, caterers and grocery stores with a deli or kitchen. Your books live in QuickBooks Online, and we run weekly or bi-weekly payroll in Gusto, ADP or QuickBooks Payroll, whichever already fits your operation.
Four Numbers That Decide A Restaurant's Month
We close these properly every month, and during the season we can track them weekly when weekly bookkeeping is part of your scope.
A Close Built Around Service Nights
What you get, week to week and month to month.
Weekly Flash Numbers
When weekly bookkeeping is part of your scope, you get a short flash report each week: sales, food and beverage purchases, labor and prime cost, set against that week's sales. It takes a minute to read and tells you whether the week worked.
Payroll With Tips Handled Properly
Cash and card tips are reported through payroll, tip pools are paid out as agreed, and your Form 941 and W-2 figures line up. We also make sure the employer credit for Social Security and Medicare paid on tips is claimed on Form 8846.
A Month-End Close That Follows The Kitchen
At month end we cut purchases off at the right date, book your food and beverage counts, and account for comps, voids, spoilage and staff meals, so the statement reflects the month you actually ran.
A Plain-Spoken Walk-Through Of The Month
We walk you through what food cost did, where labor landed against sales, and what changed from last month or the same month last season. Then we talk about what to adjust before the next one.
A Tip Is Payroll, Not Petty Cash
Tips your staff receive are wages for payroll tax purposes, even when the cash never touches your register. Employees report cash tips to you by the 10th of the following month, and card tips run through payroll with every check. Larger food and beverage establishments also file Form 8027 each year to report receipts and tips.
Kitchen And Payroll Questions We Hear Most
Why report prime cost every week instead of once a month?
Because a month is too long to wait in a business where food spoils and schedules are set a week at a time. A weekly prime cost number tells you whether purchasing and staffing matched the sales you actually had. The monthly close then confirms it against real counts, so the weekly figure never drifts far from the truth.
We are slammed all summer and quiet all winter. Does the service change?
The rhythm does. Weekly flash numbers matter most during the rush, when a bad week is expensive and there is no time to dig. In the quiet months we focus on the close, the tax planning meetings and the cash plan that carries you through to spring. The engagement letter spells out both.
Can you handle a grocery store as well as a restaurant?
Yes. Grocery adds department margins, spoilage and a register that mixes exempt food with taxable items like prepared food and alcohol. We set up the books by department, reconcile the sales tax return to what the register collected, and track shrink by department so you can see where product is going.
Services Food Businesses Pair With This
Inventory valuation, cost of goods sold tied to your counts and margin by department for stores and distributors.
Retail and inventory-based businesses in detail Payroll Processing (Weekly & Bi-Weekly)Weekly or bi-weekly payroll in Gusto, ADP or QuickBooks Payroll, with tips, deductions and filings handled.
Payroll processing in detail Cash Flow Analysis & ForecastingA forward view of cash through the rush and the slow months, so winter is planned for before it arrives.
Cash flow analysis and forecasting in detail Specialized / Industry-Specific OverviewRetail, inventory and food service accounting, with the industries we know best laid out side by side.
Return to Specialized and Industry-SpecificSee Your Prime Cost Every Week Of The Season
Tell us how your kitchen and floor run today. We will show you what a weekly flash report and a clean monthly close would look like for your operation.