Industry focus
Restaurant Accountant and Bookkeeping
Full-service restaurants, cafés, food trucks, catering companies, and ghost kitchens: we handle your Florida sales tax (DR-15), tip reporting, and bookkeeping so your books are as tight as your kitchen.
How we work with this industry
Restaurants run on thin margins and high transaction volume, which means the accounting has to be current to be useful. Tips, hourly payroll, food and beverage cost, and Florida sales tax all move weekly, and a monthly close that lands six weeks late tells you about a problem you can no longer fix. We keep the books tight to the calendar and handle the sales tax and payroll filings on schedule.
Most of the work is reconciliation. Your point of sale system, your card processor, your delivery platforms, and your bank all describe the same night's sales differently, and the gaps between them are where margin quietly disappears. We reconcile those sources against each other every period, so the revenue on your books is the revenue you actually collected, net of fees and comps.
The other half is payroll. Tipped wages and overtime each carry their own reporting treatment, and a restaurant that runs payroll casually tends to learn about the problem through a notice rather than through a report. We set it up properly and keep the filings on their own schedule so nothing lands late.
What We Do
What We Handle for Restaurants
The recurring work behind a restaurant's books, handled on a schedule instead of in a rush before a deadline.
Florida Sales Tax and the DR-15
Registration, collection review, and the return on your assigned filing frequency, reconciled against what the point of sale system actually rang up.
Tipped and Hourly Payroll
Pay runs, tip reporting, overtime, and the federal and state payroll filings, set up so tips are captured inside the system rather than handled on the side.
Point of Sale Reconciliation
Toast, Square, Clover, or whatever you run, tied back to the bank and the card processor so deposits, fees, voids, and comps all land in the right place.
Delivery Platform Revenue
DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub report gross sales and net payouts on different schedules. We record both, so commission never disappears inside revenue.
Food and Beverage Cost
Inventory and purchase coding that produces a cost of goods number you can actually use, so plate cost and menu pricing rest on something real.
Catch-Up and Cleanup
Books months or years behind brought current, reconciled, and closed, then put on a cadence that holds once we hand them back.
Common Problems
Where Restaurant Books Go Wrong
Four failures we see repeatedly. Each one is cheap to prevent and expensive to discover late.
Sales Tax Spent as Cash Flow
Sales tax is not revenue, it is money held for the state. A restaurant that treats it as working capital finds the shortfall at filing time, once it has already been spent.
Tips Handled Outside Payroll
Tips that never enter the payroll system leave the business exposed on its own filings and leave staff without the earnings record they need for credit, loans, and benefits.
Gross Sales Booked as Net
Recording the delivery platform deposit instead of gross sales and commission overstates your margin and hides what that channel actually costs to serve.
A Close That Lands Too Late
A month closed six weeks after it ended describes a problem you can no longer act on. The point of a close is to change the next month, not to narrate the last one.
Services we offer in this industry
The services most often used by businesses in this industry. Each one is led by an Enrolled Agent.
Related industries
Construction & Contracting
General contractors, subcontractors, roofers, plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, and ironworkers: we manage your job costing, 1099 compliance, sales tax, and equipment depreciation so every dollar you earn stays accounted for.
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From dental offices, physician groups, home health agencies, telemedicine platforms, nurse practitioners, and independent doctors: we handle your payroll, entity structuring, and tax strategy so you can focus on your patients, not the IRS.
Trucking & Transportation
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Related guides
No Tax on Tips and Overtime: 2025 Deductions of $25,000 and $12,500
The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act created two deductions starting with tax year 2025: up to $25,000 of qualified tips and up to $12,500 of qualified overtime, or $25,000 on a joint return. Both phase out above $150,000 of modified adjusted gross income.
Form 8300: Report Cash Payments Over $10,000 Within 15 Days
Any trade or business that receives more than $10,000 in cash in one or related transactions must file Form 8300 within 15 days, notify the payer by January 31, and e-file once it files 10 other information returns.
Common questions
Questions we hear in this industry
Straight answers, from an Enrolled Agent.
Contact Us
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