Bookkeeping for Hospitality
Bookkeeping for Restaurants, Cafes and Hospitality
POS at 6am. Supplier invoices stacking up. Tip reporting done right. We have it.
- AIPB Certified
- QuickBooks ProAdvisor
- Xero Partner
- US-based team
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The kitchen does not stop for bookkeeping. Neither does the POS, closing out at 11pm and reopening at 6am, running a full day of card swipes, cash drawers, comps, voids, and tips before the coffee is even brewed. Add a walk-in cooler full of supplier invoices and payroll that mixes tipped and non-tipped wages in the same pay period, and it is easy to see why so many owners do the books between shifts, exhausted, hoping they got it close enough.
We work with cafes running a single POS and a tight crew, restaurants juggling front-of-house tips and back-of-house hourly wages, and small hospitality groups managing two or three locations with different sales tax rates on food and beverage. What holds constant across all of it: POS reconciled daily so cash and card actually match the deposit, tip credit and tip pooling handled the way the FLSA requires, and sales tax tracked correctly even when it differs by county or by whether the item is dine-in or to-go.
Once we're running the numbers, the late-night reconciling stops. Supplier invoices get coded the day they land instead of piling up on the office desk. Payroll runs clean for tipped and non-tipped staff without a second-guess. And the monthly P&L actually tells you whether the new menu pricing is working, instead of you guessing based on how busy Saturday felt.
Where hospitality bookkeeping actually helps
- My POS report never quite matches what actually lands in the bankDaily POS reconciliation against card processor deposits and cash drops, so discrepancies get caught the same week, not at year end.
- I'm never fully sure I'm calculating the tip credit correctly for my serversTip credit and tip pooling set up to match FLSA requirements, with tipped and non-tipped wage categories tracked separately.
- Sales tax on food and beverage is different depending on dine-in versus takeout and I've probably been getting it wrongSales tax categorized correctly by item type and jurisdiction, so what you collect matches what you actually owe.
- Supplier invoices from three or four vendors are piling up faster than I can enter themInvoices photographed and coded the day they arrive, categorized by food cost, beverage cost, or supplies, so your margin is visible every month.
- I run two locations and I honestly can't tell which one is making moneyBooks split by location, so each site's P&L stands on its own and the comparison between them is honest.
What's different about hospitality bookkeeping
- Daily POS reconciliation against card processor deposits and cash
- Tip credit and tip pooling tracked to FLSA requirements
- Wage categorization for tipped versus non-tipped staff
- Multi-state and multi-jurisdiction sales tax on food and beverage
- Supplier invoice coding by food cost, beverage cost, and supplies
- Location-by-location profitability where you run more than one site
Where restaurant and cafe books usually break down
The files we take over most often carry the same handful of problems. POS reports reconciled sporadically, or not at all, so small discrepancies between what the system says and what actually deposits go unnoticed for months. Tip credit calculated inconsistently or not tracked separately from regular wages, which is exactly the kind of thing an FLSA wage claim gets built on. Supplier invoices entered in a batch once a month instead of as they arrive, which makes food cost percentage a guess rather than a number you can trust.
Each gets fixed at onboarding. POS reconciliation moves to a weekly rhythm at minimum, daily where volume calls for it, so the deposit and the register always agree. Tip credit and tip pooling get set up correctly against your state and federal requirements, with tipped and non-tipped wages tracked in separate categories from the first pay run. Supplier invoices get photographed and coded the day they land, split by food cost, beverage cost, and supplies.
From there, the rhythm holds on its own. Food and labor cost percentages show up on the monthly P&L instead of living in your head. A second location gets its own clean P&L instead of getting blended into one confusing number. And the sales tax return, whatever the jurisdiction, is built from data that was categorized correctly from day one.
"Wages, tip reporting, casual staff, daily POS reconciliations. I'd been doing it myself between services. They took it off me three months ago and I got my Sundays back. The kitchen noticed I was less on edge. I noticed too."
What's included
- Daily or weekly POS reconciliation
- Supplier invoice coding, by cost category
- Payroll with tip credit and tip pooling handled correctly
- Sales tax tracked by jurisdiction and item type
- Location-by-location P&L for multi-site operators
- Monthly profit and loss with food and labor cost percentages
- Cash drawer and till reconciliation support
- Year-end handover to your CPA or EA
Why restaurants, cafes and hospitality pick us
We run hospitality books weekly, not occasionally
POS reconciliation, tip credit, supplier invoice coding. This is the rhythm we work in every week, not something we learn on your file.
POS reconciled on a real schedule
Deposits matched against the register weekly, or daily where volume calls for it, so discrepancies get caught while they are still small.
Tip credit and tip pooling done right
Tipped and non-tipped wages tracked separately, set up to match FLSA requirements from the first pay run.
Food and labor cost, visible every month
The monthly P&L shows both cost percentages clearly, so a pricing change or a supplier switch shows up in the numbers, not just a feeling.
Supplier invoices coded the day they land
No more end-of-month batch entry. Food cost, beverage cost, and supplies get categorized as invoices arrive.
Multi-location books that stay honest
Each site gets its own clean P&L, so a strong location isn't propping up a weak one in the numbers you're actually looking at.
Get your POS and payroll reconciled without the late nights
Tell us your POS system and roughly how many staff are on payroll. Quote in writing the same business day.
Three hospitality shapes
Single POS, tight crew, steady morning rush
One location, a small team, mostly card transactions with some cash. The owner has been reconciling the POS by memory and wants it off their plate before it becomes a bigger problem.
What changes
- Weekly POS reconciliation against deposits
- Supplier invoices coded as they arrive
- Payroll set up correctly for the crew
- Clean monthly P&L, finally
How restaurants and cafes typically run their books
Owner, between shifts DIY books, exhausted | Generalist bookkeeper Not hospitality-specific | Hospitality-focused (us) POS, tips, food cost | |
|---|---|---|---|
POS reconciled to deposits weekly or daily | No | Partial | Yes |
Tip credit calculated correctly | Partial | Partial | Yes |
Sales tax coded by item type and jurisdiction | No | Partial | Yes |
Food and labor cost visible monthly | No | Partial | Yes |
Location-by-location P&L for multi-site | No | No | Yes |
Books reviewed by an AIPB-certified bookkeeper | No | No | Yes |
How we price hospitality bookkeeping
Restaurant and cafe bookkeeping pricing depends on transaction volume, POS reconciliation frequency, number of locations, and how many staff are on payroll with tip credit in the mix. A single cafe with three staff and a full-service restaurant with twenty tipped and non-tipped employees are very different scopes of work.
Fill in the quote form, tell us your POS system and roughly how many staff you run, and we'll come back with a written number the same business day. If your books need catch-up work first, that gets quoted separately.
What clients say
"Honestly, my books were a mess. Six months of receipts in a shoebox, quarterly taxes overdue, the works. They didn't make me feel like an idiot for it. Three weeks later we were sorted, and now I just send them my Square exports each month and forget about it."
"Wages, tip reporting, casual staff, daily POS reconciliations. I'd been doing it myself between services. They took it off me three months ago and I got my Sundays back. The kitchen noticed I was less on edge. I noticed too."
Hospitality bookkeeping FAQ
Two things to remember
Every account is reconciled and kept tax-ready by an AIPB-certified bookkeeper. Every account is run inside the US. Those two anchors shape how we handle compliance for restaurants, cafes and hospitality specifically.
Services we provide
Service
Payroll Bookkeeping
W-2, 1099, deposit deadlines. Payroll without the panic.
Service
Outsourced Bookkeeping
Full delegation, compliance-heavy. Contractors, hospitality, construction, allied health. AIPB certified.
Service
Quarterly Tax-Ready Bookkeeping
Books reconciled ahead of every quarterly deadline. AIPB certified.
Get your Sundays back.
Tell us about the kitchen and the crew. We'll quote your retainer the same day.