#restaurant
Accounting solutions for restaurants and food businesses
A configuration and compliance guide for payroll teams on the new 2026 W-2 Box 12 Code TT (qualified overtime premium) and Code TP (qualified tips), the Box 14b Treasury Tipped Occupation Code (TTOC), the redesigned Step 4(b) on Form W-4, and the OBBBA 2025–2028 sunset window for the No Tax on Tips and No Tax on Overtime federal income tax deductions.
How multi-brand ghost kitchens record gross revenue under ASC 606, segregate marketplace-facilitated sales tax from DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub payouts, allocate shared kitchen costs across virtual brands, and compute contribution margin per brand and platform.
An owner-operator's guide to independent bakery bookkeeping — six ASC 606 revenue streams, Section 263A inventory costing, W-2 vs 1099 classification, the Section 45B FICA tip credit, Section 179 equipment depreciation, multistate sales tax under Wayfair, and the prime-cost and sell-through KPIs that separate profitable bakeries from undercapitalized ones.
A working playbook for owner-operators of boutique indoor golf simulator lounges — how to recognize bay rental, membership, league, and breakage revenue under ASC 606; capitalize $24K Trackman units and $60K bay buildouts via Section 179, bonus depreciation, and QIP cost segregation; classify teaching pros correctly; and read the bay-utilization and revenue-per-bay-hour KPIs that separate profitable lounges from the rest.
A working guide to karaoke bar and KTV lounge bookkeeping that covers ASC 606 timing for room rental and bottle service, ASCAP/BMI/SESAC/GMR license amortization, the Section 45B FICA tip credit, Section 179 and cost segregation on the build-out, dram-shop reserve accounting, and the RevPARH and pour-cost KPIs operators actually read.
A working accounting backbone for an independent boba shop — recipe-card COGS down to the tapioca pearl, ASC 606 deferred revenue for loyalty and gift cards, Section 179 treatment for pearl cookers and heat sealers, the Section 45B FICA tip credit on Form 8846, FDA calorie disclosure thresholds, and the FDD Item 19 KPIs (ADS, prime cost, drinks per labor hour) that separate operators who scale from operators who close.
Independent pizzerias survive only when prime cost — food plus labor — stays at or below 60% of sales. This guide covers booking DoorDash and Uber Eats revenue gross under ASC 606, claiming the FICA tip credit on Form 8846, capitalizing deck and conveyor ovens under Section 179, and building recipe cards that expose the gap between theoretical and actual food cost.
A bookkeeping guide for scratch bakeries covering standard recipe cards, ingredient yield, day-old shrink, retail vs. wholesale margin separation, ASC 606 deposit accounting for custom cakes, cottage food law revenue caps, and sales tax on prepared food.
Markup and margin share a numerator but not a denominator, and the gap can quietly cost a contractor $99,000 a year. A plain-language guide to the conversion math, a target-margin lookup table, and why retailers, contractors, and restaurants keep underpricing jobs.
Qualified Improvement Property (QIP) under Section 168(e)(6) lets nonresidential interior build-outs use a 15-year recovery period and qualify for 100% bonus depreciation after the OBBBA. Covers the statutory test, three exclusions, TCJA-to-OBBBA history, a worked $540,000 restaurant example, and Form 3115 catch-up deductions.
Section 119 lets employers exclude on-premises meals and required-residence lodging from employee wages, with no FICA and no income tax withholding. This guide walks through the convenience-of-the-employer test, the "more than half" safe harbor, qualified campus lodging, the Kowalski cash rule, and what the 2026 Section 274(o) deduction sunset does and does not change.
A working operator's guide to calculating restaurant prime cost every seven days, the 55–65% benchmark by service segment, the five leaks weekly tracking surfaces first, and the bookkeeping setup the cadence requires.
