Coffee shop accounting that handles tips, beans, and retail.
Daily POS reconciliation, tip pool handling, retail bean accounting, and the food-cost reporting that tells you where margin actually lives.
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Coffee shop accounting is essentially restaurant accounting at smaller scale, with a few unique twists. Retail bean sales sit alongside drink revenue. Pastry COGS is volatile because supply often comes from a third-party bakery. Tips are typically declared and pooled. Get any of these wrong and your margin reporting is fiction.
We work with single-location specialty coffee shops, multi-location concepts, and roaster-cafés.
What we handle
- Daily POS reconciliation from Square or Toast.
- Tip handling through payroll, with FICA tip credit (Form 8846).
- Retail bean revenue separated from drink revenue.
- COGS by category — coffee, milk, food, paper, retail.
- Inventory tracking for shops carrying meaningful bean stock.
A coffee shop paying $85K in declared tips per year had never claimed the FICA Tip Credit. The recovery on amended returns: ~$6,500. Most coffee shops we onboard have never claimed it.
If you have under 5 baristas, Square + Gusto + monthly bookkeeping works.
If you sell retail beans, retail revenue tracking is non-trivial.
If you scale past one location, R365 or similar starts to make sense.
Real margin per category, real tip handling, FICA credit captured.
From $450/month for single-location cafés.
Frequently asked questions
POS reconciliation?
Daily Z-report imported into QuickBooks. We reconcile variances at month-end.
Tip pool?
We track per shift and run pool distribution through payroll with declared tips on each W-2.
Sales tax?
Coffee/food prepared for immediate consumption is taxable; whole beans are typically taxable as well at state level. City rules vary.
Inventory?
For retail beans, we recommend monthly count and adjustment. Drink-side raw materials run periodic.