Bookkeeping for restaurants.
FigureWise runs restaurant books at the pace the industry demands: daily sales reconciled across POS and delivery apps, prime cost tracked weekly, and tip reporting handled correctly in payroll.
The numbers to watch.
| # | Metric | |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Prime cost percentageFood plus labor as a share of sales is the number that decides whether a restaurant makes money. It is controllable week to week, which is exactly how often it should be watched. | Food plus labor as a share of sales is the number that decides whether a restaurant makes money. It is controllable week to week, which is exactly how often it should be watched. |
| 02 | Food cost percentageThe fastest-moving part of prime cost. Tracked weekly against sales, it exposes price creep, waste, and portioning drift while there is still time to react. | The fastest-moving part of prime cost. Tracked weekly against sales, it exposes price creep, waste, and portioning drift while there is still time to react. |
| 03 | Labor cost percentageScheduling is the biggest lever managers control daily. A labor ratio, seen alongside sales, shows whether staffing matched the business you actually did. | Scheduling is the biggest lever managers control daily. A labor ratio, seen alongside sales, shows whether staffing matched the business you actually did. |
| 04 | Sales versus break-evenKnowing the weekly sales level at which you cover your costs turns a vague sense of a slow month into a concrete gap you can act on. | Knowing the weekly sales level at which you cover your costs turns a vague sense of a slow month into a concrete gap you can act on. |
Where restaurants books go wrong.
01
Margins too thin for slow information
Restaurants routinely run on single-digit net margins, so a few points of food cost drift or an overstaffed week is the difference between profit and loss. Books that close six weeks late tell you about problems long after you could have fixed them.
02
Sales scattered across POS, delivery apps, and catering
DoorDash, Uber Eats, and the POS each report sales net of different fees on different deposit schedules. Reconciling gross sales, commissions, and actual deposits is genuinely hard, and skipping it means your revenue number is wrong.
03
Tips, tip credits, and payroll complexity
Tipped wages, tip pooling, and reporting requirements make restaurant payroll among the trickiest of any small business. Errors here create back-tax exposure and staff disputes at the same time.
04
Food cost you can only see in hindsight
Invoice price creep, portioning drift, and waste all live inside one blended cost-of-goods number. Without regular tracking against sales, a supplier raising prices in pennies costs you thousands before anyone notices.
What we put in place.
- Daily sales journal entries reconciling POS, delivery platforms, and bank deposits, with platform fees broken out so you see what third-party orders really cost.
- Prime cost reporting on a weekly or period basis, not just monthly, so food and labor drift is caught in days.
- Payroll built for tipped employees: tip reporting, tip pooling records, and wage compliance handled correctly.
- Vendor invoices captured and categorized by AI, with price-increase anomalies flagged for your bookkeeper to verify.
- A break-even figure maintained for your restaurant, so every weekly sales number comes with context.
Restaurants, answered.
Better decisions start here.
A free, no-commitment review of your restaurants books.