Restaurants run on margins. We protect them.
Full-service accounting for independent restaurants, breweries, taprooms, and hospitality groups across Northern Colorado — built for owners who actually live the 28% food cost, the 4 a.m. close-out, and the four-jurisdiction sales tax filing.
If your CPA hasn't reconciled a POS to a deposit, they're learning on you.
Restaurants don't look like other small businesses on the books. Revenue arrives across cash, card, third-party delivery, gift cards, and catering — each settling at different times. Labor splits into back-of-house, front-of-house, and tipped employees with their own payroll rules. Inventory turns weekly. Sales tax has to be filed across four jurisdictions, and getting it wrong is the difference between a 5% net month and a zero.
Unify's bookkeeping and tax teams have closed monthlies for breweries, taprooms, full-service kitchens, and quick-serve concepts across Northern Colorado. We know what 28% food cost should look like in your P&L, why your prime cost number matters more than your gross margin, and where the FICA tip credit can quietly fund your next equipment purchase.
Services built for restaurants & hospitality.
Four pillars of restaurant accounting — every one of them handled in-house.
Tip-credit payroll & Form 8027
FICA tip credit, allocated tips, tip pool compliance, large food & beverage employer reporting. We coordinate with Unify Payroll so the books and the paychecks tell the same story.
COGS, inventory & prime cost
Weekly inventory variance, food-cost trends by category, prime-cost dashboards. So you know whether the next menu re-engineering protects margin or not — before service.
Multi-jurisdiction sales tax
Colorado is one of the worst sales-tax states in the country for restaurants. We file state, county, home-rule city, and special district returns so notices don't land in your office at 2 p.m. on a Friday.
Unit economics & growth advisory
Second location? Buying out a partner? Selling the business? Entity structuring, lease vs. buy on equipment, debt covenants, and exit math — done before you sign, not after.
Running a restaurant means razor-thin margins and a million moving pieces. Unify CPAs keeps my books clean, keeps me ahead of tax deadlines, and — most importantly — helps me increase profits and grow. Mike Mehle has been our go-to since the beginning, and the team has always made us feel like partners, not just another account.
What we handle, line by line.
Everything that shows up in a restaurant's books, every month — and the once-a-year items most operators forget about until April.
Daily POS reconciliation
Toast, Square, Clover, Lightspeed — we tie the daily sales summary to the deposit and to the books.
Third-party delivery settlements
DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub fees and chargebacks coded so your real food sales aren't buried.
Tip allocation & reporting
Tip pool tracking, allocated-tip calculations, Form 8027 if you trip the threshold.
FICA tip credit
The federal credit on employer payroll taxes for tips above minimum wage — often missed, sometimes worth thousands.
Sales tax — state & home-rule
CDOR plus Fort Collins, Boulder, Loveland and any other home-rule city you operate in.
Liquor & excise filings
State liquor excise tax, federal TTB returns for breweries and distilleries, license renewals.
Inventory & food-cost analysis
Weekly or period-based inventory counts feeding into food-cost % by category.
Gift card & deferred revenue
Outstanding gift-card liability tracked correctly so it doesn't quietly inflate revenue.
Lease & capex accounting
Tenant improvements, equipment depreciation, Section 179 elections on the new hood or oven.
Multi-location consolidation
Per-location P&Ls plus a consolidated view, so you can compare units honestly.
Federal & state tax returns
S-corp, partnership, sole prop — entity selection reviewed every year as the business changes.
Bank & SBA-ready financials
Reviewed financials packaged for lenders when you're ready for the second location, the buyout, or the refi.
Run the kitchen. We'll run the books.
30-minute intro call. Bring your last P&L if you have one — we'll tell you what we'd do differently.