Industry
Restaurant and bar bookkeeping in Central Arkansas
Run by someone who spent nearly thirty years in food service, most of it in management, before he kept books for a living. There is no translation step.
Book a free consultationWhy a restaurant needs a different bookkeeper
Most small business bookkeeping runs on a monthly cycle. A restaurant does not. Food cost moves weekly, labour moves daily, and by the time a monthly P&L tells you the month was bad, the month is over and nothing can be done about it.
Mo Sliger read those numbers every week for nearly three decades — in management, on the floor, and behind the bar, in businesses where getting them wrong had consequences. That is the difference between a bookkeeper who can reconcile a restaurant and one who can tell you what the reconciliation means.
What gets tracked
- Prime cost — cost of goods plus total labour, including payroll taxes, reported against sales on a weekly cadence rather than at month end
- Food and pour cost by period, tied to real inventory counts
- Labour percentage split between hourly, salaried and payroll burden
- Comps, voids and discounts tracked as their own line so they stop hiding inside cost of goods
- Tip reporting and tip credit, handled correctly through payroll
- Supplier ledger and 1099 vendors kept current through the year
- Daily POS sales summaries posted so the books reflect real trading
Who this fits
Independent restaurants, bars, taprooms, coffee shops, food trucks and small multi-unit operators across Little Rock, Cabot, North Little Rock, Conway and Searcy — and remote clients elsewhere. Whether you are one location trying to work out if you can afford a second, or several trying to work out which one is carrying the others.
Common questions
What makes restaurant bookkeeping different?
Weekly rhythm, not monthly. Prime cost, inventory counts, comps and voids, tip reporting, and a supplier ledger that turns over constantly. A generalist bookkeeper can reconcile a restaurant. Reading it week to week is a different skill.
Do you handle tip reporting and tip credit?
Yes — allocated tips, tip credit against minimum wage, and the payroll treatment that goes with them, kept consistent with how you actually run the floor.
Can you work with my POS?
Daily sales summaries from the POS get posted into the books as journal entries so the P&L reflects real trading, not just what cleared the bank.
We are a bar, not a restaurant. Same thing?
Largely. Pour cost replaces food cost as the number that moves, and inventory counts matter more, not less.
Know what last week actually cost you
Book the free consultation and bring your last P&L. Mo will tell you what it is telling you.
Mo answers his own phone. Same-day reply, every time.