For restaurants
The line, the till, and the prepared-food ledger, retired.
The bookkeeping loop adapted to the corner-restaurant interior — till reads between shifts, nightly receipts reconcile for food cost and supplier invoices, a Friday margin digest before Saturday prep starts, and the per-state prepared-food sales-tax estimate pegged to the prepared-vs-grocery split the operator wires up once. The full wire-once beat is on /how-it-works. The Pro tier ($243/mo) is where the per-state prepared-food estimate ships. The California DOR pillar walks the closest restaurant-line state-tax detail the searcher carries in their inbox tonight (Stillpost runs the same per-state figure set against CDTFA cadence and the prepared-vs-grocery carve-out). For the rest of the California sales-tax pillar plus the nine other shipped state pillars (Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Illinois, Georgia, North Carolina), see the /guides hub.
The kitchen-table tax, named plainly.
There is another tax the corner-restaurant operator pays — one the bookkeeping books won’t show on a trial balance, but the operator’s Saturday-morning hours carry all the same. It is paid in till-counts and supplier delivery check-ins and the walk-in thermometer the prep cook has to read at six: the register tape at the lunch-rush closeout, the per-shift cash drop the operator drops into the safe at the dinner-rush cut, the Sysco invoice the back-door delivery check-in signed at 5:42am, the per-prep-table ticket rail the line cook has been working since four-thirty, and the per-table server-tip-out the bar manager is reconciling by hand against the credit-card batch on a Saturday afternoon while the operator is counting the produce the prep cook pulled from the walk-in.
The number is right about eighty percent of the time. The other twenty percent it’s wrong by enough that the operator finds out which one was right the first time a payables run bounces — the prepared-vs-grocery line item the line cook’s recipe ledger was missing so the food cost booked against grocery, the per-supplier invoice the delivery check-in signed but the costing sheet wasn’t updated for the new price the distributor rolled in last week, the per-shift tip-out the bar manager reconciled against the wrong batch because the credit-card tip pool landed on the wrong day, the per-state prepared-food sales-tax estimate the bookkeeping books were accruing against grocery rate because the cash-and-carry items shifted to a prepared category the operator didn’t realize triggered a different rate band.
By the next quarter the operator is reconciling four feeds against the prepping tickets, the supplier invoices, the per-shift batch postings, and the per-state DOR remittance calendars — five or six of them now, since the operator picked up catering as a side-line and the catering orders ship to a different set of nexus states — and re-checking each against the per-source truth that landed in the books earlier in the week, in case a per-supplier price rolled and the costing sheet missed it. The hours are paid in an unscheduled Saturday, a missed kid’s baseball game, the quiet panic the per-state prepared-food sales-tax late-notice carries when it lands on a Wednesday morning with the prepared-vs-grocery split the operator was tracking by hand and books were accruing against grocery rate.
That tax — the one four shifts publish a till-count for, the one the bookkeeping books already carry as a line item in the period close, the one the operator reconciles by hand on the Saturday before the books go out — is the one Stillpost built the bookkeeping loop to retire for restaurants. Same four shifts. Same five sources. A read-only connect per source, one wire-up at the prep table. The cash position refreshes every fifteen minutes between the lunch-rush closeout and the dinner-rush cut, the before-midnight receipts reconcile matches each day’s food cost and supplier invoice and tip pool against the costing ledger line-by-line, the weekly margin digest lands Friday before the line cook clocks in Saturday morning, and the per-state prepared-food sales-tax estimate posts at 23:55 to the calendar each DOR of record publishes — pegged to the prepared-vs-grocery split the operator wires up once and never re-wires again. The bookkeeper and the part-time accountant stay on payroll for the parts of the books that need a human reviewer — the menu re-costing, the catering tax nexus, the conversation about which direction the next quarter should bend; the four recurring beats the kitchen runs unattended are the four recurring beats the loop carries.
That is the beat. That is the loop. That is what gets handed back.
What the loop runs on a corner-restaurant interior.
Four cadence beats the bookkeeping loop fires after the wire-up — in the order the kitchen runs them. Till, food-cost, margin, tax. Each beat folds into the next, and the four-line Saturday morning the operator used to build by hand is the four-line the loop carries unattended.
- Step one01/04
Watch the till between shifts.
A read-only connect per source — the bank through Plaid, Mercury, Stripe, Square, and Brex on the direct connectors, the point-of-sale for the per-shift card batch that closes at end-of-shift rather than end-of-day, the catering portal for the off-premise orders the floor runs Saturday afternoon, the inbox for the supplier ACH that hasn’t cleared yet. One wire-up at the prep table, five feeds, none of them written back to.
- Step two02/04
Reconcile food cost and supplier invoices nightly.
The day’s POS export, the day’s supplier invoices (Sysco, US Foods, Restaurant Depot, the local produce drop, the bread-route driver the back-door delivery check-in signed at 5:42am), and the day’s processor statement get matched against the costing ledger the loop already carries — food cost against per-line recipe, supplier invoice against the trend the costing sheet carried last week, tip pool against the batch it left against. The match lands on the same row the supplier invoice already carries.
- Step three03/04
Send the Friday margin digest before Saturday prep starts.
The week’s per-line margin walks for every menu item the till closed against — food cost the recipe the costing sheet carried, labor the payroll export posted, the per-shift tip pool the bar manager reconciled, the high-margin menu items that earned their keep against the low-margin line — and the digest lands in the operator’s inbox Friday evening, before the prep cook clocks in Saturday morning. The Saturday the operator used to read the menu line-by-line is the Saturday that opens the door at ten.
- Step four04/04
Post the prepared-food estimate, per state.
The per-state prepared-food estimate posts at 23:55 every night, pegged to the calendar each DOR of record publishes — California’s CDTFA on the last day of the month, Texas Comptroller on the twentieth, NY DTF on the twentieth, Florida on the first, the per-state district surtax layered per ship-to. The prepared-vs-grocery split the operator wires up once (cold deli vs hot bar, sliced-to-order vs packaged, dine-in vs grab-and-go) drives the per-state rate band the books accrue against — and the remittance row lands Monday morning pre-split.
What it earns its keep on.
Three returns the bookkeeping loop earns against the corner-restaurant interior — the till read between shifts retired, food-cost line audited nightly, prepared-vs-grocery split made once on the wire-up — read like the rest of the small-biz pillar cluster, in the operator’s own frame.
The till read between shifts, retired.
The lunch-rush closeout ritual of opening the banking tab, the POS report, and the cash-drop sign-in sheet to hand-subtract the dinner-rush prep float is a ritual the loop retired. The till read between shifts is the read the operator opens at-a-glance — one number per shift, refreshed every fifteen minutes — and the Saturday the operator used to build the till balance is the Saturday the operator spent somewhere else.
The food-cost line, audited nightly.
The Sunday-night ritual of opening the day’s POS export, the day’s supplier invoices, and the day’s processor statement to hand-match food cost against the costing ledger is a ritual the loop retired — every per-shift batch and per-supplier invoice threaded to the per-line recipe the costing sheet already carries, refunds and tip pools and comps held against their own rows rather than swallowed into a closing entry, the variance the operator opens Monday morning is a single line the supplier invoice was carrying.
The prepared-vs-grocery split, made on the wire-up.
The books used to accrue the corner-restaurant operator’s sales tax against the grocery rate because the menu’s prepped items and grocery items got grouped on a single category on the costing sheet. The loop accrues against the prepared vs grocery split the operator wires up once on the menu — cold deli vs hot bar, sliced-to-order vs packaged, dine-in vs grab-and-go — and the per-state rate band each ship-to triggers lands prepped and pre-split in the books the operator opens Monday morning.
What corner-restaurant operators say after the wire-up.
Three shapes the bookkeeping loop runs against — a solo-operator corner restaurant with a single shift-rotation till, a multi-unit operator with a Sysco and US Foods cadence, and a solo catering operator running per-state prepared-food across county lines — all ran the same wire-once beat the home-page audience describes, and all stopped reconciling the per-shift card batch by hand.
Solo operator · corner restaurant
The till read between shifts used to be a lunch-rush-and-dinner-rush ritual — open the banking tab, the POS report, and the cash-drop sign-in sheet to hand-subtract the dinner-rush prep float. The loop fires the per-shift settlement reading at end-of-shift — the lunch-rush batch that closed at 15:00, the dinner-rush batch that closed at 22:00 — and the cash position refreshes every fifteen minutes. The Saturday the operator used to build the till balance is gone.
An owner-operator, 28-seat corner restaurant
Multi-unit operator · supplier cadence
The Sunday-night ritual of opening the day’s POS export, the day’s Sysco and US Foods invoices, and the day’s processor statement to hand-match food cost against the costing ledger is a ritual the loop retired. A per-supplier price roll the distributor slipped in last week surfaces on its own row the next morning, threaded to the supplier invoice the back-door check-in produced and the per-line recipe the costing sheet already carries. The food-cost variance the operator opens Monday is a single line the supplier invoice was carrying.
An operating partner, three-location restaurant group
Solo operator · catering across counties
The per-state prepared-food estimate used to be a Wednesday-morning scramble — read the CDTFA calendar, layer the Pennsylvania Allegheny 0.5% and Philadelphia 2% district surtax, accrue against the prepared-vs-grocery split the books were carrying as a single grocery row. The loop accrues against the prepared-vs-grocery split the operator wires up once — cold deli vs hot bar, sliced-to-order vs grab-and-go — and the per-state remittance row the CPA opens Monday morning is pre-split. A catering order that crosses a county line layers the surtax against the ship-to, not against the kitchen’s home-county rate.
An owner-operator, catering kitchen with cross-county ship-tos
The five questions restaurant operators ask before they wire it up.
Per-shift cash vs end-of-day, what the food-cost line actually reads, the prepared-vs-grocery carve-out per state, catering orders crossing a county line, and tip pool splits between front- and back-of-house — straight answers the restaurant-side search snippet can carry. The FAQPage-structured-data block above emits the same questions in a machine-readable shape Google reads directly.
Does the cash-flow watch read per-shift, or end-of-day?
A per-shift card batch, not an end-of-day rolled-up summary. The watch reads the per-shift settlement the POS posts at end-of-shift — the lunch-rush batch that closed at 15:00, the dinner-rush batch that closed at 22:00, the bar batch that closed at 01:00 on a Friday night — rather than the end-of-day rolled-up number a Square daily settlement publishes. The watch holds the per-shift batch separately from the bank balance until the ACH settles — typically one to two business days for the card networks, occasionally longer on weekends. The per-shift number the operator opens after the dinner-rush cut is the per-shift number the till-count produced at close, threaded to the per-shift tip declaration the punch-in already carried and the per-shift cash drop the safe-sign-in sheet already logged. The endpoint the operator runs decisions against is the regulator view, not the rolled-up summary — the per-shift variance the books carry Monday morning is the same per-shift variance the line cook was working on Saturday afternoon.
What does the food-cost line on the nightly reconcile actually read?
Each day’s supplier invoices get matched against the day’s POS export line by line — Sysco against the Sysco delivery ticket the back-door check-in signed, US Foods against the US Foods invoice, Restaurant Depot against the produce-and-dry-goods invoice, the local bread-route driver against the daily bread drop. The food cost the matching produces is the food cost the per-recipe costing sheet carried against the till’s menu line — not the food cost the bookkeeping books used to accrue against the grocery line. A per-supplier price roll, a per-recipe menu change, a per-shift comp the manager wrote up the night’s till — every variance lands on its own row in the day’s reconciliation file, threaded to the supplier invoice the delivery check-in produced and the till’s menu line the per-recipe costing sheet already carries. A refund against a voided order, a tip pool that landed on the wrong shift, a per-shift cash drop the safe-sign-in sheet logged but the bar manager’s reconciliation missed — every gap surfaces rather than infers.
How does the prepared-vs-grocery carve-out work for restaurants, per state?
Each state handles prepared vs grocery differently. California’s CDTFA treats hot food, sliced-to-order deli, and dine-in as taxable at the prepared rate, while packaged and pre-portioned grocery items stay at the lower grocery rate — the carve-out is the most-cited restaurant-line in the state-tax pillar cluster and the closest thing to a parsing rule the operator carries. Texas treats any food "ready for consumption" as taxable — heated, plated, or assembled-to-order — while packaged grocery at room temperature stays exempt at the same rate. New York exempts most grocery but taxes prepared deli sales and most dine-in; Florida taxes all grocery but layers a 0.5%–2% county surtax per ship-to. The operator wires the prepared-vs-grocery split once on the menu — per-line recipe, per-prep table, per-sellable item — and the loop accrues the per-state estimate against the split, not against the grocery rate the bookkeeping books used to accrue against. The per-state remittance row the CPA opens Monday morning is pre-split, threaded to the per-receipt match the nightly reconcile already produced. The matching state pillar (California’s CDTFA cadence, the $500K gross-revenue threshold, the district overlay) is on the California pillar.
What happens for catering orders that ship cross-state?
The catering-service portal the operator wires up reads as a separate source — per-catering-order ship-to, per-catering-order food category, per-catering-order nexus status against the buyer’s state-of-record — and the loop accrues the per-catering-order line item against the per-state prepared-food rate band the ship-to triggered. A catering order shipping to a Texas buyer from a California kitchen pays the Texas rate on the per-catering-order line items the menu carried; a per-catering-order for a local ship-to pays the local rate. A catering order that crosses a county line layered with a district surtax (Florida’s 0.5%–2% county surtax, Pennsylvania’s Allegheny 0.5% and Philadelphia 2% overlay) accrues the surtax against the ship-to, not against the kitchen’s home-county rate. A catering line item the operator didn’t wire up against a per-state food category lands on its own row in the day’s reconcile, rather than against the catering portal’s default rate; the contact page routes a catering-nexus question to the team within one business day.
How are tip pools split between front-of-house and back-of-house?
The bar manager’s reconciliation reads against the day’s credit-card batch, the day’s POS tip-pool split configuration, and the day’s per-shift tip declaration on the per-server punch-in the POS already carries. Tip pools split between front-of-house (server, bartender, host) and back-of-house (line cook, prep cook, dishwasher) per the kitchen’s own percentages — typically a 70/30 or 60/40 split the operator wired up once and the per-shift punch-in already carries. The loop holds the per-shift tip declaration against the day’s per-shift batch rather than against the week’s rolled-up total — a Friday bar batch that closed at 01:00 with a 22% credit-card tip pool accrues against the Friday shift, not against the next week’s Monday open. A tip-pool declaration that lands after the day’s batch (a server punch-in that wasn’t running until the line cook had already counted out, a credit-card tip that the POS processed after the bar’s batch closed) is held against its own row in the day’s reconcile file rather than swallowed into the next day’s batch.
5 questions answered · the per-state prepared-vs-grocery figure set lives on the California pillar, the wire-once beat is on /how-it-works, the per-tier price frame is on the pricing grid.
Next in the vertical trio
HVAC, plumbing, auto repair, and cleaning crews run the same wire-once beat against a per-job ledger instead of a till read between shifts — per-job past-due chasers, a parts-versus-labor sales-tax split, and a Sunday-night margin digest pegged to the trade's shoulder-season calendar. See /for-service-shops →
Next in the vertical landing cluster
The four-person service shop (a 4-person fractional-CFO practice, a 4-person bookkeeping-trained-up-to-consultancy crew, a 4-head fractional-CMO) runs the same wire-once beat against a per-engagement ledger instead of a till read between shifts — per- client WIP-to-recognized-revenue reconciled against the four-head capacity ledger, per- client retainer past-due chasers scripted to the day-of-late, the 5th sub-contractor across state lines nexus trigger surfaced the day the per-sub-contractor ship-to changes, and a one-page per-month-end digest the partner can read on a Sunday evening before the Tuesday team huddle. See /for-services →
For the per-state pillar cluster (the multi-state prepared-food cadence the corner-restaurant interior connects to), the per-tier price frame, and the wire-once walk, see the /guides hub →
The next step
If the line is yours, wire it up today.
Pro ($243 / month) ships the bookkeeping loop adapted to the corner-restaurant interior — till read between shifts, nightly food-cost reconcile, Friday margin digest, per-state prepared-food sales-tax estimate pegged to the prepared-vs-grocery split you wire up once. Starter (under $81 / month) carries the first three without the per-state tax layer; Managed ($1,620+ / month) hands the period close to a human. Pick the tier that fits your line, or waitlist the launch.
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