Questions owners ask
Straight answers, before you ask.
Most of these come down to the same thing: where your money is, and what to do about it. Here is how we work — plainly.
Will this actually make me more money?
That is the whole point — clean books are the starting line, not the finish. Cost Control usually finds 2 to 4% of food cost you can take back; Labor Control catches the hours and tips bleeding out while the week can still be fixed; and every week The SBO Brief hands you what to do about it, not just a number. We do not run your floor — we show you where the margin is and what to do about it, and you make the call.
Do I have to switch my software?
No. We run on QuickBooks, and most restaurants we work with are on Toast — but the accounts are yours, owned by you. If you are on something else today, we map it out together before anything moves.
Do you do payroll?
We do not run payroll ourselves — you keep the payroll service you already use. What we do is keep every payroll entry clean in your books and handle the tip side. Tell us what you run and we fit to it.
Do you do my taxes?
We are not your tax preparer — but we get your books tax-ready and hand your CPA clean year-end numbers. Do not have a CPA? We can point you to a good one.
Do you file my sales tax?
Yes — sales and liquor tax filing is part of the monthly work, with your 1099s at year-end and a clean hand-off to your CPA.
Do you handle tips?
We do not run your tips for you — we set it up so you can. We put you on a proper tip app with your tip-pool and tip-out rules built in; you run it day to day; and we keep it reconciled to your POS and payroll so the numbers match and nobody gets shorted.
Do you pay my bills?
Yes — we take vendor bills off your plate. We capture every invoice, code it to the books, and run your food-supplier payments on time, posted straight to QuickBooks. You approve; we handle the rest. No more stack of checks on a Friday night.
Do you track inventory?
We do not count your shelves. You track inventory the way you already do — a spreadsheet, or an inventory app — and we connect it to your books and read it for cost: true food cost, live inventory value, and where it is leaking, dish by dish. The counts are yours; what the numbers mean is ours.
What if my books are months behind?
Common, and fixable. Whether it is a few weeks or a couple of years, we catch you up first so we are working from real numbers, and we scope it up front as a one-time Books Rescue — no surprise bill.
Do you do more than monthly bookkeeping — open a place, fix a mess, set up my systems?
Yes — that is SBO Advisory (Rescue & Build). Beyond the monthly service, we take on one-time work: standing up a new or just-bought restaurant, catching up a set of books, costing your menu, auditing where your margin leaks, or building your events side. Fixed-scope projects, or an operator on the line by the hour — quoted before we start. It is laid out on the Services page.
How fast will I see something?
The daily sales pulse is automatic. Your weekly SBO Brief arrives within 4 business days — counted from the day we have your full week (your one job: upload the week’s vendor invoices from your phone). The monthly close is delivered within 10–15 business days. We will not promise a calendar date we cannot keep.
Do I have to be local?
No. Everything runs online, so we work with an owner across the country the same as one down the street. In-person help is there for owners near Bend, OR and Santa Barbara, CA.
Is there a long contract?
No — no contract, no lock-in. It is month-to-month, and onboarding is a one-time setup.
What does it cost?
The Books — clean books plus The SBO Brief — runs $1,035 to $1,320 a month per location, set by your volume. Cost Control adds $460–$635; Labor Control adds $235. Your software (QuickBooks, your POS, and the tools behind the add-ons) is yours, in your name, quoted all-in before you sign — we never resell it. One-time setup is $1,200–$1,800, quoted for your situation. Month-to-month, no commitment. Bigger jobs — catching up messy books, costing a menu, opening a new place — are fixed-scope projects or $225 an hour, always quoted before we start.
Are you a fractional CFO?
No. A fractional CFO drops in on strategy and forecasts — usually for companies chasing investors. You run a restaurant. You need clean books and someone who reads them every week, not a quarterly set of reports. That is us: the back office, kept right, by people who have run the line — who flag what moved and recommend what to do about it.
Do you use AI?
We use software to do the busywork — pulling in sales, catching invoices, flagging what moved. We do not hand your numbers to a bot for advice. The same certified people, who have actually run restaurants, read your books and recommend what to do about them. The tools do the typing; the note — and a recommendation on what to do about it — comes from us. An AI CFO has never been 86'd on a Saturday night.
Still wondering
Ask the one on your mind.
Quick questions are part of the relationship — you'll never see a bill for asking. Every message is read by a person, and you get a written answer, usually the same day.