One base, two add-ons — built around one number: prime cost.
Every restaurant starts with The Books — clean books and a weekly note on your prime cost, on whatever POS you run. That is See it. Add Cost Control and Labor Control to run that number down — food and bar, hours and tips. That is Run it. The SBO Brief keeps the margin in writing every week — Keep it. You own the software; SBO reads the numbers. Month-to-month, no lock-in. We are for independent, owner-run restaurants and food trucks — up to a single location doing about $5 million a year.
- SBO Dashboard — 24/7 access
- Clean books in QuickBooks
- Your POS, connected
- Bills & receipts capture
- Sales tax, set aside & filed†
- Bills paid, vendors on time
- Payroll posted — tips on the books
- Food cost, COGS, labor, prime — weekly
- Sales by category, week over week
- What you owe (A/P), by vendor
- P&L & balance sheet — monthly
- Cash on hand + 13-week forecast
- The SBO Brief — weekly & monthly
At the base, you keep your own tip sheet, count sheet, and clock-in — until you are ready to hand a piece of it over. That is where the add-ons come in.
Add Cost Control
This is how you stop guessing on food cost. Cost Control reads every invoice and count, shows your true food and bar cost — not just what you bought — and flags exactly where it is leaking: over-portioning, price creep, waste, the moment it happens.
We do not sell it as software — we sell it as money found. On a typical kitchen there is 2 to 4% of food cost sitting in the leaks; we find exactly where, so you can take it back — usually many times what the add-on costs. The SBO Brief stops saying "food cost is up" and starts saying where it is leaking, and what to do about it by Friday.
Optional — we build and maintain your recipes, menus, and order guides: +$199/mo.
- Live, true food cost
- Food-cost variance by item — the leak, named
- Live inventory value
- Vendor price-increase alerts
- Menu margin, dish by dish
- Food & bar — one cost engine
- Vendor payments & AP automation
Add Labor Control
You build the schedule and run your shifts — that is the floor, and it is yours. Labor Control is the numbers behind it. We read your hours against your sales, turn your tip pool into clean, compliant payouts on the books, and put the labor heads-up in your SBO Brief — early in the week, while the schedule can still be fixed, not after the money is spent.
What SBO does — and does not. We process the labor numbers, keep your tips compliant, and flag what is drifting. We do not schedule your staff or manage your shifts. You run the floor; we make the numbers true.
- Labor % against sales — read in the weekly SBO Brief
- Prime cost — food + labor, one number
- Sales per labor hour, by daypart
- Overtime & overstaffing flagged early — while the week can still be fixed
- Tip pool — pooled & compliant on the books
- Tip-credit math & Form 8027 — handled
- Clean hours & tips into payroll
* Your tier — Lite / Core / Plus — is set by your volume (roughly 20 / 40 / 60 vendor invoices a week), with Core the typical quote. The software you own — QuickBooks, your POS, and the tools behind the add-ons — is bought in your name, never resold by SBO, and quoted all-in before you sign. One-time setup runs $1,200–$1,800, quoted for your situation. Per location. Your books live in your own QuickBooks; if you ever leave, you keep them. Month-to-month, no lock-in.
† Sales tax is set aside automatically and filed in sales-tax states — not Oregon, which has no state sales tax.
Real numbers, not a promise.
Here is how the money pencils on an example restaurant — an estimate from an owner's own numbers, firmed up once we see the books. Cutting cost goes straight into gross profit; a bigger check shows up on the bottom line.
Illustrative estimates on example restaurants — your real figures get firmed up once we see your books. Cost Control: we review and approve every vendor invoice, name the leak weekly, and check menu margin monthly. Labor Control: hours, overtime, and tips watched weekly, tied out to payroll monthly.
On a food truck or cart? There is a plan for that.
A food truck is not a small restaurant — it is a different animal. Fewer moving parts: one sales sheet a day, a short vendor list, one bank account. The Food Truck Plan sits off to the side, flat and simple — for trucks and carts running roughly $100K–$300K a year.
Same base inclusions as The Books — QuickBooks closed monthly, your POS connected, vendor bills captured, sales & liquor tax filing, 1099s, an annual CPA handoff, and The SBO Brief. Payroll and big one-offs are quoted on their own. Most trucks run Square or Toast Go — the lightweight card readers built for a single mobile spot — so that is what we connect. One-time setup to get you going. When you cross ~$300K or move into a full brick-and-mortar spot, you graduate to The Books — books already clean, tools already connected, add-ons ready when you want them.
We set up the systems, then run them.
Clean books start with clean plumbing. Before the first report, we pick the right tools for your place, wire them together, and get your sales, bills, and labor flowing in on their own — QuickBooks, your register, invoice capture, cost control, payroll posting. Set it up once; it runs from there. That is the one-time setup. Everything after is us keeping it running.
Opening, fixing, or building — the work bigger than the close.
SBO Advisory is where thirty years of actually running restaurants goes to work on your questions. Pick a fixed-scope project, or get an operator on the line by the hour — the work the monthly service does not cover.
Fixed-scope projects, or from $225/hr — quoted before we start. The monthly service stays the engine; this is the bigger one-time work on top.
What you are really paying for.
A bookkeeper keeps records. We keep the records, read the numbers, and give you the heads-up on what to do about it — for one flat fee, with nothing hidden behind it.
- Data entry and reports you have to decode
- Surprises waiting at tax time
- You chase them for answers
- Billed by the hour or the task
- Clean books and a written note on what they mean
- What moved, flagged before it bites
- The same certified people every month
- One flat monthly fee
- Add-ons and per-transaction charges that stack up
- Payroll, cleanup and extras billed by surprise
- Quote-on-a-demo — sometimes a long contract
- Every report your plan produces is included
- Cost Control and Labor Control are the only add-ons — and they pay for themselves
- Pricing on the page — month-to-month
One flat fee. Month-to-month. Certified pros who have run the floor.
A few things most restaurant bookkeepers will not put on the table — so here they are up front.
One clean picture of your back office — your books, your costs, and the tools that feed them.
Your register, your bills, payroll, food and bar, inventory, and tips — it all flows into your books in QuickBooks. SBO sits in the middle: we wire it together, read it, and hand it back as The SBO Brief — your numbers, and what to do about them.
The only two names you will see up front are the constants: SBO and QuickBooks. The specific tools behind the rest — your POS, your tip handling, your invoice capture, your Cost Control and Labor Control add-ons — we fit to your business and map out once you decide to move forward. Your setup stays your business until then.
See where you stand — in about a minute.
No phone screen, no pitch. Answer a few questions and we will tell you which plan fits, where you stand on prime cost, and where we would look for the money. Every Fit inquiry is reviewed personally.
Check your fit