Accounting for retail
& hospitality.
Thin margins, high transaction volume, and constant tax exposure. We keep sales tax filed, tips reported correctly, and prime cost visible — so you know each week whether you actually made money.
Built for retail and hospitality.
The specific problems this industry runs into — handled by people who have seen them before.
Sales & Use Tax Filings
Connecticut sales tax handled end to end — collection review, filing, and remittance across every location and channel, including online sales and marketplace facilitator rules that trip up most retailers.
Tip Reporting & Labor Costs
Tip allocation, reporting compliance, and the FICA tip credit — a meaningful credit most restaurants either miss or under-claim — plus labor cost tracking against sales.
Claim your tip creditInventory & Prime Cost
Weekly and monthly prime cost reporting, shrinkage tracking, and menu or category-level margin analysis so pricing decisions are grounded in real numbers.
See your true marginsOrganizations like yours.
Serving clients across Litchfield County and throughout Connecticut.
Retail Stores
Single and multi-location shops managing inventory, POS, and seasonal swings.
Restaurants & Cafes
Full-service and quick-service operations tracking prime cost and tips.
Inns & Lodging
Bed-and-breakfasts and small hotels with occupancy tax and seasonal revenue.
Specialty & E-Commerce
Boutique retailers selling across storefront, online, and marketplace channels.
What owners in retail and hospitality ask.
Sales tax, tips, and margin control in high-volume businesses.
Do I owe Connecticut sales tax on online sales?
Likely yes, and possibly in other states too. Economic nexus rules mean you can owe sales tax in a state where you have no physical presence once you exceed its sales or transaction thresholds. Marketplace facilitator rules shift collection to platforms like Amazon or Etsy for sales made through them — but not for your own website. Multi-channel sellers frequently under-collect without realizing it until a notice arrives.
What is the FICA tip credit and am I claiming it?
The FICA tip credit lets food and beverage employers claim a credit for the employer portion of Social Security and Medicare taxes paid on employee tips above the minimum wage threshold. For a restaurant with meaningful tipped income it is worth thousands of dollars annually, and it is one of the most commonly missed credits in the industry. It requires accurate tip reporting to claim, which is another reason tip compliance matters.
What is prime cost and what should mine be?
Prime cost is cost of goods sold plus total labor, and it is the single most useful number in a restaurant. Full-service operations generally target roughly 60 to 65 percent of sales, quick-service somewhat lower. It should be calculated weekly, not monthly — by the time a monthly statement arrives, four weeks of margin leakage have already happened and you cannot recover them.
How do I handle tip reporting and allocation correctly?
Employees must report all tips, and employers must collect those reports, withhold appropriately, and file accordingly. Tip pooling arrangements have specific legal requirements about who may participate, and service charges are legally not tips — they are wages, taxed differently. Getting this wrong creates both payroll tax and wage-and-hour exposure at the same time.
How should I track inventory shrinkage?
Through regular physical counts compared against book inventory, with variance investigated rather than simply written off. Shrinkage combines theft, waste, spoilage, and receiving errors, and the causes require different fixes — so a single write-off number tells you nothing actionable. Categorizing variance by cause is what turns shrinkage from a cost of doing business into something you can reduce.
Can you tell me which menu items or product categories actually make money?
Yes, and it usually reshapes the menu or floor plan. Item-level margin analysis combines cost with sales volume to show which items are high-margin and popular, which are popular but barely profitable, and which occupy space without earning it. Owners are routinely surprised by which best-seller is a loss leader.
How do I manage cash flow through a seasonal business?
By planning the slow months during the strong ones. Seasonal businesses fail in February, not in July — but the decision that causes it was made in July. We build rolling cash forecasts that reserve appropriately during peak season, time equipment purchases and debt service around the cycle, and give you a realistic picture of how much cushion you actually need.