No mystery, no "trust me." This page walks through onboarding step by step, what happens every month, and how the tricky parts of coffee shop money — tips, sales tax, margins, loans — get handled correctly.
Most owners finish their part in under 30 minutes total. If you get stuck anywhere, we do it together — on the phone or at your shop.
You add me as your accountant from inside QuickBooks Online — free, doesn't count against your user limit, removable by you at any time. I send exact click-by-click instructions. Don't have QuickBooks? Skip this — building your file is part of setup, and I handle it.
✓ Done when: you get my "I'm in" confirmation email.QuickBooks needs to see business transactions automatically — your business checking and every business credit card, including supplemental cards your manager carries. Prefer not to link an account? Monthly PDF statements work too.
✓ Done when: every business account shows in the feed (or we've agreed on statements).A shared Google Drive folder or a photo emailed to me — whichever you'll actually do. Receipts end up attached to their transactions inside QuickBooks: permanently organized, audit-ready. The habit: within 3 business days, especially anything paid in cash.
✓ Done when: you've sent one test receipt.A short form: legal structure, accounts and cards, your POS and who set up its tax rates, loans, payroll, your tax preparer's contact. Partial answers are fine — we fill gaps at kickoff.
✓ Done when: the form's back to me.I spend the first week inside your existing books (or your statements and spreadsheets, if that's what exists): how things are categorized, whether months reconcile, duplicates, gaps. You do nothing for this step. If there's significant cleanup, it's quoted flat, in writing, before any work begins.
✓ Done when: you have my findings and a confirmed quote in your inbox.At your shop or by phone. What shape your books are in, honestly. How money actually moves — sales, suppliers, cash, how you pay yourself. And the one-time decisions that are easiest made now: sales detail (one number vs. coffee/food/retail split — free from day one, a paid project later), how we'll measure your cost of goods, and a simple cash routine. You get a recap email of every decision — that becomes our shared reference.
✓ Done when: the recap email is sent. Then we're in monthly rhythm.Same cadence, every month, no surprises. Your books close by the 5th — reconciled to the penny, explained in plain English.
I categorize transactions as they land in the feeds and match your receipts as they come in. Anything I can't identify goes on one batched question list — never a guess, never twenty texts.
I pull your POS monthly report — the source of truth for sales, refunds, tax collected, and tips — and confirm every bank and card feed is current.
Reconciliation. Checking to the statement — difference $0.00. Each credit card to its statement. Cash on hand to the safe count you text me. A reconciliation that won't zero never gets forced; it gets found.
Review before you ever see it. Margins in your normal band? Payroll proportionate? Merchant fees where they should be (~2.6–3% of card sales)? Anything wildly off from last month gets opened and explained.
Your report lands: P&L, balance sheet, and a 3–5 sentence plain-English note — what happened, what's coming (like a sales tax deadline), and anything that needs your eyes. Questions answered within 1 business day, all month.
Coffee shop money has moving parts that generic bookkeeping mangles. These are handled correctly from day one:
Card tips are your employees' money passing through your account — so they're tracked as a liability in transit, not sales. Booked wrong (the most common DIY error), your revenue is overstated by roughly the tip rate and you pay tax on money that was never yours.
Read more → Sales taxEvery sale adds to a Sales Tax Payable balance; every filing drains it. You always know exactly how much of the cash in your account is not yours to spend — and your monthly note flags the filing deadline before it hits, not after.
Read more → MarginsYour choice at kickoff: a zero-effort estimate method, or true margins from a quarterly 30-minute inventory count (small add-on). Either way you see your gross margin trend — and a slipping margin is how you catch supplier price creep, waste, or underpricing months before year-end.
Read more → LoansEvery loan payment is part principal, part interest — booking the whole payment as an expense (the classic mistake) distorts both your profit and what you owe. I track each loan's balance and split every payment per the amortization schedule, so your balance sheet matches the bank's.
Read more → CashRegister cash, the safe, cash paid to suppliers — tracked through a Cash on Hand account reconciled to a monthly count you text me. Drawer overs and shorts get their own line, so "a little short lately" becomes a number you can see, not a feeling.
Read more → Gift cardsA gift card sold is a promise, not revenue — it becomes revenue when redeemed. Delivery app deposits get grossed up so you see full sales and the 15–30% commission you're really paying, instead of a net number that hides both.
Read more → PayrollYour payroll service posts wages, taxes, and withholdings; I match every bank withdrawal to those entries. Doubled-up payroll expense is the #1 error I find in DIY books — it makes your labor cost look scarier than it is.
Read more → You & partnersWhat you and any partner take out (or put in) is tracked per owner in equity — never buried in expenses. At year-end you see exactly what the business paid each of you — a number most owners have honestly never seen.
Read more →"Fair warning — if I look at your books and find something a CPA needs to fix first, I'll tell you that instead of taking your money."
That's the whole list. Everything else on this page is my job.
The review is free, the quote is in writing before any work starts, and your part of onboarding takes about half an hour.
Email me — singhbookkeepingsvcs@gmail.comOr call/text: (630) 812-8610