Tipped payroll, turnover and sales tax in one place.
Tipped wage payroll, high turnover onboarding and sales tax handled together.
Tipped payroll has to be exactly right
Tip credit, tip pooling and tip reporting are the three places restaurant payroll goes wrong, and all three carry real consequences. Michigan's tipped minimum wage and the federal tip credit rules interact, tip pools have restrictions on who can participate, and reported tips drive both the employee's tax position and the employer's FICA tip credit.
Set up correctly, the FICA tip credit is money back to the restaurant that a meaningful number of operators never claim. Set up incorrectly, tip handling is a wage claim waiting to happen.
Turnover is the operating reality
A restaurant may issue two or three times as many W-2s as it has positions. Every hire is a new hire report. Every departure is a final paycheck with timing rules. Every year end is a W-2 delivery problem for people who have moved.
Handled as a process, this is routine administrative work. Handled by a general manager between shifts, it produces the penalties and the wage complaints.
Food cost and labor cost, visible monthly
The two numbers that determine whether a restaurant survives are food cost and labor cost as percentages of sales. Most independent operators only see them annually, in a tax return, which is far too late to act on.
A properly configured chart of accounts puts both on a monthly P&L. When labor runs four points high in a month, you find out in the second week of the following month, not the following March.
Sales tax and the busy-season slip
Michigan sales tax filings get missed during peak season for one reason: the books are behind and nobody can produce the number. The filing failure is a symptom of the bookkeeping failure.
Monthly close solves both. It also means the quarterly estimate and the year-end position are known while there is still time to do something about them.
Talk through your restaurants & hospitality payroll
Bring your last return and a payroll register. We tell you what we would change and what it costs. No charge, no obligation.