Accounting that gives you numbers you can trust.
CFO support that helps you make better decisions.
Accounting
How It Works
Every engagement is custom built around the needs of your business. We start with the service modules below, choose the ones your operation needs, and leave out the rest. Together they produce clean books, closed on time, that help you deliver results. The modules you choose set your flat monthly fee, agreed in writing before we start.
The modules fall into three areas.
Core Accounting Services
The work that keeps the books right, every day and every month.
- Monthly Hard Close. Books closed within ten business days of month end, on an accrual basis, by location. Bank, card, and payroll reconciled. Inter-company entries booked. Accruals for payroll, rent, liabilities, and major expenses. Shared costs allocated and documented.
- Daily Sales and Deposit Reconciliation, Including Third Parties. Sales reconciled every day from the point of sale through the processor to the bank, with every third-party delivery platform tied out. Deposits matched, processor fees and chargebacks recorded, cash over and short tracked, variances flagged the same day.
- Accounts Payable and Vendor Management. Invoices captured and coded to the restaurant chart of accounts so food, beverage, supplies, and repairs land where they belong. Vendors set up, W-9s kept current, statements reconciled. A weekly payables report.
- Inventory and Cost of Goods Sold. Invoice-level cost tracking. Price changes on your highest-volume items flagged as they happen. Period-end inventory counts so the cost of goods on the P&L reflects what was actually used, not just what was bought.
Reporting and Analysis
The numbers you run the business on, delivered on a set rhythm.
- Consolidated and Unit-Level Financial Reporting. A chart of accounts built for restaurants. Profit and loss for every location, a consolidated P&L, a balance sheet, and a cash flow statement, every month. Prime cost, labor, occupancy, and controllables shown as a percent of sales.
- Weekly Prime Cost and Owner’s Scorecard. Food, beverage, and labor cost by location every week, measured against sales and target. A one-page scorecard every month with the same handful of numbers each time, so the trend is visible: sales, prime cost, labor, cash, and what each location contributed.
- Weekly Cash Flow Report and Multi-Week Forecast. Every week: what came in, what went out, and where cash stands by account. A rolling multi-week forecast that shows payroll, rent, sales tax, debt service, and vendor payments before they land, so a tight week is visible in advance rather than on the morning it happens.
- Monthly Owner’s Report and Review. A short report every month in plain language: what changed and what it means. Then a sit-down with us to go through it.
Other Services
Added to the engagement when your business calls for them.
- Payroll Administration. Payroll processed with tips and service charges. Timekeeping imported and reviewed. State-mandated retirement plan enrollment and remittance where required. Tied out to the general ledger every period.
- Sales Tax Compliance. Taxability mapped by revenue channel, including delivery and marketplace facilitator rules. Returns prepared and filed on your state’s schedule and reconciled to point of sale, so what you collected is what you remit.
- Fixed Asset Records and Business Personal Property Tax Filings. Fixed asset records kept current by location, and the business personal property tax filing prepared from them each year.
- Management Company and Intercompany Accounting. Management fees, shared costs, and intercompany balances booked and reconciled across your entities every month.
- Lender, Landlord, and Franchisor Reporting. The statements and reports each one requires, prepared from the same books and delivered on their schedule.
- Catch-Up and Clean-Up Bookkeeping. Books brought current and corrected, so the monthly rhythm starts from a clean set of records.
CFO Advisory
How It Works
For long stretches, running a restaurant group is steady work: Ninety percent of your time is on the floor, with your people, your product, or your guests, and you’re running the business on numbers you trust.
Then something happens. A third concept starts to brew. A partner wants out, or wants in. A buyer calls.
CFO Advisory is how we handle those moments.
The work is built around the event, not a package, and it is layered directly onto the accounting we already run for you. Because we keep the books, we are not starting from a document request; we are starting from a clean P&L by location, a current balance sheet, and a forecast that already exists. That is why the work moves fast, and why it costs a fraction of what a standalone adviser would charge to learn the business first. Each engagement is scoped in writing before it begins and can be billed as a fixed fee or hourly.
Below are the types of situations we encounter most often and how we support owners in these moments.
Expanding
For an operator who is ready to open the next location.
- Site Economics. Whether a location can work financially, before you sign the lease.
- Lease Review. The full cost of the lease, including the terms that matter later.
- Opening Budget. Build-out, pre-opening costs, and working capital, based on your existing units.
- Funding Plan. How much you will need, when you will need it, and where it comes from.
- Ramp Tracking. Actual results against the opening plan through the first year.
Investor Relations and Raising Capital
For an operator bringing in partners, investors, or lenders.
- Capital Plan. How much to raise, in what form, and what it will cost you.
- Investor Package. The financial model, the business story, and the reporting investors expect.
- Partner Deals. Buy-in and buy-out structures, and what each partner receives.
- Debt Capacity. How much debt the cash flow can carry, and on what terms.
- Ongoing Reporting. Reporting that investors and lenders can rely on.
First Concept Modeling and Analysis
For someone planning their first restaurant.
- Concept Pro Forma. A realistic financial projection for the restaurant you are planning to open.
- Capital Required. What it will take to open and to get through the first year.
- Break-Even. The sales the concept needs each week to cover its costs.
- Objectivity. No-nonsense feedback from industry veterans about what to expect in this industry and how to overcome roadblocks.
Real Estate Acquisition
For an owner buying the building, or buying another one.
- Lease or Buy. The economics of owning the space compared with continuing to rent it.
- Deal Modeling. Purchase price, financing, and the effect on the business’s cash flow.
- Entity Structure. How the real estate should be held alongside the operating business.
- Lender Package. The financial statements and forecast a bank will ask to see.
Exit Planning
For an owner thinking about selling or stepping back from the business.
- Valuation Range. What the business is likely worth today, and why.
- Value Drivers. What would make it worth more, and how long that would take.
- Sale Readiness. The records and reporting a buyer or broker will expect to see.
- After-Tax Proceeds. What you would actually keep from a sale, after taxes.
- Transition. Support through the deal, and a clean close of the books when it is done.
Owner Financial Planning and Investment Management
For principal owners and their families. Provided through Lyon Wealth Advisory, our affiliated registered investment adviser, under a separate agreement.
- Business and Household. One comprehensive view of the assets, obligations, opportunities, across business and personal balance sheets and what it means for your family.
- Financial Plan. Cash flow, retirement, and estate planning built on what the business actually produces.
- Tax Planning. Entity structure, owner pay, and the timing of major decisions, across business and personal returns.
- Cash Management and Investment Management. Cash management to improve interest yields on cash held for operations or future investments. An investment portfolio managed alongside the business and the real estate you already own.
Budgets, forecasts, pro formas, valuations, and other financial models prepared as part of Lyon Restaurant Advisory’s CFO Advisory services are for management’s internal planning use only. These models are not audited, reviewed, or compiled financial statements, and we provide no assurance on them. They are based on assumptions and information available at the time they are prepared, and actual results will differ from any projection, in some cases materially. Lenders, investors, buyers, and other outside parties should not rely on these models without our written consent. Owner financial planning and investment management services are provided separately by Lyon Wealth Advisory, LLC, a registered investment adviser, under its own agreement.
Start with a conversation
Thirty minutes about your business and what you’re facing. A new location, a partner, a lease, or just getting books you can trust. No obligation.