Harmony Group is built around the idea that accounting is a conversation. We're not an outsourced, offshore service or an automated software. Our 100% insourced U.S.-based team works directly with you, bringing deep restaurant and hospitality expertise and clear, ongoing communication to help you run a healthier, more profitable business.

Harmony offers our accounting services solely to restaurant and hospitality industry businesses, but we also provide tax and advisory services for individuals and businesses in other industries. If you value a team that's hands-on, responsive, and collaborative, Harmony's tax team can be a good fit.

Harmony Group is a fully remote team based across the United States, which allows us to support clients nationwide while still offering a personal, responsive relationship.

Our core services for restaurants include day-to-day full-service bookkeeping, CFO advisory, tax planning and preparation, and strategic consulting. This includes industry-specific financial reporting, margin analysis, advisory and planning around pre-opening, and insights tailored to the hospitality business model.

It means you'll never feel like you're sending your financials into a black box. What separates Harmony from other firms, or from automations, is we talk through your numbers with you, explain what they mean, and offer CFO level advisory to help you improve and make confident decisions for your business.

Yes. Our tax team supports both individuals and businesses with preparation, planning, and advisory. We'll ensure you're compliant today and better prepared for tomorrow.

If you're looking for a team that understands the realities of running a restaurant — from tight margins to ever-changing costs and the challenges of seasonality — and you want advisors who get into the trenches with you, Harmony is the right partner. Clear numbers and projections can help you focus on what you do best operationally, and we regularly help operators of all sorts improve margins and increase profitability.

We start with a discovery call to learn about your business goals and challenges. From there, we set up your systems, review your historical financials, and build a clear reporting framework. Most clients are fully onboarded within a few weeks.

We work with leading restaurant and accounting platforms like QuickBooks, MarginEdge, and other integrations that streamline your reporting. Harmony is versed in all the most common POS platforms. But more importantly, we customize the tools around your team and workflow, not the other way around.

We offer customized monthly packages based on your business size and service needs. Our goal is to provide predictable, transparent pricing with no hidden fees.

No. Most of our services are offered month-to-month. We want you to stay with Harmony because of the value we deliver, not because of a contract.

You'll be matched with a dedicated Harmony team — real people, not a call center. Your primary accountant point of contact knows your business inside and out, and you'll always have access to our wider team for specialized support. Harmony builds layers of accountability and advisory into our processes — in addition to your main point person, there are several people on your team, from Director to Controller to staff accountant.

As often as you need. Some clients talk to us weekly, others monthly. We adjust communication to fit your pace, but we're always just an email, text message, or call away.

No problem. Most of our bookkeeping clients also opt for Harmony to handle their taxes, but CPAs love us for doing most of their work for them. Harmony also has packages for higher-level insights like CFO advisory and tax planning.

Just schedule a discovery call through our website. We'll talk through your goals, challenges, and service needs, and map out a tailored plan for your business.

Yes. Our initial consultation is complimentary — it's a chance for us to learn about each other and see if Harmony is the right fit.

A profit and loss statement (P&L) is a financial report that shows your revenue, costs, and expenses over a given period — essentially a snapshot of whether your restaurant is making or losing money. For operators, the P&L is your single most important financial document. It tells you where your money is going, whether your food and labor costs are in line with industry benchmarks, and where you have room to improve margins. Reading your P&L regularly — not just at tax time — is one of the most important habits a restaurant owner can build.

Ideally, every month — with a hard close completed within 10 business days of month end. A hard close means your books are finalized, reconciled, and reliable enough to make business decisions from. Many operators only close quarterly or annually, which means they're flying blind for months at a time. Monthly closes give you a consistent rhythm of accurate data so you can catch problems early and plan ahead with confidence.

At minimum, you should be reviewing a P&L monthly, a cash flow report weekly, and a sales and labor trend report weekly. On a daily basis, your sales reconciliation — comparing your POS totals against actual deposits — should be happening without fail. The more frequently you're looking at your numbers, the faster you can respond to issues like rising food costs, a slow week, or a vendor billing error. Financial reporting isn't a once-a-quarter exercise for a healthy restaurant — it's an ongoing conversation.

The three numbers operators watch most closely are food cost percentage, labor cost percentage, and prime cost. Food cost typically runs 28–35% of revenue depending on concept; labor runs 25–35%; and prime cost — the combination of both — should ideally stay under 60–65%. Beyond those, you want to track your net profit margin (healthy full-service restaurants aim for 5–9%), your cost of goods sold, and your operating expenses as a percentage of revenue. Benchmarks vary by concept and market, but knowing your numbers against industry standards tells you immediately where you're healthy and where you need to act.

The key is consistency and speed. Invoices should be scanned or photographed and submitted to your accounting system the same day they're received — not stacked on a desk to deal with later. Platforms like MarginEdge make this seamless by letting you photograph invoices on your phone and automatically coding them to the right accounts. On the filing side, maintain a simple digital folder structure organized by vendor and month. Paper invoices create delays, introduce errors, and make audits painful. The sooner your invoices are in the system, the more accurate and timely your books will be.

Cash basis accounting records revenue when cash is received and expenses when they're paid. Accrual accounting records revenue when it's earned and expenses when they're incurred, regardless of when money actually changes hands. For most restaurants doing meaningful volume, accrual accounting gives you a far more accurate picture of your business — it matches your costs to the period they belong to, which matters enormously for understanding your true margins. Cash basis can make a bad month look fine if you haven't paid your bills yet. Accrual keeps you honest.

Tips flow through your books differently depending on your model. For credit card tips, the gross tip amount should be recorded as a liability (you owe it to your staff), then cleared when payroll is run. Cash tips are generally the employee's responsibility to report. If you're running a tip pool or auto-gratuity, the accounting gets more nuanced — you need to ensure your payroll system and your POS are talking to each other correctly, and that tip income is being reported accurately for payroll tax purposes. Mishandling tips is one of the most common audit triggers for restaurants, so it's worth getting right.

Sales tax compliance is one of the most overlooked risk areas for restaurant operators. What's taxable varies by state — in some states, prepared food is taxed differently than grocery items; alcohol has its own rules; and delivery fees may or may not be taxable depending on jurisdiction. You need to ensure your POS is set up correctly to collect the right tax on the right items, that you're filing on time (monthly or quarterly depending on your state), and that your remittances match your reported sales. Errors here can result in significant penalties and back taxes.

A bookkeeper handles day-to-day transaction recording — categorizing expenses, reconciling accounts, and keeping your books current. A controller oversees the bookkeeping function, ensures accuracy, and produces reliable financial reports. A CFO uses those reports to drive strategy — cash flow planning, budgeting, growth decisions, and investor or lender relationships. Most independent restaurants need all three functions but can't afford three full-time hires. That's the case for an outsourced model like Harmony's, where you get the full stack at a fraction of the cost.

Start with your theoretical food cost — what your costs should be based on your recipes and sales mix — and compare it to your actual food cost from your P&L. A significant gap between the two (typically anything over 2–3%) points to one of a few culprits: portioning inconsistency, waste and spoilage, theft, vendor price increases that haven't been reflected in your menu pricing, or invoices being coded incorrectly. Regular inventory counts, recipe costing, and weekly food cost reporting are the tools that keep this number in check.

At minimum: daily sales reports and POS closing reports (7 years), payroll records and tax filings (7 years), vendor invoices and receipts (7 years), bank statements (7 years), and your annual financial statements indefinitely. If you're ever audited — by the IRS, a state tax authority, or a liquor board — the burden of proof is on you. A good document retention policy, combined with a cloud-based accounting system, means you're never scrambling.

Sooner than most operators think. The common triggers are: you're opening a second location, you're considering outside investment or an SBA loan, your margins have been declining and you can't pinpoint why, or your revenue has crossed roughly $2–3 million annually and your financial complexity has outgrown what a bookkeeper alone can manage. A CFO-level relationship pays for itself quickly when it's helping you structure a deal, avoid a bad lease, or find margin you didn't know you were leaving on the table.