Thanks a lot, folks!  I’ve leaned toward doing my own books using QuickBooks.  I will NOT, however, attempt to do my own taxes.

Mike S – where did you get your register, and do you have a brand you’d recommend?

I won’t do my own taxes either.  I use a Casio register that is about 4 years old and love it.  Mine has 48 different departments on it.  It has keys 1 thru 24 then a shift key and 1 thru 24 becomes 25 thru 48.  Each dept is a menu item.  For instance I program key 1 for Buffalo Burgers at a price of $5.50, key 2 is Bufflao Burgers with cheese at $6.00 and so on.  We never have to enter a price because each menu item and it’s price is preprogrammed in the register.  You can even program in sales tax if you want.  At the end of the day I run a register report that shows each item,  how many were sold and the gross receipts for that item plus a gross for the day from all sales.  I can then use that report to help restock inventory because I know how much is gone.   It only cost me about $200 and has worked great for 4 years.
 
Mike S.

  I use Quickbooks Pro and an Accountant!  It will save you a LOT of headaches in the future to get setup with the proper system  in the beginning.  My Accountant teaches Quickbooks at the local SBA and Community College that’s how I met him.  Google him and get his info if you are interested: John Sawyer, AccountNet.  He has offices in Atlanta and Nashville (he works remotely from his computer to yours so you don’t have to be in the same location)  and he is very reasonable in costs and he is familiar with Hot dog Carts and mobile vendors!

I use Quickbooks Pro and it’s the only way to go.  I also have a CPA that I send a copy of quickbooks to once a year and she does the taxes.   I don’t use a POS system, just a good register with department keys that I print off each day and post to a spreadsheet which is transferred to quickbooks.  When getting started, don’t waste money on bookeepers, accountants or fancy POS systems.  Instead put the money you would give them in your pocket.  Getting started is tough enough.
 
Mike S.

We use Quickbooks, I have two bookkeepers and an accountant. If you are a small business with no employees I would do the books myself, and use Quickbooks, it makes all your tax payments easy, and get a monthly P&L statement………..BillyB

at the restaurant that I worked at we had Quickbooks Pro.   I set up vendors and  categories for everything and then each item and entered the data every time something was purchased.   It helped to be able to pull up each item and see the price increases or compare  the prices for different vendors.    They didn’t have the register setup like Konnie does, it just had breakfast, lunch, dessert and beverage so there wasn’t really any way to keep track of what was sold for each day.
 
You can easily do payroll yourself, but one of the advantages of using a payroll service is they can do background checks and drug testing and they handle all the workman’s comp.  And the service that a friend of mine has also  has health insurance that you can get on a group rate. 

I bought a ledger book at OfficeMax for around $5. It works great and it takes little time at the end of the day, I keep it with me and do my “books” right there in the trailer. I also have an accountant that I call on when needed, they also do payroll which is the way to go, let them worry about it. I call them with the pay amount and they do the rest at a minimal charge and keep all of the records. I have enough government crap to deal with.