Menu Engineering 101: Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles, and Dogs
Menu engineering classifies dishes by margin and popularity into four quadrants: Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles, and Dogs.
#profit-margins
Profit Margins
Calculate, benchmark, and improve profit margins across your business
Protecting Margins When Costs Rise: A Repricing Playbook
A repricing formula (New Price = New Cost ÷ (1 − target margin)) and cost-control tactics that protect small-business profit margins during 2026 tariff and inflation-driven cost increases.
The Bridal Shop Owner's Bookkeeping Guide: Special-Order Deposits, Consignment Inventory, and the KPIs That Matter
How independent bridal shop owners book special-order deposits under ASC 606, separate memo and consignment from owned inventory, navigate the ABC test for in-house seamstresses, handle multi-state sales tax after Wayfair, capitalize bridal suite buildouts, and track the operational KPIs that signal real profitability.
Commercial Janitorial and Office Cleaning Service Bookkeeping: A Practical Guide for Independent Operators
How independent commercial cleaning operators should structure revenue recognition under ASC 606, allocate route-level costs, capitalize equipment under Section 179, and manage 1099 misclassification risk — with ISSA-aligned KPI benchmarks and a chart-of-accounts outline.
Auto Body Collision Repair Shop Bookkeeping: DRP, Parts Margins, Supplements, and Section 179
Collision shops bleed cash when DRP revenue isn't booked net of concessions, parts margins aren't split across OEM, aftermarket, and LKQ pools, and supplements slip through CCC and Mitchell without authorization. A guide to the bookkeeping, Section 179 equipment decisions, and the cycle time, touch time, and severity KPIs insurers actually watch.
Independent Cinema and Drive-In Bookkeeping: Film Rental, Concession Margins, and ASC 606 Deferred Revenue
Independent theaters keep 10-50% of box office after the distributor split but 85-92% of every concession dollar. This guide covers film rental settlements, ASC 606 deferred revenue for gift cards and movie passes, concession COGS by category, breakage and state escheatment, and Section 179 expensing for digital projectors and recliner seating.
Painting Contractor Bookkeeping: How Residential and Commercial Painters Bid, Job-Cost, and Stay Profitable Without Bleeding Margin on Callbacks
Painting contractors lose margin in three places — unmeasured prep hours, a wrong burdened labor rate, and unreserved callbacks. This guide shows the chart of accounts, EPA RRP cost treatment, warranty reserve journal entries, and lender-grade KPIs that keep residential and commercial painters profitable.
MSP Bookkeeping: ASC 606, Per-Seat MRR, and the Three Numbers Buyers Check First
How small and mid-sized managed service providers should structure their general ledger so that MRR percentage, customer concentration, and service-line gross margin are always investor-ready — with concrete chart-of-accounts, ASC 606, and utilization mechanics.
Markup vs. Margin: The Pricing Mistake That Quietly Costs Small Businesses 7 Points of Profit on Every Sale
Markup and margin share a numerator but not a denominator, and the gap can quietly cost a contractor $99,000 a year. A plain-language guide to the conversion math, a target-margin lookup table, and why retailers, contractors, and restaurants keep underpricing jobs.
Pet Boarding, Daycare, and Grooming Bookkeeping: Run-Night Revenue, Add-On Allocation, and Gingr/PetExec Reconciliation
Pet boarding, daycare, and grooming operators run three businesses under one roof — services earned over time, retail earned at sale, and pass-throughs that are never revenue. This guide builds a chart of accounts that separates service lines, recognizes boarding revenue per run-night through a deferred-revenue liability, allocates add-ons to the service that produced them, and reconciles Gingr or PetExec daily summaries to the bank deposit by isolating processor fees, tips payable, deposits, and refunds.
Brewery Bookkeeping: Cost Per Barrel, TTB Excise Tax, and the Shrinkage That Makes COGS Lie
How to build a craft brewery's books so cost of goods sold tells the truth—a production chart of accounts, a true cost-per-barrel formula using net barrels, TTB excise tax rates ($3.50/barrel on the first 60,000), and the 3–8% shrinkage that inflates margin if ignored.
Common-Size and Trend Analysis: Turning Financial Statements Into Percentages to Catch Margin Erosion
Common-size analysis restates every line of a financial statement as a percentage of revenue or total assets; trend analysis indexes the same lines across years. Together they expose cost creep, margin erosion, and balance sheet drift that raw dollars hide, and they make a $2M business meaningfully comparable to a $50M peer.