Job Description

Cafe Stella has been on Sunset in Silver Lake since 1998 — a French bistro with a gated patio, a long-tenured staff, and a neighborhood that's kept us busy for over twenty years. We're hiring a full-time bookkeeper to run our back office.

The role

This is a full-time, salaried, on-site position reporting directly to the owner and general manager. You'll own the books day to day and work with our CPA at month-end and year-end. Restaurant accounting has its own rhythm — daily sales, heavy vendor volume, tips, and thin margins — and we need someone who has genuinely done it before, not someone learning hospitality on our books.

Day to day:

• Reconcile daily sales in Toast. Tie out POS reports against credit card batches, cash deposits, and third-party delivery platforms. Chase variances the same week they appear, not at close.
• Manage accounts payable. Enter and code vendor invoices in QuickBooks, match against receiving, catch price creep and short deliveries, and run payments on schedule so we hold our terms.
• Run payroll. Submit hours, verify tip pooling, allocation, and distribution, and make sure overtime, split shifts, and California meal and rest break premiums are applied correctly.
• Own the general ledger. Journal entries, bank and credit card reconciliations, prepaids and accruals, and a clean, on-time close every period.
• Track COGS and inventory. Partner with the chef and beverage lead on counts, food and beverage cost percentages, and surfacing drift before it shows up in the P&L.
• Handle compliance filings. Sales and use tax, payroll tax deposits, 1099s, business licenses, ABC and health permit renewals, and workers' comp and insurance audits.
• Reconcile covers against revenue. Use OpenTable reporting alongside Toast to make sense of cover counts, average check, no-shows, and large-party service charges.
• Report to ownership. Weekly and monthly P&L, labor cost, prime cost, and cash flow reporting the owner and GM can actually run the business from.
• Keep records audit-ready and organized for the CPA year-round.

What we're looking for

• 3+ years of full-charge bookkeeping with substantial restaurant or hospitality experience. This is a hard requirement — we need someone fluent in daily sales journal entries, tip reporting, comps and voids, vendor credits, and prime cost.
• QuickBooks proficiency, Online/Desktop.
• Toast POS — reporting, sales reconciliation, and menu and item-level data.
• OpenTable — reservations, cover counts, and reporting.
• Strong Excel or Google Sheets. Comfortable building and maintaining a working model, not just entering data.
• Familiarity with restaurant payroll and scheduling platforms [e.g., Gusto, ADP, Paychex, 7shifts], AP and invoice tools [e.g., Bill.com, MarginEdge, Restaurant365], and third-party delivery back ends.
• Solid grasp of California wage and hour law as it touches payroll.
• Accuracy and follow-through. Small errors compound fast at our margins.
• Discretion with financial and employee information.
• Someone who raises problems early rather than burying them in a reconciliation.
• Preferred: Associate's degree in accounting or equivalent experience.

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