Flat monthly, not hourly
One predictable number. You are never paying by the minute for a question about a supplier charge.
Portland, Oregon · Now booking first clients
Know your cafe's numbers every month, in plain English
Larkspur Ledger Studio is a monthly bookkeeping and reporting service built specifically for Portland's independent cafes and bakeries — reconciled accounts, tracked supplier invoices, and a profit report written so you can run the shop instead of wrestling spreadsheets.
01 — Deliverables
What you get each month
Bookkeeping usually feels invisible until tax season. Here's exactly what lands in your inbox every month, so the service is something you can hold rather than hope for.
- 01
Every account reconciled
Bank, card, POS deposits and Square/Toast payouts matched line by line. No "uncategorized" pile waiting for you in April.
- 02
Supplier invoices tracked
Roaster, dairy, flour, packaging — logged, coded and watched for creeping price changes so a $0.40 bump per gallon does not hide for six months.
- 03
A one-page profit report
Written in sentences. What came in, what went out, what you kept, and the one or two numbers that moved since last month.
- 04
A standing 20-minute call
Same week every month. Ask anything about the report — questions are included in the flat fee, never billed back to you.
02 — The deliverable
This is what your monthly report looks like
An anonymized mock-up of the plain-language report Larkspur Ledger Studio is built to deliver. No dashboards to log into, no terminology to decode — one page you can read standing at the espresso machine.
- Sales through the counter
- $48,210
- Cost of goods (beans, dairy, flour)
- $14,880
- Labor, including your hours
- $18,640
- What the shop actually kept
- $6,115
Up 6% from March. Saturdays carried it.
30.9% of sales. Your dairy line rose $310 — new supplier price.
38.7% of sales. Slightly high on Tuesdays.
12.7% margin. Healthy for a single-location cafe.
In short: a solid month. Watch dairy and Tuesday labor. Nothing here needs an emergency.
03 — Fit
Who this is for
This studio is built for one kind of person: the owner-operator of a small Portland coffee shop or bakery who is already doing six jobs and has quietly pushed the books to the bottom of the list.
You own one or two shops
Independent, owner-operated, somewhere between a two-person bakery and a twelve-person cafe with a wholesale side.
You are still the opener
You pull shots, do the ordering, fix the grinder, and the books get touched on a Sunday night, if at all.
Your software is mostly fine
QuickBooks or Xero already exists. It is just three months behind and nobody trusts what it says.
You want answers, not dashboards
You do not want another login. You want someone to tell you whether last month was good and why.
04 — Process
How it works
Three steps from first conversation to your first monthly report. The onboarding is designed to take a couple of hours of your time total, not a couple of weekends.
- 1
A free 20-minute call
Tell us about the shop: locations, POS, payroll, how far behind the books are. No pitch deck.
- 2
A flat monthly quote
Scoped to your transaction and invoice volume. One number, in writing, within two days of the call.
- 3
A two-hour onboarding
We connect accounts, clean up the chart of accounts and sort any backlog. Your part is mostly saying yes to access requests.
- 4
Your report, every month
Books closed by the 10th. Report in your inbox, call on the calendar, and that is the rhythm from then on.
05 — Pricing
Pricing approach
The intent is a flat monthly subscription — one predictable number per month, scoped to the size of your shop and the volume of transactions and supplier invoices. No hourly billing, no surprise line items for asking a question. Because Larkspur Ledger Studio is just opening its doors, pricing is set per shop on the intro call rather than published as a fixed menu.
Scoped to your shop
Set by transaction volume, invoice count, locations and payroll — not by what the last firm happened to charge you.
Quoted on the call
Because the studio is brand new, pricing is set per shop rather than published as a fixed menu. You get the number before you commit to anything.
06 — Straight talk
An honest note about where we are
Larkspur Ledger Studio is a new, Portland-focused bookkeeping studio, and it is building its first client relationships right now. There are no case studies on this page because there are not yet clients to write them about — and inventing some would be a strange way to start a relationship built on handling your financial records. What there is: a clearly defined service, a deliverable you can see before you commit, and a deliberately narrow focus on independent cafes and bakeries in this city rather than every small business everywhere. Early clients get direct access to the person doing the work and a say in how the monthly report evolves.
— The studio, Southeast Portland
07 — Questions
Questions worth asking before you hand over your books
Fair concerns about trusting a new studio with your financial records. Straight answers below.
- You are new. Why would I trust you with my books?
- Because you can see the deliverable before you hand over a single login — the sample report on this page is the actual format. And because the scope, the price and the monthly schedule are all in writing before we start.
- Do you do my taxes?
- No. This is monthly bookkeeping and reporting. Clean, reconciled books make your CPA’s job cheaper and faster, and we hand off directly to them at year end.
- My books are a year behind. Is that disqualifying?
- No, it is typical. Backlog cleanup is quoted separately as a one-time project, then the monthly rhythm starts from a clean baseline.
- Which systems do you work in?
- QuickBooks Online or Xero, alongside Square, Toast or Clover for POS, and Gusto for payroll. If you run something else, say so on the call and we will be straight about fit.
- Why only cafes and bakeries?
- Because food cost percentages, waste, tip handling and roaster invoices behave differently than a design agency’s books. A narrow focus means fewer questions asked of you.
- What happens if I want to leave?
- Month to month, no lock-in. Your files are yours — we hand over the full set of books and access on the way out, cleanly.
08 — Waitlist
Join the waitlist
Be the first to get access. Drop your email and we'll reach out the moment we launch.
Twenty minutes now, clear numbers every month after
Tell us about your shop — how many locations, which POS, what shape the books are in. You'll leave the call with a straight answer on scope and a flat monthly quote. No pressure, no commitment, no jargon.