Shea Business Solutions handles bookkeeping for dry cleaners, laundromats, and garment-care businesses across Orlando, FL. The register is the easy part. What breaks the books is everything around it: a heavy mix of cash and card at the counter, equipment that has to be tracked and depreciated, payroll for counter staff and route drivers, and a set of Florida taxes written specifically for dry cleaning. The work runs in QuickBooks Online under a Level 2 ProAdvisor who answers the same business day.
If your books lump every deposit into one line and your machines show up as a bad month instead of an asset, the numbers you are pricing and planning from are not the real ones.
You run the counter, and we keep the books straight.
Where a Dry Cleaner's Books Get Complicated
A dry cleaner takes money in more ways than most small businesses. Walk-in counter sales, account customers billed monthly, and pickup-and-delivery routes all land differently, and a lot of it is still cash. When the point-of-sale totals never get tied back to the bank deposits and card settlements, the daily count stops matching the books and the profit and loss turns into a guess. Reconciling the counter to the deposit is where a clean dry-cleaning file starts.
Owners running a plant plus one or more drop stores add another layer. Each location generates its own sales, its own supply orders, and its own labor, and if the books only see one combined number, there is no way to tell which store carries the operation and which one drains it. We structure QuickBooks so locations and routes report separately, then roll up to a single picture you can actually read.
The Florida Taxes Written for Dry Cleaning
Dry cleaning is one of the few trades Florida taxes with its own rules. On top of ordinary sales tax, the state charges a gross receipts tax on dry-cleaning and laundering and a separate tax on the cleaning solvents a plant buys. Both are administered by the Florida Department of Revenue and both fund the state program that cleans up solvent contamination at dry-cleaning sites. They register and file separately from your regular sales tax, and a new owner setting up a plant is the person most likely to miss them.
These are not sales tax and they do not go away because a location is small. The bookkeeping job is to capture the figures each return needs through the year so filing is a lookup, not a scramble. When a plant is behind, this is one of the first things we reconstruct.
Equipment, Supplies, and Where the Value Sits
A dry-cleaning plant is capital heavy. Presses, boilers, dry-cleaning machines, and delivery vehicles are assets that wear out over years, and the tax code treats them that way. The right way to book them is as fixed assets that depreciate over their life. Drop them in as a plain expense the month you buy them and you blow up that month's profit and loss and lose the deduction that should have spread across later years.
Supplies and solvent are the other side of it. Hangers, poly, detergent, and solvent are consumables that belong in cost of goods, and a big supply order should not read as a loss the week it lands. We set the chart of accounts up so the plant's spending shows where it actually goes, and so the depreciation schedule is ready for tax preparation instead of rebuilt from receipts every spring.
Payroll for Counter Staff and Drivers
Most cleaners run a mix of hourly people: counter clerks, pressers and plant staff, and route drivers. That means overtime to watch, and a Florida employer with even one W-2 worker files an RT-6 reemployment tax report every quarter on the first $7,000 of each person's wages. Miss the setup and the first year turns into penalties and amended filings. Certified QuickBooks Payroll covers the filings, direct deposit, and year-end W-2s and 1099s, and it reconciles back to the books instead of living in a separate app.
What Shea Business Solutions Handles for Dry Cleaners
The full list lives on the services page, but for a plant owner it comes down to this:
- Counter and route reconciliation. Point-of-sale totals tied to bank deposits and card settlements, with locations and routes reporting separately.
- Equipment and supplies handled right. Machines and vehicles booked as depreciating assets, supplies and solvent tracked as cost of goods.
- Florida dry-cleaning tax support. The gross receipts and solvent figures captured through the year so the returns are ready to file.
- Payroll and monthly books. Payroll for counter staff and drivers, plus flat-rate monthly bookkeeping and clear statements.
Want a flat quote on your plant's books? Call, or use the form at the top of this page. Every message gets a same-business-day answer.
When the File Needs a Full Cleanup
Counter reconciliation problems rarely arrive alone. A file that has not tied out in months usually also has unreconciled bank accounts and a chart of accounts that grew without a plan. When that is the case, we start with a full QuickBooks cleanup and optimization, get every account reconciled, and rebuild the structure before the monthly service takes over.
If the books are also months behind, that first step is catch-up bookkeeping, quoted flat after a free review. From there, monthly bookkeeping keeps the file accurate, and the Orlando bookkeeping page walks through what the monthly service covers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you reconcile counter cash and card sales for dry cleaners?
Yes. We tie the point-of-sale totals to the bank deposits and card settlements so the daily counter cash reconciles instead of getting lumped into one number at month end. That is where most dry-cleaning books go wrong first.
Can you handle Florida's dry-cleaning taxes?
Yes. Florida charges a gross receipts tax on dry-cleaning and laundering and a separate tax on cleaning solvents, both administered by the Florida Department of Revenue and separate from regular sales tax. We track the figures those returns need and keep the books ready to file.
Do you track our machines and equipment correctly?
Yes. Presses, boilers, and cleaning machines are capital assets that depreciate over years rather than expenses in the month you buy them. We record them as fixed assets and keep a depreciation schedule the tax return can use.
What does bookkeeping cost for a dry cleaner?
Pricing is flat and quoted up front after a free assessment, not billed by the hour. Cost depends on transaction volume, the number of locations or drop stores, and whether you need payroll or a cleanup first, so we scope it before any work begins.
