Supplier invoices and credits, in one pass a week

A cafe will spend an evening costing a new dish to the cent, then pay eleven supplier invoices without looking at a single line.

The prices on those invoices move more often than the menu does, and nobody is told when they move.

Check against the delivery, not against the order

The order says what you wanted. The delivery is what turned up, and the invoice is what they say they sent. Those three disagree often enough that checking only two of them is the common mistake.

The check belongs at the door, by whoever receives the delivery. Short deliveries and substitutions are obvious then and invisible three days later, and a credit asked for on the day is a formality.

One pass a week, at a set time

Invoices handled as they arrive get handled badly, because they arrive during service. Doing them in one sitting, at the same time each week, is faster and catches more.

Working through a stack makes the price movements visible in a way that one invoice at a time never does. You notice the same supplier's flour has moved twice because you are looking at both.

Watch the lines that move quietly

• Unit changes. The price per kilo held, and the bag went from five kilos to four.
• Delivery fees, added, raised, or applied to an order that should have been over the threshold.
• Substitutions, charged at the price of the item you asked for rather than the one you got.
• Repeated short deliveries, which is a pattern worth raising rather than a run of bad luck.

None of these are unusual and most are honest mistakes. They are simply nobody's job to catch, which means they continue.

Chase the credits, and count them

The credit you are owed for a short delivery is almost never issued automatically, and a credit not chased within the month is usually a credit lost.

Keep a list of credits requested with the date and the amount, and go through it in the same weekly pass. Knowing what a supplier owes you is also what makes the annual pricing conversation with them a different conversation.

Get the lines out of the PDF without typing them

The reason this does not get done is the typing. Eleven invoices of twenty lines each is an evening, and it is the kind of evening that gets postponed indefinitely.

In Diract you upload the supplier's PDF and review each line before it is added as a record. The typing becomes a read and a correction, which is the difference between a weekly habit and a good intention.

Reconcile the statement, not just the invoices

A supplier statement at month end lists what they think you owe. Checking it against the invoices you hold catches the two things a weekly pass cannot: an invoice that never reached you, and one you have paid twice.

Both are common with a supplier who delivers several times a week. Ten minutes against the statement is usually the best paid ten minutes in the month.

Then the price of a dish stops being a guess

Once supplier lines are records rather than paper, the cost of an ingredient has a history. You can see what flour did over six months instead of remembering that it feels dearer.

That is what makes menu costing honest rather than annual. Cafe food cost percentage, costed one dish at a time covers the costing itself, and it depends entirely on having current prices to cost with.

What to do first

• Check the delivery at the door, against what was ordered
• Do invoices in one weekly pass, at a set time
• Look for unit changes, delivery fees and substitution pricing
• Keep a list of credits requested, and work it weekly
• Import the lines rather than typing them
• Recost the dishes whose ingredients have moved