Yearly running cost Assuming 6,000 invoices a year
By hand $30K / year 1,000 hours of work
Subscription $21K+ / year
This workflow $392 / year Machine usage only; setup, hosting and review are extra. How should it update your recipe costs? Upload invoices for a costing report, or connect your point of sale and recipe system.
Upload invoices See updated recipe costs and ingredient price changes. $936 – 3,000 setup Connect my restaurant systems Also use sales data and save approved ingredient prices. $1,584 – 4,920 setup
Which system holds your recipes or inventory?Toast Square MarketMan Restaurant365 meez Spreadsheet Other Your team approves every price update. It never changes menu prices, pays invoices or posts to your accounts.
What is included Read each invoice, match lines to your ingredients with pack and unit conversion, recalculate recipe and menu item costs, and list price changes, unmatched lines and items above your target food cost.
Start with your ingredient list, recipes with portion sizes, current supplier item names and a set of past invoices checked by your chef or bookkeeper. The connected option reads an invoice inbox, takes menu prices and item sales from your point of sale and saves approved ingredient prices to your recipe or inventory system.
How accurate should the costing be? Set targets for matching invoice lines to ingredients, correct dish costs and price-change alerts.
Standard Accurate costs with unmatched and uncertain lines held for your team. Invoice lines read correctly: ≥97% Lines matched with the right unit: ≥95% Included Strict A second check on line totals and unit conversions, and more tests on difficult invoices. Invoice lines read correctly: ≥99% Lines matched with the right unit: ≥98% Setup +$288 – 840 My own targets Agree your own acceptance requirements with the provider. Quote separately
How these standards are measured Test on held-out suppliers and weeks of invoices, including photos, credits, substitutions and catch weight items. Score line reading, ingredient matching and unit conversion separately, then recalculate recipe costs by hand for a sample. An unmatched line must be shown, never guessed.
Targets for your selected standard What is checked Target Invoice lines read correctlyEach invoice line passes only when item, pack size, quantity, unit price and extension match the labelled values, including credits; a guessed value is an error. ≥97% Lines matched with the right unitLines matched to the right ingredient with a correct conversion to your recipe unit, divided by all labelled lines; an unmatched line shown for review is not an error, a wrong match is. ≥95% Price changes flaggedIngredient price changes above your agreed threshold that are flagged, divided by all such labelled changes in the test invoices. ≥98% Recipe costs matching a hand checkRecipe and menu item costs that match a hand recalculation within your agreed tolerance, divided by all recipes in the checked sample. ≥95%
Recipes, portions, unit rules and target food cost come from your chef or owner, not from the model. A line that cannot be matched with confidence is shown for review, not applied.
How quickly should costs update after an invoice arrives? Choose how soon recipe and menu item costs are recalculated after an invoice is uploaded or received. Your team's review time is separate.
Within 3 minutes Included Within 90 seconds Setup +$72 – 360 Within 45 seconds Setup +$216 – 600
Timing details Time from receiving an invoice to an updated costing report, including reading pages, matching, recalculation, queueing and retries. Very long invoices may need agreed limits. Confirm invoice volume and hardware with your provider.
The target applies to at least 95% of agreed test runs, with 4 in progress at a time.
How much do you want to spend per invoice? Set the AI processing budget for updating costs from each invoice.
Up to $0.25 Included Up to $0.15 Setup +$72 – 360 Up to $0.10 Setup +$216 – 600
Cost details Includes invoice reading, model calls, retries and a shared hosting allocation. Point of sale, recipe or inventory software licences, your team's review time and the calling agent are separate. A corrected or resent invoice is another run.
Reference machine cost: $0.11 – 0.19 per invoice at 500 invoices a month. The selected cap is a target to test, not a replacement for this estimate.
Where do you want it to run? Keep invoices, recipes and costs in your cloud or on your own server. Choose whether invoice pages may go to approved reading and AI services.
Run it onYour cloud Local environment AI model accessApproved OCR and model APIs Private model only
Data and access details Runs in a cloud account you control, with access controls and logs.
Invoice pages go to the approved reading service and the lines with your ingredient names to the approved model. Agree access and retention first.
Recipes, supplier prices and sales stay in your environment except for the invoice pages and ingredient names sent to the approved services. Private model only keeps invoices on your hardware; the workflow still connects to your own systems.
How do you want to use it? Choose where you want to use it. You can select more than one.
A review page and costing report Upload invoices, check matched lines and see which recipes and menu items changed in cost. Included My existing AI agent Let your agent submit invoices and ask for an ingredient's latest price or a dish's current cost. Setup +$72 – 240 A weekly price change email Owners and chefs receive the largest ingredient price changes and the menu items now above target cost. Setup +$72 – 240