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Overview:
COGS-Well and NetSuite offer a fully integrated cost control and financial accounting solution to restaurant chains. By tightly integrating these two systems, it results in improved accuracy, more timely reporting, and substantial time and labor savings.
We conducted interviews with executives at Bambuza Vietnam Kitchen, Playa Bowls, Fort Point Beer, Buzz Hospitality, and Impact Kitchen to understand how they are using and benefiting from the COGS-Well and NetSuite combination. Below are their responses.
Transfers to General Ledger:
COGS-Well has features to manage transfers from a commissary or restaurant A to B. These features save restaurant managers time, increase accuracy, and eliminate the need to track transfer activity manually.
“Our managers like the transfer feature in COGS-Well. They like that they can make requests to the commissary and review fulfillments via COGS-Well.” Jennifer Posner, Controller, Bambuza Vietnam Kitchens & Bars.
“Our managers appreciate the COGS-Well transfer features – especially because they are bonused on their cost of goods sold and they recognize COGS-Well is ensuring they are receiving adjustments to their COGS for
transfers.” Danielle Panikiewsky, Director of Finance, Playa Bowls.
“The COGS-Well transfer features are increasing accuracy. The export of transfer adjustments to NetSuite is saving me 2 to 3 hours per month.” Erica Raihala, Administrative Support and Logistics Manager, Bambuza.
“With COGS-Well, we have eliminated manually updating transfer adjustments to our NetSuite General Ledger. This is saving us at least ½ hour per week. Also, the elimination of human error makes the information more accurate.” Linda Liu, Director of Finance and Accounting, Impact Kitchen.
“We track transfers in COGS-Well during the period. We export transfer adjustments to our NetSuite General Ledger at the end of each period. We review the COGS-Well transfer journal and then export and we are done in 2 minutes.” Mike Schnebeck, CFO, Fort Point Beer.
Inventory Valuation Adjustments to General Ledger:
Restaurant Managers use COGS-Well to count their inventory on hand. Managers can take counts using a tablet or count worksheet. Inventory valuations can then be reviewed and exported to the NetSuite General Ledger.
Our Managers are taking inventory counts every two weeks. We export the adjustments to our NetSuite General Ledger shortly after that. This enables us to generate bi-weekly operating Profit and Loss statements for each location via NetSuite.” Rich Ortiz, Director of Finance, Buzz Hospitality, dba Ri Ra Group.
“COGS-Well is much more accurate than using spreadsheets for inventory counts. We export valuation adjustments to our NetSuite General Ledger. The export saves us about 2 hours per month and the more sites we add, the more time we will save." Jennifer Posner, Controller, Bambuza.
“With COGS-Well, we moved from periodic to weekly inventory counts. More frequent counts have provided the managers with increased control and insight. End-of-period inventory adjustments are now automatically exported to our NetSuite GL. With 33 restaurants, this process is easily saving us 5 hours per month.” Danielle Panikiewsky, Director of Finance, Playa Bowls.
“Our old inventory system did not have a General Ledger export so the ending inventory adjustments were entered manually. Due to the COGS-Well export to NetSuite, we save an hour per week, our reporting is much more timely, and our accuracy is improved." Linda Liu, Director of Finance and Accounting, Impact Kitchen.
Invoices to Accounts Payable:
COGS-Well imports vendor invoices using EDI, an AP automation system, or Scanning technology and updates inventory items automatically. The invoice information can be exported to NetSuite’s Accounts Payable, saving time and improving accuracy.
"Our old inventory system did not export invoices to accounts payable so they were entered manually. COGS-Well is saving us 1 to 2 hours per week by eliminating the manual entry.” Linda Liu, Director of Finance, Impact Kitchen.
“Before COGS-Well, invoices with the line item detail were being entered manually by our managers. COGS-Well’s integration with Plate IQ is providing enormous time savings. Our managers are no longer spending several hours per week behind their keyboards entering invoices.” Rich Ortiz, Director of Finance, Buzz Hospitality, dba Ri Ra Group.
”Now, if a manager has returns or adjustments to an invoice, they can make a notation on the invoice and the invoice and their COGS are adjusted immediately. We used to enter credit memos in our GL, but this was not timely.” Danielle Panikiewsky, Director of Finance, Playa Bowls.
Point of Sale Financials to General Ledger:
COGS-Well imports daily Point of Sale transactions from the restaurants, provides a daily sales journal, and exports balanced information to NetSuite's General Ledger saving time and allowing for sales and cost reporting for each location.
“COGS-Well combines sales from our Givex POS with inventory costs to achieve cost of goods as a percentage of sales reporting, for each location, in real time. For 5 restaurants, we are also saving 1 hour per day (30 hours per month) by exporting daily sales to our NetSuite General Ledger.” Linda Liu, Director of Finance, Impact Kitchen.
"Before COGS-Well, our daily sales reporting was not reliably accurate. With COGS-Well reporting and export to NetSuite, we are saving several hours per week. Sales-related reporting from NetSuite can go out to managers weekly.” Rich Ortiz, Director of Finance, Buzz Hospitality, dba Ri Ra Group.
More Customer Comments:
“Prior to COGS-Well, we were outsourcing our accounting service. The potential to use COGS-Well and NetSuite in combination caused our team to realize it was more strategic to move our accounting in-house.” Danielle Panikiewsky, Director of Finance, Playa Bowls.
“We went with Toast, COGS-Well, and NetSuite because we wanted to control our Technology Stack. NetSuite provides us with a broad platform for financial control.” Rich Ortiz, Director of Finance, Buzz Hospitality.
“Before COGS=Well, no one knew their Cost of Goods Sold until well after the end of a period. Now, our corporate team and managers can monitor both their actual and theoretical COGS on a real-time basis. We get more information much faster from COGS-Well and NetSuite.” Danielle Panikiewsky, Director of Finance, Playa Bowls.
“We're extremely happy with the support the COGS-Well team has been providing throughout the configuration, training, and rollout processes of the implementation. We're so glad that we started this partnership.” Emir Aydin, Manager of Business Development, Impact Kitchen.
“We have done a lot of system implementations over the last few years and the COGS-Well support team is by far the best we have ever worked with. Any issue we have, any questions we have, their team is always very responsive." Danielle Panikiewsky, Director of Finance, Playa Bowls.