Easy to Install & Easy to Maintain.

What makes COGS-Well easy to install and maintain?

COGS-Well’s founders have decades of experience in developing and servicing restaurant inventory and recipe management systems. When we designed the COGS-Well system, we were on a mission to create an easy-to-install and maintain system. We utilize unique technology and added customer service to make COGS-Well easy.

Fast and Easy to Install:

We can do your initial system setup, including the inventory item database, for you, and in just a few days. We will interface with your vendors, your accounts payable automation system (like Plate IQ), and/or our invoice scanning system to import all required information automatically.

During the invoice import, we utilize an extensive, proprietary, vendor packaging library to automatically assign pack sizes, counting units (how you count partial packs), and recipe units to your inventory items. This automates a tedious, time-consuming task that other inventory systems require you to do yourself.

Next, we interface with your POS system to import items you sell (sales items) and to track your ongoing sales mix. Sales item names, categories, and prices are imported so all you need to do is optionally create recipes for them.

We next turn the system over to you - and typically just a few days after you sign an agreement. You can immediately start using COGS-Well for taking inventory counts, ordering, receiving, and/or transfers. You can also start building recipes right away.

Experienced restaurant inventory system users will tell you that they spent several months and thousands of dollars setting up their inventory system. COGS-Well not only does the initial installation for you, but also for only a few hundred dollars.

"COGS-Well did the initial system setup for us and they did it very quickly. The inventory item database was automatically created via the Fintech interface." Layne Schneider, General Manager, Ghost Baby.

“COGS-Well is definitely faster to install and easier to maintain than our old system. It works great”. Samuel Stanczack, Corporate Inventory and Prep Manager, Lulu's.

Fast and Easy Ongoing System Maintenance:

One of the primary challenges when using a traditional inventory control system is inventory receiving. Vendor invoices, including inventory line item detail (the item, the price, the vendor item code, and the pack size), must be entered manually. In most systems, it typically requires a manager or a system administrator several hours each week to enter this information manually and it is very prone to error.

COGS-Well completely eliminates the requirement for manual receiving by interfacing directly with your vendors, or your AP automation system (such as Plate IQ), or utilizing our Invoice+ import system. All information, including the inventory item detail, is imported automatically. This saves many hours of otherwise tedious work every week.

COGS-Well also includes a "Receiving Audit Service" to verify that new vendors or items are correctly added to your database. Any missing inventory item information such as the pack size, category, or vendor item code, is added during the audit. Receiving Audit provides a great insurance policy for an accurate item database. It also ensures that you can count, order, transfer, or use new inventory items in a recipe immediately.

“If COGS-Well’s mission is to make inventory control faster to implement and easier to use, then it is mission accomplished for COGS-Well.” Gerald Tipton, LuLu’s President.

"I was impressed by how tightly COGS-Well integrated with Plate IQ. Unlike other inventory systems, COGS-Well eliminates all of the requirement for manually entering item detail from invoices.” Joshua Thomas, General Manager, Austin Eastciders.

Fast and Easy Recipe Setup

A challenge for any recipe management system is that a recipe unit needs to reflect how an item is purchased. For example, if onions are purchased by the pound then the recipe unit is typically a weighted ounce (16 weighted ounces in a pound). However, some recipes may call for onions by the cup, and others may use each. Traditional recipe systems will lock you into building recipes with just one recipe unit (in this example a weighted ounce). If you have a recipe calling for onions by the cup or each, then you will need to convert a cup or an onion to weighted ounces when you build the recipe. This is not only a time-consuming process, but a staff person viewing the recipe will not easily know how to create the recipe.

To solve the problem, COGS-Well allows an ingredient to have multiple units of measure. Each measure class has a "Recipe Unit Library" that has all common recipe units (ounces, cups, quarts, pounds, grams, milliliters, slice, etc.) configured. You can use an ounce, cup, gram, or whole onion in different recipes. You can also use a cup of onion in some recipes and a quart in others. The end result is that recipes can be built more quickly and recipes can be easily followed by your preparation staff.

“COGS-Well truly automates the entire inventory process saving us a significant amount of labor hours compared to other products on the market.” Tim Anderson, President, Hideaway Pizza restaurants.

Summary

COGS-Well provides a very fast, easy, and affordable system setup and we do most of the setup work for you. Due to the elimination of manual invoice entry, as well as our Receiving Audit, we eliminate the manual receiving requirement. Our flexible recipe units make recipe management much easier and more friendly for your staff.

Finally, there is a restaurant inventory system provider focused on helping restaurant operators be more successful in implementing and using an inventory control and menu management system. Your success is our success.

COGS-Well has some really great ideas about how to reduce the amount of setup time and maintenance time for a restaurant inventory system.” Noah Kopito, Director of Kitchen Operations, Mamahuhu.

“COGS-Well makes inventory SO much easier. The folks there are thinking about the problem from the restaurant owner’s point of view rather than just as a process problem. That way of thinking translates through to a big return on investment for us.” Will Strong, Partner, Cherry Lane Ventures.