Hands-Free Receiving!

The Challenge:

Restaurant Inventory control systems require "Receiving". Receiving is the process of entering the quantity and cost for each inventory item received on an invoice. The Receiving process typically also requires you to add new vendors and new inventory items to your database.

Receiving must be done accurately and on a timely basis to ensure your actual inventory usage and ending inventory valuation are correct. It will also keep your recipe costs and your theoretical to actual cost and usage variances accurate.

The catch-22 on receiving is while it enables inventory control systems to perform their magic, manually entering invoices with inventory line item details, and continually adding new items, is a time-intensive task that is prone to error.

The Solution:

COGS-Well has solved the Receiving challenges by fully automating the Receiving process. We have eliminated the need for manual entry of invoices. We have also eliminated the need to manually add new vendors or new items to your database. We created "Hands-Free Receiving" using a combination of innovative technology and specialized customer services:

Innovative Technology:

COGS-Well capitalizes on scanning technology to convert invoice images into digital data. Customers scan and upload invoice images and the data, complete with inventory item details, is converted and automatically imported into Receiving. An image of invoice is retained for reference purposes.

COGS-Well's invoice scanning system is named "Invoice+". COGS-Well can also import invoices with item details from Ottimate's AP Automation system. For vendors that offer EDI (Electronic Data Interchange), COGS-Well can directly import invoices (please note that EDI vendors do not include an invoice image in their export).

Next, COGS-Well uses proprietary intelligent technology to automatically assign a standard pack size and configure count units and recipe units for every new inventory item. This technology completely eliminates the need for customers to manually add or configure new inventory items into their inventory item database.

Specialized Audit Services:

Some vendor invoices do not include all of the details for an item such as the item's pack size. Some invoices may have item information that can't be read. And Optical Character Recognition (OCR) data conversions are not always accurate. In short, technology alone is subject to omissions and errors.

To address omissions and errors, and ensure accuracy, COGS-Well uses a team of auditors to deliver our "Receiving Audit Service". The Receiving Auditors are alerted every time a customer receives a new inventory item or when the pack cost changes significantly. The auditors will then verify, complete, or correct the inventory item's information.

Results:

COGS-Well's Hands-Free Receiving is unique to COGS-Well. It saves time and it increases accuracy, and it is free! It will save restaurant managers or system administrators several hours per week per restaurant, and it helps ensure consistency and accuracy for your inventory item and vendor database.

"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.

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

“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.