Top Inventory Management Features in COGS-Well for Foodservice Ops

At COGS-Well, we work with all kinds of food and beverage service operations, from independent restaurants and bars to multi-unit chains, hotels, catering companies, entertainment venues, and country clubs. 

Our customers start with a few of COGS-Well's core features to see an immediate positive impact. They start using more advanced tools over time. No matter the size or type of operation, the feedback from customers is consistent: COGS-Well saves time, improves accuracy, increases control, and reduces costs. 

Let’s take a closer look at those high-impact features and how they help simplify managing a restaurant or foodservice concept. 

Core Features for Restaurant Inventory Control   

COGS-Well’s core features can be implemented quickly and easily: 

• Invoice Automation: Say goodbye to manual entry and invoice processing. Scan invoices and automatically update your inventory items, costs, and quantities purchased. Invoices can also be exported to your accounts payable system to provide full AP automation.   

• Receiving: Get clear visibility into what you're buying from each vendor and how prices are fluctuating. You’ll get cost change alerts and cost trend reports.  

• Counting: Do inventory counts on a tablet or use printed worksheets – whatever works best for your team! Your counts are valued and exported for easy General Ledger adjustments.  

• Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): By combining invoice data and inventory counts, your true inventory usage and actual COGS are calculated, helping you increase control and update your Profit & Loss Statement more accurately.  

• Recipe Building & Menu Modeling: Start pricing smarter. Build recipes in COGS-Well and compare costs to the selling price so you can model profits. Test different ingredients or portion sizes to improve margins. 

“Having tablets, opening up COGS-Well, and counting inventory is nice and easy for us.” –  Greg Meeks, Beverage Program Director, Lure Fish House 

"COGS-Well has been an invaluable asset to us at OVG. The integration of scanned invoices directly into our inventory management system has been particularly transformative. This feature alone has revolutionized the way we handle inventory costs, providing both efficiency and accuracy that drive our operations forward.” – Otis Huemmer, PCIII, Divisional Chef, OVG Hospitality    

Additional Benefits for Restaurants and Beyond 

Once you have the core features down, you can leverage more benefits to save time, increase controls, and provide new insights:  

• Accounting Integration: Export invoices (with images!) directly to your accounts payable (AP) system. Export the ending inventory adjustments to your General Ledger (GL) system. You’ll minimize manual data entry and accounting errors while building more confidence in your numbers.  

• Storage Locations: Simplify your inventory counts by aligning how items are stored and counted. Less confusion, faster counts.  

• Ordering: Enter inventory orders and email or EDI export them to your vendors. COGS-Well can suggest the items and quantities to order based on par levels and/or projected usage.  

• Waste Tracking: Track known waste causes, like spoilage, overproduction, or accidents. Logging waste helps you spot patterns, minimize loss, and protect your margins.  

• Menu Analytics: Evaluate the popularity and profitability of all your menu items. Know your Stars and Dogs.  

• Variance Analysis: Compare your theoretical cost of sales and inventory item usage to your actual cost of sales and item usage to determine variances. Know if you are performing as well as you should be and isolate problem areas. 

"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 

“We use COGS-Well to manage our food and beverage inventory. We have storage locations and recipes set up for food, beverage, beer, and wine.  COGS-Well helps us control costs and evaluate performance for all our F&B operations.” – Eric F. Beacom, Assistant Food and Beverage Director, Snowmass Club  

Powerful Tools for Chains and Multi-Unit Concepts  

COGS-Well also helps multi-unit restaurant groups and chains go beyond the basics:  

• Transfers: Easily request, fulfill, and approve transfers between locations. Your inventory costs and usage for each site are updated automatically.  

• Multi-Location Reporting: Multi-site reporting lets you see the big picture and drill down into the details when needed. Do things like compare sales across multiple locations, see how a new menu item is performing across the brand, or look at the food cost percentage for one concept vs. another. 

• Commissary Features: Transfer items produced in your commissary and receive them as inventory items in your restaurants.  You can also markup the cost of commissary items.  

• User Levels: Control the features and reports that different users will see and which locations they have access to. 

“Our commissary kitchen supplies a lot of products to our restaurants. We can request and fulfill transfers to and from the commissary and between our stores with COGS-Well. We can also place orders from the commissary as if it were a standalone supplier.” – Emir Aydin, Director of Operations, Impact Kitchen 

“When you're looking at reports in COGS-Well, it really gives you that granular breakdown of what you need to see for each location. District leaders can just pull up their own district and get an idea of what’s happening without having to run 900 reports.” – Jeremy Lanni, Director of Catering, Events, Fundraisers & Partnerships, &pizza 

Summary 

COGS-Well makes it easy for restaurant operators to gain control over inventory, boost accuracy, and improve profitability, all without getting stuck in spreadsheets, complicated processes, or a clunky system.  

Whether you only need a few core tools or you're ready to optimize your brand, we’re here to grow with you. Spend less time stressing about costs and more time focusing on what you do best.