Turn supplier invoices into live ingredient costs

An invoice is more than a document to file. It records which product arrived, the size you bought, and the price you paid. Those details should inform the cost of the dishes you sell. When bookkeeping and recipe costing use separate records, a purchasing change may be recorded correctly in one place and missed in another.

BOH Brain focuses on the connection between invoices and food costs. It helps turn supplier line items into ingredient records that your recipes use. It is not a replacement for a full accounting or bill-payment system. Keep the invoice review process connected to the people who understand the delivered products, especially when a vendor sends a substitution.

A supplier-generated PDF usually gives the parser more consistent source material than a blurry photograph. If you use a phone photo, include the entire page, keep the text in focus, and avoid shadows over quantities or totals. A multi-page invoice needs all of its pages so that the review reflects the full delivery.

Structured CSV imports are another option when your supplier can export line items. Use the supported import format and review the column mapping rather than assuming any spreadsheet layout will work. AI parsing is used for supported unstructured documents; CSV workflows remain available on the free plan. No parser can guarantee a correct result for every scan, so approval remains a separate step.

The review screen is where extracted data becomes dependable operational data. Compare the product description with the source invoice, check whether a price is per case or per weight, and confirm the number of packs and the size of each pack. A case of six half-gallon bottles contains three gallons. A mistaken six-gallon interpretation would cut the calculated cost in half.

Product names should remain in the invoice's language so that cooks recognize what they are handling. Review the ingredient match as well as the spelling: two similar descriptions may represent different grades, sizes, or usable yields. Match to an existing ingredient only when it is the same product for your costing purposes; otherwise create the appropriate record.

Delivery fees, deposits, CRV, and other non-product charges should not become ingredients. Review and skip these lines in the costing workflow. Your accounting process may still need to track them, but a delivery charge should not become a kitchen ingredient or inflate the unit cost of an unrelated product.

Credits and unusual adjustments also deserve attention. Do not treat a credit memo as an ordinary positive purchase without checking how it is represented. The goal is a catalog whose unit costs describe products your team actually uses. If the source invoice is ambiguous, resolve it with the supplier before approving a guessed pack size or price basis.

Uploading is not the same as approving. After parsing, review the proposed lines and confirm the update. Approved product lines update the ingredient catalog, record price changes, and recalculate affected recipes. That includes prep components and final dishes that depend on those components. You can then review which recipes moved relative to their cost targets.

An invoice update also does not mean your physical stock was counted. Inventory counts record what is on hand; invoices provide purchase and cost information. Keep those jobs distinct when training staff. A completed historical count should remain a record of that count rather than changing whenever the next supplier invoice updates today's catalog prices.

Choose who uploads deliveries and who checks the extracted data. Start with one supplier and compare a few approved lines against a manual calculation. Once your pack structures and ingredient matches are consistent, bring in the next supplier. This makes exceptions easier to spot than importing the entire purchasing history in one session.

A short review after a delivery can surface a price change before the next menu meeting. Review the largest increases and frequently used ingredients first. A small percentage change on a high-volume product may deserve more attention than a large change on something you rarely buy. Use the pricing tools to decide whether the response is purchasing, portions, or selling price.

BOH Brain Free includes five AI-parsed invoices per month and CSV imports. Pro is $75 per month and includes unlimited AI-parsed invoices and the deeper reporting and pricing features. Invoice retention is a separate limit: Free keeps ten approved invoices and paid plans keep fifty available in the app. See the plan page for the full comparison.

Start with a recent invoice containing products you know well. Build or check a recipe using one of those products, approve the invoice, and verify that the result matches your expectations. This is a more useful test than an idealized demo because it includes the packaging, language, and naming conventions your kitchen actually encounters.