Industries / Food & Beverage
Thin margins deserve thick books.
Daily sales in, supplier bills out, and food costs you can actually see — because a few points of margin is the whole game.
“The case that never arrived is still on the invoice.”
Produce lands two cases short on Tuesday and the credit turns up on the invoice after next — three weeks and $84 later, if it turns up at all. Record the vendor credit the morning it happens and it stays in plain sight until it comes off a bill, instead of living in the delivery driver’s memory.
“I find out my food cost at year end.”
Deliveries go in as bills, ingredient costs stay current, and cost of goods posts against sales — so food cost is a weekly percentage you can still act on, not an autopsy in February.
“Monday’s deposit is the whole weekend.”
Saturday plus Sunday, minus the processor’s cut, arriving as one number. The bank feed matches it back to the days it covers and files the fees separately, so weekend revenue stays honest and the deposit ties out.
Monday morning
The weekend, already reconciled
Saturday and Sunday’s payout is in the feed; you categorize it once, with the processor’s fee split out as its own expense instead of quietly shaved off sales. The weekend’s seven deliveries are in as bills with due dates. Food cost for week 23 came in at 28.4% — $5,226 of food against $18,400 of sales — the third week under your 30% target since you re-priced the pastry case. What actually needs you is two lines long: credit the shorted produce, and schedule Friday’s bills.
- Weekend payout categorized once, fee split out
- Delivery invoices in as bills, sorted by due date
- Shortages recorded as vendor credits the same morning
- Food cost as a percentage of sales, every week
Built for the work
The parts of Bokeping you’ll lean on
Vendor credits
The shorted case becomes a credit that morning, not on the invoice after next.
Learn moreIngredient costs & COGS
Costs move as bills are entered, so food cost is a weekly number.
Learn morePayout reconciliation
Sat plus Sun, minus fees, equals Monday’s deposit — categorized once, fee split out.
Learn moreExpense tracking
Rent, gas, linens and repairs by category, so the creep shows up in June.
Learn moreThe re-price
When butter jumps 14%, the menu answers back
The dairy list arrives with Tuesday’s delivery: butter from $4.25 to $4.85 a pound, and flour up another 6%. In most kitchens that page goes in a drawer and reappears next January as a margin that shrank for reasons nobody can name. Here it lands the moment the bill is entered — the croissant’s food cost moves from $0.92 to $1.04, the pastry case drifts toward your 70% floor, and the case for a price change is already made in numbers. Four items go up fifty cents on Friday, while the quarter can still be saved.
- Ingredient costs move when the bill is entered
- Item cost and margin visible before you re-price
- A margin dip shows up in weeks, not next January
- Every supplier increase leaves a dated paper trail
In the field
Built for days like these.
FAQs
Fair questions
Enter deliveries as bills and let each ingredient carry its current cost; cost of goods posts against what you sell, so food cost as a share of sales is a live number — 28.4% on $18,400 of sales is $5,226 of food. Two honest notes. Purchases and usage aren’t the same thing in a week where you loaded the walk-in, so run a periodic count and let a stock adjustment true it up at real cost. And ingredient costing comes with Standard ($29 a month, or $290 a year) — Free tracks the bills but not the cost of goods behind them.
Record a vendor credit the morning it happens — shorted case, wrong item, spoiled in transit — for the exact dollars, against the exact supplier. It stays open and visible until it applies to that supplier’s next bill, so you pay the difference rather than paying full and waiting for a credit memo that arrives two invoices later. The audit trail keeps the whole story, which is useful the third time it happens with the same vendor.
There is no Toast, Square, or Clover integration, and Bokeping does not pull POS tickets. Bank feeds or .qbo bank files can bring in the transactions for processor payouts, but they do not contain daily sales summaries or menu-item detail. Record sales and fees separately using supported CSV/XLSX templates, then reconcile them to the payouts. Menu-item reporting and per-plate recipe costing require a POS or another tool that has that detail.
Monday’s deposit is Saturday plus Sunday, less the processor’s percentage and per-transaction fees, less anything refunded in the same batch. In Bokeping you categorize that deposit once and split the processor’s fee out as its own expense, so weekend revenue stays gross, your annual processing cost is a number you can see, and reconciliation finishes at $0.00 difference.
No. We don’t run payroll, we don’t track hours or breaks, and we don’t do tip pooling or tip-outs — a kitchen’s payroll is a compliance product with filings attached, and it isn’t ours. Run it through Gusto, Toast Payroll, or whoever you use now. The payroll withdrawal lands in the bank feed and you categorize wages, employer taxes and tips paid out, so labor cost shows up next to food cost where it belongs.
Record a stock adjustment. The quantity comes off and the dollars post to waste at what the food actually cost you, with a reason and a date attached — so a bad week has an explanation instead of just a worse number. Do it alongside your weekly count and spoilage stops being the invisible line that eats the two points you were trying to win back on the menu.
Bokeping for food & beverage
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Other industries
Different shelves, same books
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