How long it takes to find out one number
A simple question like «how much did we overpay for meat in August» travels through the mailbox, the accounting system, an export and a spreadsheet. It takes from half an hour to half a day, and the answer arrives after the decision was made without it. Not a matter of skill: the number is assembled by hand.
Ask your manager how much you overpaid for meat in August. They will not answer straight away - and it is not about skill.
The journey of one question
Find August's invoices in the mailbox - some from the supplier, some forwarded by the bookkeeper.
Pull out the meat lines: suppliers name things differently, so this is done by eye.
Convert prices to a kilo: here a case, there a 2.4 kg vacuum pack.
Find last month's price to compare against.
Work out the monthly volume and multiply by the difference.
Every step has room for a mistake, and none of them is remembered: in a month the whole thing is repeated from scratch.
Why this costs more than it looks
The time goes into preparing the decision, not making it. Half a day to assemble a number, five minutes to draw a conclusion.
The question gets asked less often than it should. If an answer costs half a day, people stop asking - and decide by feel.
The answer goes stale. While the number was being assembled, new invoices arrived.
Manual control breaks first. Not from ignorance, but from there being no hour left for it in the evening.
What changes when the number is already assembled
The question stops being a project. The price is already per kilo, the history is continuous, the volume is known - all that is left is to ask. The answer takes seconds, so it gets asked when it is needed rather than when someone finds the time.
The second consequence matters more than the first: people who could not ask before start asking. A new manager, the chef, the owner of the second venue.
Check yourself
Sixteen questions about how purchasing and cost control actually work in your restaurant - a ten-minute checklist. What the plans include and how many documents a period covers is on the pricing page.
Self-check checklistPricingWhy does a simple question take half a day?
Because the number is assembled by hand from four sources, and every step has to be repeated for the next question.
Can this be fixed with a procedure?
Partly. A procedure helps while people have time. Control breaks on the lack of time, not on the lack of knowledge.
Where do we start if we run several systems?
With the documents: they carry the price, the unit and the supplier. The other sources attach to a history that is already assembled.