How to Scan Supplier Invoices and Update Your Food Costs Automatically

Every price change from a supplier quietly moves your food cost. When the prices in your costing are a month old, your plate costs and margins are a month old too. Typing invoices into a spreadsheet takes time most kitchens do not have, so the numbers drift.

Supplier invoice scanning in AKROUN FOOD AI closes that gap. You give it the invoice, you check what it read, and your stock prices, received quantities and every recipe cost update together.

Supplier invoice scanning is part of the Chef Pro plan. You find it in Inventory → Scan invoice.

Three ways to bring an invoice in

Step by step

1. Open "Scan invoice"

Go to Inventory and press Scan invoice. Choose Take a photo, Upload photos or PDF, or E-invoice file (XML).

2. Take a photo the app can read

• Lay the invoice flat, in good light, and take the photo straight on.
• One photo per page, up to 5 pages per invoice (about 4 MB in total — large photos are made smaller before they are sent).
• A PDF that is only a scanned picture has no text inside. Photograph its pages instead.

3. Press "Read invoice"

Reading usually takes 10 to 30 seconds. Nothing changes in your inventory yet.

4. Check every line

The review screen shows the supplier, invoice number, date and currency, then one card per line. For each line you choose what happens:

• Update a stock item — the app suggests the closest item from your inventory, whatever language the invoice is in. It understands packs too: "6 × 2.5 kg", "12 × 1 L", "36/1 LB" or "15 DOZ" become the quantity in your own stock unit.
• Add as a new item — for a product you do not stock yet.
• Skip this line — fees, deposits, discounts and anything that is not stock.

Each line shows the new cost next to the old one. You get a warning when:

• the price went up or down sharply;
• the price is so different that the unit is probably wrong (a case priced as if it were a kilo);
• quantity × price does not equal the line amount;
• the lines do not add up to the invoice total — usually a missed or misread line;
• the stock item is priced in another currency. Amounts are never converted behind your back — you decide.

If the line prices include tax, tick Line prices include tax so the tax is not counted in your food cost; the app tells you when the totals point that way. If an invoice with the same number from the same supplier was already applied, you are warned before you apply it twice.

5. Press "Apply to inventory"

In one step:

• the cost per unit of every matched item is updated;
• the delivered quantity is added to stock (you can switch this off per line);
• recipe costs, plate costs and the Menu costs report use the new prices straight away.

6. Made a mistake? Undo it

Open the invoice and press Undo this invoice. Prices go back to what they were (wherever nobody changed them since) and the received stock is taken out again — never below zero.

It learns your suppliers

When you match a supplier's product to one of your stock items, the app remembers it. On the next invoice from that supplier the line is matched for you and marked Learned from an earlier invoice. Undoing an invoice also forgets what it taught.

AI use

Reading a photo or a PDF uses one of your plan's daily AI requests per invoice. E-invoice files are imported without AI, so they never count.

Why it matters for your margins

Say a supplier raises an ingredient from 6.50 to 7.00 per kg (+7.7%). A dish that uses 200 g of it now costs 0.10 more per plate. Across 3,000 plates a month, that is 300 a month leaving your margin without anyone noticing — unless the new price reaches your costing the day the invoice arrives.

Want to see the effect on a single dish first? Try the free food cost calculator.

Tips from the kitchen

• Scan on the day of delivery, so stock and prices match what is on the shelf.
• Keep one stock unit per item (kg, L or piece). The app converts packs into that unit for you.
• Always read the review screen. A smudged or folded invoice can be misread — that is exactly why nothing changes until you press Apply.