Free tool
Vendor price book template + 10 minute invoice audit
Vendors count on you not noticing a 40 cent bump on a case you buy every week. A price book is how owners notice. Fill it from your last two weeks of invoices, then run the 10 minute audit weekly.
What you get
- The price book: one row per item you buy, with columns for vendor, item, unit / pack size, baseline price, last price, change, notes. Printable page and CSV for Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets.
- The 10 minute weekly invoice audit: a 10 step checklist that catches math errors, price creep, and missing credits before they compound.
Works for restaurants, coffee shops, food trucks, and pizza shops. No software needed.
Get the templates
Free to use, no signup needed.
The 10 minute weekly invoice audit
- Pull this week's invoices into one stack, paper or PDF.
- Check each invoice's totals: quantity times unit price for the 5 biggest lines.
- Compare unit prices against your price book baseline for your top 10 items.
- Flag anything up more than 5 percent with no notice from the vendor.
- Check you were not charged for credits, returns, or shorted deliveries.
- Log new prices in the price book and date the entry.
- Call or email the vendor about every flag. Ask for the old price or a credit.
- Note the outcome in the price book so next week's call has receipts.
- Move any repeat offender's items out for a quote from a second vendor.
- Total the flags you caught. That number is your raise this week.
Related reading: how to catch vendor overcharges and why price creep is the quiet margin killer.
Or stop doing this by hand
Smooth Ops reads your invoices, keeps the price book for you, and sends an alert the day a vendor moves a price.
Start free30 days free, no credit card