Invoice problems
Is Sysco overcharging you? The five checks that sort it out
· by the Candor team — operators auditing real restaurant invoices
Type this question into a search engine and you get forum threads, stock-market pages, and recaps of a class action that closed over a decade ago — nothing that actually answers it. So here's the thing nobody on that results page says: whether you're being overcharged is checkable from your own invoices, and "overcharged" turns out to mean three different things that deserve three different responses. This method works for any broadline distributor — Sysco, US Foods, PFG, or a regional — we're using the Sysco framing because that's the question operators actually type.
First, split the question
A price that went up is not automatically an overcharge. On any distributor invoice, an increase is one of three things:
- A market move — the underlying commodity moved, and your price rode along. Real, verifiable, and not your distributor's doing. (Produce is the loudest example.)
- A contract-allowed increase — cost-plus terms, volume tiers, or an indexed fee doing what your agreement says. Checkable against the agreement (which structure you're on matters enormously).
- An error or unexplained drift — arithmetic that doesn't multiply, a pack size that shrank at the same case price, a fee with no term behind it, a SKU whose floor quietly rises. This is the category worth a conversation.
The five checks below give each invoice line its first sort into those buckets — some land cleanly (arithmetic errors, missing credits), while others produce a strong signal that the rep conversation settles rather than a verdict. Checks 2 and 3 need only your last three invoices and a calculator. Check 1 spots a rise from your invoices alone, but attributing it — market move or drift — takes a matched public series (how to pick one); check 4 needs the diesel series linked below; check 5 needs your own delivery notes, credit memos, and account statement alongside the invoices; and confirming a category-2 increase needs your agreement in hand. Invoices alone tell you something changed, not why.
The five checks
1. Same SKU, rising price. Pull the same SKU across your invoices, per-unit price, in date order. Produce bounces; a floor that rises across months while your matched series stays flat is a signal to investigate — not proof by itself, since region, grade, pack, and freight can move independently of any one series — but it moves the burden of explanation to your rep. (When industry costs spiked, Sysco told investors it had passed along a 13.4% cost increase "with little pushback" — Restaurant Business — the on-record reminder that increases stick when nobody contests them line by line.)
2. Pack-size changes at the same price. A case that went from 4/10 LB to 4/8 LB at the same case price is a 25% per-pound increase that never looks like one. Redo the per-unit math on any SKU whose description changed. (The per-unit method, worked example included.)
3. Arithmetic. Quantity × unit price should equal the extended price — with one known exception: catch-weight items (meat, seafood, anything billed by actual shipped weight) can legitimately show a case quantity next to a per-pound price, so their extension won't multiply from the case count. For those, check price × the shipped weight printed on the line instead. Everything else that doesn't multiply cleanly is either an honest error or an adjustment that deserves an explanation.
4. Fees against what governs them. Total the fee lines, then check each against the thing that's supposed to explain it: fuel surcharges at the big broadliners move with published diesel-price averages — reporting during the spring 2026 fuel spike described that pattern across Sysco, US Foods, and PFG (The New York Times) — and diesel averages are public at EIA. A surcharge that steps up with diesel but never steps down is a specific, checkable question.
5. Credits that actually landed. Shorted items, returns, and promised adjustments — confirm each one actually posted, either as a credit line on a subsequent invoice or as a standalone credit memo applied to your account statement (distributors do it both ways). This is the one check that needs your own records alongside the invoices: the delivery ticket you noted the short on, the credit memo or rep text that promised the credit, and — for memos that post directly to the account — your account statement to confirm it actually landed there. An invoice shows the credits that posted to it, never the ones that didn't. A promised credit that never posts is a real loss that no price check will find.
What to do with what you find
Take findings to your rep as evidence, not accusation: line, invoice number, date, math. Category-1 findings (market moves) aren't complaints — but they're worth verifying against a public series, with the matched-reference caveats. Category-2 findings become contract questions. Category-3 findings — the errors and unexplained drift — are the ones your invoice numbers give you standing to get corrected. The Sysco guide covers the account-structure questions worth raising in the same conversation.
The check this method can't run
Everything above compares your invoices to themselves and to public series. What none of it answers: whether your level is high — whether the price you've been paying all along, creep or no creep, is above what the market actually charges operators like you. That takes a reference point beyond your own paper, and it's the part we sell: email your last 3 invoices and the free top-3 benchmark comes back within 48 hours, your per-unit prices set against prices other operators have paid or been quoted — every finding tied to the specific invoices it came from, by invoice number and date, with the SKU on item findings where your invoice lists one. No citation, no claim. Rather do it all yourself? The full self-audit method is free.