Invoice problems
How to self-audit 3 distributor invoices in an hour
· by the Candor team — operators auditing real restaurant invoices
You don't need software or a consultant to find out whether your distributor is overcharging you. You need three recent invoices, a second price reference, and about an hour. Here's the exact method we use — the same one behind our audits — so you can run it yourself. (At the end, the honest case for when to just hand it off.)
Before you start: what you need
- Your last 3 distributor invoices (photos or PDFs are fine).
- One second price reference: another distributor's quote, Restaurant Depot shelf prices, or a fellow operator's invoice.
- A calculator. That's it.
Step 1: Rank by spend, not by count (10 minutes)
If the columns on your invoice aren't obvious yet, read how to read a distributor invoice first — this hour assumes you can find the unit price, pack size and extension. List your line items and sort by total dollars spent, not by price per case. Your top 10 items by spend usually drive most of your food cost — that's where recoverable money lives, and where you should spend your hour. A $0.50 overcharge on a case you buy twice a year isn't worth your time; a $0.35/lb gap on chicken you buy weekly is about $2,730 a year on one item, in our own data.
Step 2: Check the math (10 minutes)
For each of your top items, verify that quantity × unit price = the extended (line) total. Arithmetic errors are honest mistakes and fully recoverable — but only if someone multiplies. While you're there, scan for the same line billed twice.
Step 3: Watch for pack-size sleight of hand (10 minutes)
Compare this invoice's pack size and unit to last month's for the same items. A case that shrank from 6/#10 to 4/#10 at a "lower" case price is a per-unit increase in disguise. Always compare per usable unit, never per case. This is the single most common way a cut is actually a raise. The seven line items operators miss.
Step 4: Benchmark against your second reference (15 minutes)
For each top item, put your invoice price next to your second reference. Anything with a double-digit gap on a high-volume item is a finding. In our documented Phoenix data, real spreads ran 12.5% on chicken, 15% on oil, 25% on a case of soy sauce (the spreads) — same item, same week.
Step 5: Check your own history for creep (10 minutes)
Pull an invoice from 60–90 days ago and compare the same SKUs. A staple that drifted up with no market story behind it is your cleanest negotiation evidence — no rep can call your own invoice history a competitor's lowball. Why creep happens.
Step 6: Turn findings into a rep conversation
Take your two or three biggest findings — the item, your price, the reference, the ask — and make it a line-item call, not a loyalty complaint. Specific numbers get escalated; feelings get sympathy. The script structure.
When to just hand it off
The DIY method works — the cost is your hour, repeated, forever, and it dies the month you get slammed. There are two ways to buy your way out:
- Ongoing monitoring tools (for example, InvoiceWatch, ~$79/mo) watch your invoices going forward and email you when a price jumps versus its recent average. Good for catching future creep automatically; you still act on the alerts.
- A done-for-you audit — what we do — checks what you're paying right now against real invoice data across operators, and hands you the negotiation script. Send your last 3 invoices; the free top-3 benchmark comes back in 48 hours, every finding cited to your own invoice line. If it finds nothing, you don't pay.
Different jobs: monitoring guards the future, an audit fixes the present. The spreadsheet does both, at midnight. Pick the one that fits the hour you actually have.