Invoice Data Extraction for
Restaurants and Food Service
Restaurants receive more invoices — with more line items — than almost any other small business. SkipEntry extracts item-level data from any food distributor, any format, and exports directly to QuickBooks or Xero for food cost tracking.
No credit card required.
The restaurant AP problem
A single Sysco or US Foods invoice for a busy restaurant can have 80 line items. Each item has a product code, description, quantity, case weight, unit price, and extension. Multiply that across deliveries from 3–5 vendors per week, and a restaurant bookkeeper is looking at thousands of line items per month to enter manually.
Most restaurant operators just enter the invoice total and move on — losing all item-level detail. That means no food cost analysis, no visibility into which categories are driving costs, and no way to spot pricing discrepancies from distributors.
SkipEntry extracts full line-item detail automatically. Every item, every invoice, without typing — so food cost tracking becomes practical even for single-location operators.
The volume adds up fast
Average invoices per week (small restaurant)
Pages per month at that volume
Manual entry time at 5 min/invoice
SkipEntry time at the same volume
Even a small restaurant hits the Professional plan volume. At $149/month, that's less than one hour of bookkeeper time.
Invoice types SkipEntry handles
From your largest distributor to your smallest local vendor.
Food distributor invoices
Sysco, US Foods, and regional distributors send invoices with 20-100+ line items. SkipEntry extracts every item, quantity, unit price, and total.
Local produce and specialty vendors
Farm-direct and local supplier invoices are often hand-formatted spreadsheets or PDFs with non-standard layouts. No templates needed.
Beverage and alcohol invoices
Beer, wine, and spirits invoices from distributors — often large line-item counts with brand, SKU, case quantity, and bottle pricing.
Equipment rental and supplies
Linen services, uniform rental, paper goods, small equipment — recurring invoices with varying line-item structures.
Maintenance and repair
Kitchen equipment repair, hood cleaning, pest control — service invoices that need to be coded to the right expense accounts.
Utilities
Gas, electric, and water bills for restaurant operations — high usage periods need to be tracked against revenue.
Line item extraction — the key for food cost
Most invoice tools capture the invoice total. That tells you what you spent but not why. Food cost analysis requires item-level data: how much did proteins cost this week? Did chicken prices increase from last month? Is the produce category trending up as a percentage of revenue?
SkipEntry extracts every line item from distributor invoices — product code, description, quantity, unit of measure, unit price, and extension. That data exports to QuickBooks or Xero where it can be mapped to food cost accounts and tracked against revenue.
Item description
Chicken Breast 40lb Case
Quantity
4 cases
Unit price
$68.40/case
Extension
$273.60
Product code
CHK-BRE-40
Category
Protein / Poultry
Export to QBO and Xero for food cost tracking
SkipEntry exports in import-ready formats for QuickBooks Online and Xero. Map line items to food cost accounts — proteins, produce, dairy, dry goods — and track cost of goods as a percentage of revenue over time.
| Category | QBO Account | Xero Account |
|---|---|---|
| Protein / Meat | 5000 · Food Cost - Protein | Food Cost - Protein |
| Produce | 5010 · Food Cost - Produce | Food Cost - Produce |
| Dairy | 5020 · Food Cost - Dairy | Food Cost - Dairy |
| Dry Goods / Pantry | 5030 · Food Cost - Dry Goods | Food Cost - Dry Goods |
| Beverages | 5040 · Beverage Cost | Beverage Cost |
Related reading
- Batch Invoice Processing— How to process large volumes of invoices efficiently — ideal for restaurants with high weekly invoice counts.