Validation - FAQs
Overview:
Restaurant inventory databases are constantly changing due to item cost changes, packaging changes, vendor substitutions, buying the same item from different vendors, and buying new items. In addition, some vendors do not clearly identify important information on their invoices such as the pack size (critical for an accurate item costing and usage calculation). When menus change, new sales items are added or deleted from your POS system.
COGS-Well automatically adds new vendors, GL accounts, inventory items, or sales items to your database when they are imported. This feature eliminates the need to add them manually which saves a lot of time and it also ensures that your database is always up to date. We believe it is important to also ensure that the information that is automatically added to your database is accurate.
Validation is the process of using a combination of unique technology and human auditors to ensure that the information for inventory items, vendors, GL accounts, or sales items imported into your database is complete and accurate.
Purpose: The primary purpose of our validation service is to transition the initial database setup as well as the ongoing database maintenance required for any inventory control system from you to us.
Alerts: Your COGS-Well system automatically generates alerts when new vendors, GL accounts, inventory items, or sales items are imported and added to your database.
Audit Team: We have a team of auditors that perform validation services each night. Our validation service is free (it is included as part of our monthly software subscription fee).
Upfront Validation: As part of your initial system setup, validation is provided for every vendor, GL account, inventory item, and sales item in your database.
Ongoing Validation: Validation is done every night on an ongoing basis to make sure any new items or changes to existing items, GL accounts, vendors, or sales items are verified and updated to your database correctly.
Validation Service is performed as part of our Receiving Audit Service. For more information please click this link to our Receiving Audit Service - FAQs.
How Validation Works:
Your COGS-Well system generates alerts when new inventory items, vendors, GL accounts, or sales items are imported and added to your database. An example is shown below. The below example is what our auditors see because it includes a company name. If you are logged into your company, it would just list new items, vendors, or accounts:
New Inventory Item Validation: Our auditors will review all new inventory items for complete and accurate information. If the pack size is not clearly defined on the invoice (buried in the item description or missing), our auditors will correct it. Or, if Plate IQ reads an item code incorrectly and creates a duplicate for an item that already exists, our auditors will merge the duplicate item into the existing item.
New Vendor Validation: Our auditors will review a new vendor that is imported from a scanned invoice. Sometimes the restaurant scans an invoice from a vendor that is not a food or beverage vendor and our auditors can exclude these vendors from future imports. Otherwise, the information for a new vendor is verified (validated).
New GL Account Validation: Our auditors will review a new GL Account that is imported from a scanned invoice. Sometimes the restaurant scans an invoice from a vendor that is not a food or beverage vendor and it creates a new GL account that is not used for Food and Beverage. Our auditors will not add these GL Accounts to your database. Otherwise, the information for a new GL Account is verified (validated). New
New Sales Item Validation: Our auditors will review every new sales item that is imported from your POS system for complete and accurate information.
Validation Self-Service: A few of our customers do their own validation. This is typically because they have an added resource to do this work and because they want to more closely monitor the inventory item detail being imported from their invoices into their COGS-Well database. These customers have been trained to use our alerts and validation features.
Validation Access and Alerts are Configurable: If you are using the COGS-Well Receiving Audit Service, then the Validation Alerts are just informational. If you or one of your Users does not wish to see Validation Alerts, and/or, if you do not want a User to have access to the Validation features, then the User Setup feature allows for validation alerts and feature access to be disabled. Please see this link on User Setup for more information.
Invoice Images: COGS-Well's auditors are aided by having access to images of every invoice imported from a scanning system such as Plate IQ or Invoice+. For example, if an auditor is looking at an item that requires validation, they can click a button to show an image of the invoice that included that item. Below is an example of an invoice image:
Viewing Validation Activity:
If you would like to know more about or review the inventory items that the Receiving Audit team (or your team) is validating, it is available via our 30-day Activity dashboard grid. This grid is displayed in the center of the COGS-Well dashboard (please see the example below):
Validated Inventory Items: The value on this row of the 30-Day Activity grid represents the number of items that have required Validation over the last 30 days. In the example above, 18 inventory items have been validated over the last 30 days. Clicking on the "Jump button" (>) on the Validated Inventory Items row will take you to the "Find Grid" for Inventory Items. There is a column on the inventory item find grid for a "Validated Date". An example is below:
Validated Date on Inventory Item Find Grid: Whether you access the Inventory Item Find Grid via the jump button on the 30 Day Activity Dashboard, or via Inventory>Setup>Items, you will see the Validated date column as shown in the example above. If you hover over the magnifying glass at the top of this column, you will see the filtering options as shown in the example below:
To view the items that have been validated over a date range, hover over the magnifying glass, then click on the "Greater Than or Equal To" option that is highlighted above. Next, click on the calendar button at the top right of the Validated Column to see the calendar display as shown in the example below. Then select your greater than or equal to starting date from the calendar as shown below:
Only the items that have been validated within your selected date range will display after a starting date has been selected, If you want to view additional detail or change an item, then select the edit button next to that item on the find grid. An example of only validated items for a date range is shown below:
