Trudy’s Adds AP Automation to Compeat

Trudy’s is a longstanding Austin, TX original known for its strong margaritas and classic queso. Since its first location opened in 1977, Trudy’s has been serving the Austin community with local, unique and truly Tex-Mex cuisine – from breakfast tacos to chipotle enchiladas.

Prior to implementing AP Automation to Compeat, the staff at Trudy’s were required to temporarily store boxes of invoices at each location until the documents were picked up for processing. Three days out of the week, a courier would pick up bags of invoices from each store and transport them to the central office. Upon delivery at the central office, the invoices would be processed by three central office employees and manually input into Compeat, restaurant management software used by Trudy’s.

Because Trudy’s uses Compeat for restaurant accounting, inventory management, and purchase orders, each invoice needed to be manually uploaded into Compeat and matched to the corresponding purchase order. Similarly, each line-item must be manually input into Compeat’s inventory management system. This time-consuming process consisting of organizing and uploading the invoices one-by-one and manually entering the data into Compeat took more than 18 hours each week.

AP Automation to Compeat a Significant Time Saver

Since implementing xtraCHEF, the team at Trudy’s has drastically reduced the time and expense of getting clean AP data into Compeat. Now consisting of only two employees, the central office team is able to accomplish the same accounts payable and inventory management processes in just 5 hours per week. They’ve also significantly accelerated the process between when the order is delivered and when that data is available for bill pay, reporting and analysis.

Each store uses an iPad to capture the invoices on-site, eliminating the need to store them and transport them to the central office. Once captured, xtraCHEF digitizes and stores the invoice in a cloud-based document management system making the documents easy to access for both in-store operators or the central office.

xtraCHEF also accurately codes and extracts the line-item restaurant food cost data for thousands of products purchased by the culinary team at Trudys and makes that data available for import into Compeat the next day. Shelly McHugh, the Central Support Manager, is able to easily verify any new products and push that data into Compeat with minimal manual intervention.

Standardized reporting to support bonus structures

O’Mara, Frant, and Womack had wanted to roll out a bonus structure for GMs for a while so they could reward those who were keeping close tabs on their COGS and hitting food cost targets. However, they didn’t feel they could implement one until they felt comfortable with the accuracy of data.

“How can you hold GMs accountable if you don’t even know where they are?” asks Womack. “Having real numbers and real money that they’re responsible for changes the level of ownership they have for what they’re doing.”

Each week, GMs submit reports to Womack that are pulled from xtraCHEF’s data based on the previous quarter and the end of the workweek. At the end of each quarter, GMs submit a quarterly summary, and bonuses are paid out then based off of overall success. 

After implementing xtraCHEF, Sidewall leadership knew they could feel confident with the information on hand to be able to implement a bonus structure. Their program is a weighted scale based on multiple factors, including prime costs and bar costs, discounts and voids, customer feedback, internal audits, and secret shoppers.   

Document Management a Key AP Automation Feature

xtraCHEF’s AP Automation to Compeat offers more than just invoice processing. Another feature that Shelly finds valuable is being able to access what she needs quickly and easily without having to go through extra steps. She uses xtraCHEF’s cloud-based invoice search feature almost daily to retrieve invoices, purchase history, or pricing information.

“If someone asks me, ‘hey, when’s the last time we purchased this or that?’, it’s really easily to search for that item and physically pull up the invoice in just a few clicks,” said Shelly. “In Compeat, you don’t have that option.”

Anytime, Anywhere Access Makes it Easy

Because xtraCHEF is a cloud-based, mobile-friendly restaurant management platform, users can access the system from anywhere on any device. This makes it easy to use the system whether users are in the restaurant, in the office, or on-the-go.

“I would certainly recommend other restaurants to use xtraCHEF, especially for the time savings but also the ease of being able to access the software from anywhere,” said Shelly. “I can get my job done remotely without having to wait for the invoices to come to me, because they’re already there in xtraCHEF.”

Restaurant management systems should not just be easy to access but easy to implement and easy to use. That’s why Trudy’s chooses xtraCHEF for AP Automation.

“xtraCHEF is very user-friendly, especially since it’s all online and really quick,” says Shelly. “I like being able to just pull up exactly what I need and know where it is vs. having to go through a lot of steps to get to what I need.”

Does your restaurant use Compeat for restaurant accounting? Learn more about how you can add AP Automation to Compeat to save time and streamline your accounts payable process.

Learn more about how you can add AP Automation to Compeat to save time and streamline your accounts payable process.