--- title: COGS-Well's Bill Lindsey on Managing Restaurant Inventory description: Bill Lindsey co-founded COGS-Well with Dave Douglas, Glen Nelson and Mike Brown in 2019 to help restaurants with inventory management. image: https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Bill-Lindsey-Head-Shot.jpg --- [Skip to content](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/cogs-well-co-founder-bill-lindsey-managing-restaurant-inventory#main-content) [![FIXE Logo](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/FIXE-2@2x.png?width=333&height=200&name=FIXE-2@2x.png)Homepage](https://www.getmyfixe.com/) - [How FIXE Works](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/) - [Restaurant Types](https://www.getmyfixe.com/restaurant-types/) - [Pricing](https://www.getmyfixe.com/pricing/) - [FAQs](https://www.getmyfixe.com/faqs/) - [Communal Table](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table) [Book a demo](https://www.getmyfixe.com/book-a-demo/) - [How FIXE Works](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/) - [Restaurant Types](https://www.getmyfixe.com/restaurant-types/) - [Pricing](https://www.getmyfixe.com/pricing/) - [FAQs](https://www.getmyfixe.com/faqs/) - [Communal Table](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table) [Book a demo](https://www.getmyfixe.com/book-a-demo/) ![](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Imported_Blog_Media/Bill-Lindsey-Head-Shot.jpg?width=1629&height=1885&name=Bill-Lindsey-Head-Shot.jpg) FIXE Best Practices COGS-Well # COGS-Well co-founder Bill Lindsey on managing restaurant inventory ![FIXE](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hubfs/FIXE-mark-trees-icon.svg) FIXE June 27, 2024 **Short answer:** COGS-Well, co-founded by Bill Lindsey in 2019, automates restaurant inventory by pulling item data straight from scanned and EDI invoices, so your staff only scan invoices and periodically count what's left. Human auditors review new items and investigate unusual price changes, setup usually takes a couple of days instead of months, and tools like Recipe Versions, cost alerts and usage projection help you control cost of goods sold. It integrates with FIXE, so your counts flow into your cost of goods reporting. Reno resident Bill Lindsey co-founded [COGS-Well](https://www.cogs-well.com/) with longtime colleagues Dave Douglas, Glen Nelson and Mike Brown in 2019. The latest product from this serial entrepreneur integrates with FIXE and is the latest stage in Lindsey’s 40-year journey to help restaurants get a better handle on inventory management. ## Key takeaways - Bill Lindsey co-founded COGS-Well in 2019 with Dave Douglas, Glen Nelson and Mike Brown, after a 40-year career helping restaurants manage inventory, including at Compeat. - COGS-Well builds your inventory from invoice data, so new items are added automatically and staff just scan invoices and count what's left. - Human auditors review every new item and investigate price spikes or drops flagged on a dashboard. - Setup that's generally a couple of months of manual data entry usually takes COGS-Well a couple of days. - Recipe Versions, cost alerts, prime cost analysis and usage projection help you control cost of goods sold, waste and portioning. Lindsey started working in the restaurant business in 1974 in Fayetteville, North Carolina. As a manager for Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlors, he was on the road for two years opening new restaurants. “I would set up the bank account, talk to the vendors, set up the credit and payment schedules, hire employees and train them. As soon as we got it up and running, I’d get a week off, and then I’d go to another town and do it again,” Lindsey recalls. “Great education. It set me up to go to Las Vegas and design and build restaurants there.” That’s what Lindsey did until 1990. “I was a food and beverage director in Las Vegas,” he says. “We opened our fifth casino in 1984, and we were armed with #2 pencils. I had this idea for a central purchasing operation that would put three competitive bids on every product we buy using pre-approved pricing. We needed a computer system to make it work. There were no PCs at that point, so we hired a company in Las Vegas to write my first system, and the owner of that company is now my wife. That’s where I met her.” Lindsey was an independent consultant to restaurants and restaurant technology companies for years. Dave & Buster’s asked him to replace an inventory system he previously installed. He found Compeat Restaurant Management Software, which was a new company. “I rolled that out to Dave & Buster’s on the agreement that Compeat would let me completely redesign the inventory and recipe system because it lacked functionality and was too difficult to manage,” Lindsey says. “I was an equity partner at Compeat when the company was acquired by private equity in 2015, and subsequently acquired by Restaurant365.” “Compeat was the first all-in-one restaurant management system with a General Ledger, payables, receivables, payroll, labor, inventory, and recipes,” Lindsey says. “We dominated the market for many years and learned a few lessons along the way. One lesson is that if you have an all-in-one solution, you become averse to innovation. It’s like a three-legged sack race. You’re bound together in a way that makes it clumsy.” With COGS-Well, they’re not trying to do it all, just be the very best tool for managing the cost of goods sold. The challenges Lindsey faced with existing inventory software motivated him to find a better way. “Have you ever set up an inventory system?,” he asks. “It’s one of the most miserable jobs ever. It’s traditionally typing in the name of every item in the building, how it comes packed, how you might count it, and how you might use it in a recipe.” One problem: limited data. The answer presented itself while Lindsey was working as a strategic advisor for Plate IQ (now [Ottimate](https://ottimate.com/)), an automated Accounts Payable software company. “I was looking at all the data that they’re scraping off these invoices and the hair on the back of my neck stood up,” he says. Lindsey called his partners, who concurred. They all agreed to build an inventory product that uses all of that data. While large broad line vendors offer direct EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) connections for ordering and invoices, scanning invoices plugged a major hole in terms of data availability.  “We started COGS-Well as an API integration to Plate IQ, which we still use today,” Lindsey says. “We also have our own OCR scanning solution called Invoice+, and we integrate with other vendors like [ChouxBox](https://www.chouxbox.com/) and [Factura](https://factura.ai/). We like to keep the doors open for integration so that customers can decide what products they choose to use.” Lindsey summarized four key selling points for COGS-Well users: - Fast, Easy & Inexpensive Setup - “Hands Free” Invoice Automation - Unique Receiving Audit Service - Easy Recipe Management ## HOW COGS-WELL WORKS Lindsey’s pitch has several big picture takeaways for potential COGS-Well customers: “Better quality data with full automation. No receiving function in the store. Just scan or take a picture of the invoice and move on with your day. Everything from that point forward happens automatically. The only thing we need from restaurant staff is to periodically count what’s left.”  ### AUTOMATION “Any new item that shows up on an invoice, our system is designed to automatically add to the inventory system using our standard packaging library. That includes the detailed recipe units they will need to track ounces, grams, teaspoons, etc.” Lindsey says. “Nobody has to manually enter anything. The kids call it AI. We call it data mapping. It’s been around forever if you know how to do it.” ### HUMAN AUDITORS “This is powerful technology, but we still use an eyes-on human audit,” he says. “An auditor’s job is to open every new item and make sure we read the vendor pack size accurately and set the item up properly. We have a dashboard that monitors activity for all of our customers. An automatic function looks for suspicious activity on invoices. When we see the price either spike or crater for an inventory item, one of our auditors investigates. Maybe the vendor changed the packaging, or maybe it was read incorrectly. Sometimes on invoices, an 8 will look like a 0 to an OCR (Optimal Character Recognition) system, so it will create a duplicate item. We have a merge function that solves for that. For vendors we have EDI connections with, there’s a little switch for a catch weight. If you’re buying cases and receiving pounds, they sometimes forget to send that little bit. In most other inventory systems, all of a sudden, a $5 pound turns into a $5 case, and their food costs go up. In COGS-Well that hits the dashboard, our auditors go in and correct it.”  ### FAST SETUP “How hard is it to maintain your inventory item database? Setup can be grueling. It’s generally a couple months of manual data entry. Sign up with COGS-Well and we can usually do that for you in a couple of days. We won’t bill a new customer until after we complete this step for them, along with adding their vendors and general ledger accounts.” ### STANDARDIZATION “Units of measure can be very fragile in most systems, and very inconsistent,” Lindsey says. “We built a standard packaging library for every product you’ll ever buy, no matter who it’s from. We map all those disparate vendor pack descriptions to our standard packaging.” ### RECIPE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM 1\) “We’ve got a scalable **Recipe Viewer**, with step-by-step instructions with pictures that you can use on tablets,” Lindsey says. “Bring up a recipe and you can scale it for large parties, banquets, and special events. ‘I need 100 servings. How many eggs do I crack?’ That sort of thing.” 2\) “If you have a seasonal menu item or change a recipe in the system, recipe software will always use the newest recipe when reporting historical data. It’s liable to be wrong if that’s not how you used to make the item,” Lindsey says. “All of our competitors’ systems have this same vulnerability. They tell you that you have to inactivate or retire the old recipe. Start a new recipe with new ingredients and map the POS code now to the new recipe. We created **Recipe Versions**. If you want to change or adjust a recipe, click an “add version” button, put in the date that the new menu or recipe goes into effect, and change the ingredients with an effective date. You can have the same recipe with multiple versions over time.” 3\) “COGS-Well provides full **Prime Cost** analysis,” Lindsey says, “meaning you can assign a job to a prep recipe and calculate the full cost of each recipe, including the labor required to prep fresh ingredients or break down primal cuts into steaks or portion fresh fish.” 4\) “Sometimes the ingredient driving price increases is not what you expect,” he says. “We’ve seen some dramatic price changes. A couple of million chickens had to be slaughtered a couple of weeks ago because of bird flu. What do you think that’s going to do to egg prices tomorrow? Or to chicken prices and chicken wing prices going forward? With all of these dramatic events, we have **cost alerts**. Set a percentage trigger. Like, ‘I want a 5% cost alert on meat.’ So anytime a meat product cost moves up or down 5% or more, it hits the dashboard and says, “Prices are up 17%.”  You’re either going to change the recipe or change the sales price.” ### USAGE PROJECTION “We have an usage projection tool to make recommendations on how much to order, transfer, prep and when,” Lindsey says. “Look back over the last six Mondays. What’s my average usage compared to what’s on hand? Look 3 days into the future and tell me how much I need to prep today, so I have enough to last 3 days. If it’s a 3-day shelf life and you make it every day, you’re using 3 times the labor dollars. Why not make a 3-day batch and make it every three days? A lot of those little nuances in the recipe system will help people be more efficient and profitable.” ### WASTE REDUCTION “Are you buying too much food?,” he asks. “If you’re buying canned goods, you’re just tying up capital. But if you’re buying a fresh product, you’re running into a waste issue. The product’s expiring before you have a chance to use it. You don’t want to over buy. If you’re using usage projection, then we can help people purchase more efficiently and not order too much food.” “Portioning is important,” Lindsey says. “Figure that out by comparing your theoretical to your actual usage. I had one customer in the deli business. His problem was tuna salad. They were using the wrong scoop, and they were over portioning the tuna. He didn’t figure that out until he saw a theoretical variance between how much tuna he should have sold compared to how much he actually used. It can also be things like over portioning fries or cutting the steaks too large.” “It’s just as dangerous to under-portion. If I come to your restaurant and always get a handful of French fries. Then I come in and I get a little portion of French fries. I’m wondering what’s happening here. Consistency is key, and the only way to know is to track your recipe’s theoretical usage and compare it to your actual accounted for and received usage.” Lindsey and his partners have created and provided restaurant inventory and recipe management tools for decades. With COGS-Well, the culmination of that collective experience, they built their most powerful software yet to benefit restaurant operators.  COGS-Well is one of the inventory tools that connects with [how FIXE works](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/), so your counts flow into your cost of goods reporting. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is COGS-Well? COGS-Well is restaurant inventory and recipe management software co-founded in 2019 by Bill Lindsey, Dave Douglas, Glen Nelson and Mike Brown. Rather than trying to be an all-in-one system, it focuses on managing the cost of goods sold, using data from scanned and EDI invoices to build and maintain your inventory automatically. ### How does COGS-Well automate restaurant inventory? Staff scan or take a picture of each invoice and move on. Any new item on an invoice is added to the inventory system automatically using a standard packaging library, including recipe units like ounces and grams. Human auditors then check each new item's pack size and investigate unusual price changes, duplicate items and catch weight errors. The only thing restaurant staff need to do is periodically count what's left. ### How does comparing theoretical and actual usage cut restaurant food costs? Comparing your recipes' theoretical usage to what you actually received and used shows where portions are off. In one example Lindsey shared, a deli found it was over portioning tuna salad because staff were using the wrong scoop. Usage projection also helps you avoid buying more fresh product than you can use before it expires. ## More on Costs, Inventory and Cash Flow This post is part of our [Costs, Inventory and Cash Flow](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/restaurant-costs-and-cash-flow) guide. Keep reading: - [Why Your P&L Says Profit but Your Bank Account Is Empty](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/why-your-pl-says-profit-but-your-bank-account-is-empty) - [Negotiate terms with restaurant vendors to maximize operating cash flow](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/negotiate-terms-with-restaurant-vendors-maximize-operating-cash-flow) - [Restaurant inventory: When it makes sense + best practices](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/restaurant-inventory-when-it-makes-sense-best-practices) Want to know if your numbers are driving profit? [Take the Profit Check](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/profit-check?src=blog). About the author Written by the [FIXE team](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/author/fixe). FIXE does restaurant bookkeeping with the bookkeeper included, for 600+ restaurant locations. [Meet the team behind FIXE](https://www.getmyfixe.com/about/). ## Share this post [mailto:https%3A%2F%2Fhub.getmyfixe.com%2Fcommunal-table%2Fcogs-well-co-founder-bill-lindsey-managing-restaurant-inventory](mailto:https%3A%2F%2Fhub.getmyfixe.com%2Fcommunal-table%2Fcogs-well-co-founder-bill-lindsey-managing-restaurant-inventory) ## Keep reading ### [![The Complete Guide to Restaurant Payroll Reconciliation](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/FIXE-The-Complete-Guide-to-Restaurant-Payroll-Reconciliation.jpg?width=1672&height=941&name=FIXE-The-Complete-Guide-to-Restaurant-Payroll-Reconciliation.jpg) Tipping Bookkeeping FIXE The Complete Guide to Restaurant Payroll Reconciliation](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/the-complete-guide-to-restaurant-payroll-reconciliation) ### [![Best Restaurant Bookkeeping Firms for Multi-Unit Groups](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/FIXE-Best-Restaurant-Bookkeeping-Firms-for-Multi-Unit-Groups.jpg?width=1672&height=941&name=FIXE-Best-Restaurant-Bookkeeping-Firms-for-Multi-Unit-Groups.jpg) 3rd Party Apps Franchises Bookkeeping Best Restaurant Bookkeeping Firms for Multi-Unit Groups (2026)](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/best-restaurant-finance-partners-for-operators) [![FIXE-2@2x-1](https://hub.getmyfixe.com/hs-fs/hubfs/FIXE-2@2x-1.png?width=150&height=90&name=FIXE-2@2x-1.png "FIXE-2@2x-1")](https://www.getmyfixe.com/) - SOLUTIONS - [How FIXE Works](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/) - [Fresh Financial Reports](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/#reports) - [A/P Automation](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/#automation) - [3rd Party App Intelligence](https://www.getmyfixe.com/how-fixe-works/#3rd-party-intelligence) - RESOURCES - [Restaurant Types](https://www.getmyfixe.com/restaurant-types/) - [Pricing](https://www.getmyfixe.com/pricing/) - [Book a demo](https://www.getmyfixe.com/book-a-demo/) - [Glossary](https://www.getmyfixe.com/fixe-restaurant-bookkeeping-glossary/) - COMPANY - [FAQs](https://www.getmyfixe.com/faqs/) - [Communal Table](https://www.getmyfixe.com/communal-table/) - [Sign in](https://www.fixebookkeeping.com/) - [Contact us](https://www.getmyfixe.com/contact-us/) © 2026 FIXE. 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Rather than trying to be an all-in-one system, it focuses on managing the cost of goods sold, using data from scanned and EDI invoices to build and maintain your inventory automatically." }, "name" : "What is COGS-Well?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Staff scan or take a picture of each invoice and move on. Any new item on an invoice is added to the inventory system automatically using a standard packaging library, including recipe units like ounces and grams. Human auditors then check each new item's pack size and investigate unusual price changes, duplicate items and catch weight errors. The only thing restaurant staff need to do is periodically count what's left." }, "name" : "How does COGS-Well automate restaurant inventory?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Comparing your recipes' theoretical usage to what you actually received and used shows where portions are off. 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