Upload an invoice to create your supplier products

Recipes and menu items are built from products, and products belong to suppliers. Setting that chain up by hand is slow, so the fastest way to get started is to upload the invoices you already have. Chefy reads the supplier and product details off them and creates everything for you to check.

You can upload:

• A PDF invoice from your supplier.
• A photo of an invoice, as long as it is reasonably clear.
• A CSV file in Chefy's template. Download the template first, fill it in, and upload it. This is the quickest way to load a long product list in bulk.

Whatever you upload, Chefy converts it into the same product list and walks you through the same checks.

Start an upload

1. Open Products from the main navigation.

2. At the bottom of the list there are two controls. Add opens the form for a single product (see Add a supplier product by hand). The round button above it opens the bulk upload tool.

3. Choose Upload invoice for a PDF or photo, or Upload CSV for a filled-in template. If you have not got the template yet, choose Download CSV template first.

4. Pick your file. Chefy reads it and moves you through the steps below. Each step shows what it found and lets you correct it before anything is saved.

Check the supplier

If the invoice is from a supplier you already have, Chefy matches it to them. If it is a supplier you have not added yet, Chefy creates the supplier from the invoice. All it needs is a name and an email address; if the invoice carries more (phone, address, account details) that is used too.

When something is missing, for example a CSV with no supplier email, Chefy asks you for it here, one gap at a time.

Check for products you already have

Chefy compares the products on the invoice with the products already in your venue, by SKU and by name, and tells you what it plans to do: for example, "10 new products will be added, 2 existing products will be updated". Have a look at the ones marked as duplicates and confirm they really are the same product before you continue.

Approve the tags

Chefy pulls tags out of the product names: the words it thinks matter, like a cut, a grade or a size. You decide which to keep.

• Accept all or Reject all to deal with the whole list at once. There is also a quick option to accept every plain English word.
• Or go through the tags one by one and accept or reject each.
• If a tag is a misspelling or a variant of a tag you already use, make it an alias of that tag so both spellings land on the same thing.

Review and confirm

The review step lists every product with the details that are about to be saved. Read through it, fix anything that looks wrong, then click Confirm. A final summary asks whether you are sure; confirm again to start the upload.

What happens next

The upload runs in the background. A few products take seconds; a few hundred can take three to five minutes. You can close the screen and carry on. Come back to Products later and you will see the new products in the list.

Next steps

• Add a supplier product by hand for the odd product that is not on an invoice
• Upload your recipes