Rikavo or Excel for recipe costing, which suits you
Excel, or any spreadsheet, can cost your recipes and you probably have it already. It is enough if you have few dishes, your prices change little and someone on the team updates them every month. It falls short when keeping prices up to date means typing in every invoice. Rikavo does it from a photo of the invoice and tells you when a price rise hits your dishes.
Comparison
| Excel | Rikavo | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free if you already have it | Paid, one plan with everything included |
| Entering prices | By hand, invoice by invoice | Photo of the invoice or forward the email; you confirm or correct |
| When a price rises | You have to spot it and change the cell | It tells you and recalculates the dishes that use it |
| Units and pack sizes | With your own formulas | Converts kg, l and units to the pack you buy |
| On a phone | Awkward | Built for the phone |
| Several people | A file that gets copied and messed up | Each person with their own login and language |
| Daily menu and orders | No | Included |
| Flexibility | Total: you build it your way | What the app does |
When Excel is enough
- Your menu is short and changes little.
- You buy from a few suppliers and their prices are stable.
- Someone on the team enjoys spreadsheets and has time to keep them up.
- Knowing your margins once a month is enough.
If that is you, a few tips to make it work:
- One sheet for products and another for recipes. Each product’s price is written once, and the recipes take it from there.
- The price per base unit (€/kg, €/l, €/unit) and the date of the invoice it comes from.
- Quantities as bought, with trim waste, as in how to cost a dish.
- A copy before changing formulas. A broken formula gives no warning.
Where it falls short
- Prices go stale. Typing in every invoice takes time and is the first thing to slip. A recipe cost with prices from months ago says the dish leaves more than it does.
- Price rises slip past unseen. The sheet does not know a new invoice has arrived. We explain it in how to keep supplier price rises under control.
- It depends on one person. When whoever keeps it changes jobs or goes on holiday, the file stops.
- You can’t work on it from a phone. Invoices arrive in the kitchen or at the bar, not at the computer.
What changes with Rikavo
Rikavo reads every line of your invoices and delivery notes: product, quantity, price and VAT. It remembers what each supplier calls your products and keeps each dish’s cost up to date. When a price rises, it tells you and suggests how to recover the margin. If you already have your recipe costs in another program or in Excel, they are imported as they are and it points out what is missing.
You don’t have to stop using Excel to try it, and you can check the results against your spreadsheet. For a single dish, the free recipe costing calculator does the sums instantly, without signing up.