How long do I have to report a short shipment?

It depends on the distributor. US Foods will not credit shortages after the invoice is signed and the driver has left, and allows 24 hours for concealed damage. Check your distributor's customer policy.

Is invoice auditing worth paying for?

At about 1% of invoice dollars, a restaurant spending $30,000 a month on food has roughly $300 a month at stake. That pays for a disciplined receiving routine; it rarely justifies an expensive audit service on its own.

Supplier invoice errors

How do you audit food supplier invoices?

Updated September 23, 2026 · Checked against primary sources

The short answer

Check each delivery against the invoice before the driver leaves, then compare invoice prices with your quoted or contracted prices weekly, and match credit memos to statements monthly. An audit of more than 11,000 invoices from 400 restaurants found an overcharge on 35%, typically about 1% of the invoice total, so the money is in volume, not single invoices.

Key takeaways

The frequently repeated "4-8% of food cost" figure has no primary source we could find. Audits show about 1% of invoice dollars (restaurants) to 1.5% (college foodservice).
Shortages are often uncreditable once the invoice is signed and the driver leaves. US Foods states this in its customer policy.
Unapplied credit memos are pure loss: the supplier agreed you were owed it.
Falling commodity prices are a leak too: check that decreases reach your invoice, not only increases.

The four layers of an invoice audit

Each layer catches a different leak, and the first one has the shortest deadline.

When	Check	Catches
At the door	Count cases, weigh catch-weight items, note shorts on the invoice before signing	Short shipments, underweight cases, damage
Weekly	Invoice price vs quote, contract or last order guide	Price creep, substitutions at a higher price
Monthly	Credit memos vs statement; invoices vs payments	Credits never applied, duplicate billing
Quarterly	Cost-plus markup and fees vs agreement	Markup drift, fuel and delivery surcharges

Underweight cases are a real, litigated problem

In A1A Burrito Works v. Sysco Jacksonville, restaurants alleged that 40 lb cases of chicken weighed between 34.7 and 37.3 lb on 13 occasions; the Eleventh Circuit reinstated the breach of contract claim in December 2023 (FindLaw). A scale at receiving is the cheapest audit tool a kitchen can buy.

Common mistakes

Signing the invoice before counting. With some distributors that ends your right to a shortage credit.
Auditing only price increases. Commodity decreases that never reach your invoice cost the same.
Filing credit memos without matching them to the next statement.

Frequently asked questions

How long do I have to report a short shipment?: It depends on the distributor. US Foods will not credit shortages after the invoice is signed and the driver has left, and allows 24 hours for concealed damage. Check your distributor's customer policy.
Is invoice auditing worth paying for?: At about 1% of invoice dollars, a restaurant spending $30,000 a month on food has roughly $300 a month at stake. That pays for a disciplined receiving routine; it rarely justifies an expensive audit service on its own.

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Find out what your restaurant is owed

Send exports, not logins: processor statements, payout reports, delivery-app CSVs and payroll summaries. We return a written list of what looks recoverable, what each item is worth, and which deadlines are still open. If something is worth pursuing, we quote the recovery before you commit to anything.

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Supplier invoicesWhy do restaurants lose supplier credit memos?

Go deeper

Terms on this page

Short shipment: A delivery that contains fewer cases or units than the invoice bills. Caught at receiving, it becomes a credit request; missed, it is paid in full.
Credit memo: A supplier document that reduces what you owe, issued for shorted, damaged or returned items. If it is not applied to a later invoice or statement, the credit is lost.
Catch weight: Products billed by actual weight rather than a fixed case price, common for meat, seafood and cheese. The invoiced weight should match what was received.
Cost-plus pricing: A distributor agreement that prices products at the distributor's cost plus a fixed markup. Auditing it means checking both the markup and what counts as cost.

Sources

Cite this page

Pavado, “How do you audit food supplier invoices?”, https://www.pavadotech.com/restaurants/questions/how-to-audit-food-supplier-invoices, updated 2026-09-23.