The finance brain for independent restaurants, bars and cafés
Snap a photo of any invoice or end-of-day report, straight from WhatsApp. Forkwize reads it line by line, proves the maths, tracks what you owe, flags price creep in pounds, and hands your accountant a ready-made VAT pack. No data entry. No new habits.
No setup. No training. Your first invoice is the integration.
Photograph the invoice, or just send it to Forkwize on WhatsApp between orders. Multi-page, handwritten, stamped: all fine.
Lines that pass both the confidence check and the maths check clear automatically. Doubtful ones come back with the reason attached. Duplicates, copies and pro-formas are caught before they touch your books.
Costs build by category, debts build by supplier, and the panel turns it into decisions: what got dearer, who to pay, what to reprice.
Forkwize isn't one-size-fits-all. From the first invoice, its AI starts learning your restaurant: your suppliers, your products, your prices, your menu. Every document it reads and every correction you make teaches it something. Within weeks it speaks your kitchen's language: it recognises your products, understands your suppliers' shorthand, and tells similar items apart. It does not just work for restaurants. It evolves into software for yours.
We compare what you pay against live prices from the wholesalers we partner with, brought down to a base unit so it's like for like: £ per kilo, per litre, per unit. Saving opportunities come back in pounds, with what they're worth to your margin over a year. The call is always yours.
Every supplier gets a running ledger: bought, paid and owed, with credit notes netted off automatically. At quarter end, one click builds the VAT pack: a locked, numbered batch with CSV your accountant (or Xero) imports directly. Hours of folder-shuffling, gone.
Most systems claim they read everything, then you find the mistakes months later. Forkwize scores every line, cross-checks quantity × price against the printed total, and reconciles VAT line by line. If the maths doesn't hold, nothing gets auto-approved.
If chicken went up, or the keg, or the coffee, you see the impact in pounds against what you actually bought. If Tuesday's takings dipped, the panel tells you it rained before you blame the menu. If a dish or a drink is priced under target margin, you get the suggested price.
Not once a year on a spreadsheet: every time an invoice lands. Forkwize prices your dishes and your pours from what you actually paid, tells you when it isn't sure, and says nothing when it doesn't know.
Ingredient costs come off your own invoices as they're read: per kilo, per litre, per unit. A 1 kg bag and a 10 kg sack are never mixed up, and neither are a bottle and a case.
No recipe cards yet? Margins still come through from category costs, for plates and for pours. Add the cards when you're ready: grams, millilitres, centilitres or units.
Every margin carries its basis: costed from the recipe, estimated from category, or no data at all. Where the cost isn't known you get a blank, not a made-up number.
Set the margin you want for food and for drink. Anything selling under it comes back with a suggested price, worked back from its own cost, and only where that cost is actually known.
Locked export batches, every figure traced to a printed invoice line, Xero-compatible CSV. No more shoebox of receipts at quarter end.
No new app to learn. No logins to forget. No training your staff. Snap an invoice and it's read, priced and filed. Forward the payroll summary and the pay run drafts itself. Type "WASTE 2kg chicken" and stock and costs update. Ask for today's takings and they're in your pocket before you've poured a coffee. The WhatsApp you already use all day becomes the front door to everything Forkwize knows about your restaurant. The dashboard is there when you want to go deeper, but your daily routine never has to leave the chat.
Most tools are built for chains and dumbed down for you. Forkwize starts where you are: one busy venue, real invoices, no ops team.
No setup project. No integrations to wire. No training day. Whoever's on shift photographs the delivery note, and five minutes later it's costed, categorised and on your dashboard.
"BRAISING STEAK 5KG" → £4.75/kg · logged 09:12
Photograph your menu and we turn it into your product catalogue. Recipes come pre-drafted; you correct, we calibrate. Your suppliers and products get mapped by us, not by your staff on a Sunday night. Software, with a human service wrapped around it.
"SMIRNOFF RED 70CL" → Vodka · 70cl bottle · mapped by us
We never guess. If a figure can't be read from your invoice, we say “unknown”. We don't dress up an estimate as fact. That's why you can take our numbers to your accountant.
"—" means we don't know. Never a guess.
Core keeps your numbers honest. Pro runs your money: cash-flow foresight, stock control and contract enforcement. Built for operators with real volume, multiple sites, or both.
The next 14 days, day by day.
Money in, money owed, payment runs and fixed costs on one timeline, so the quiet week doesn't catch you short.
Monday morning, last week's profit.
Revenue, COGS, opex and margin in one page, with deltas on the week before, shareable as PDF. No waiting for month-end.
Stock counted blind. Variance in pounds.
Blind counts against theoretical stock, waste logged from WhatsApp, par levels with order suggestions, and purchase orders 3-way matched against delivery and invoice.
Agreed £4.85? Invoiced £5.40? You'll know.
Contract prices live in the CRM; every invoice line is checked against them the moment it's read. Violations surface with the evidence attached.
Every branch, one view.
Group dashboard, branch comparison, inter-branch stock transfers, with each site's books kept strictly separate.
Decide who gets paid this week.
Build a run from what's actually open, trim it line by line, confirm it, and every invoice marks itself settled as it's paid, from the app or from a PAID message on WhatsApp.
Pro is scoped around your operation, so book a call and bring your numbers.
First photo → "Got it. £237.25 · Marlow Meats · filed."
menu.jpg → 24 items · 21 recipes drafted
Daily close: £1,842 · card £1,610 · cash £232
£149 /month per venue
Forkwize Pro
Not a dashboard. A finance department.
Pro is priced around your operation, so talk to us.
Try Forkwize on your own invoices in a 15-minute call. Bring a real invoice: we'll read it live, prove the maths, and show you the decision it produces.
Thanks, we've got your details.
We'll email you to arrange a time. If it's urgent, write to hello@forkwize.com.
Email hello@forkwize.com with your venue name and we'll arrange a time.