Hospitality team solution

Invoice processing for hospitality on Exact Online

In hospitality, complexity is in volume and spread, not in single invoices. Dozens of suppliers, weekly billing cycles, prices that shift weekly, and multiple locations receiving their own deliveries. Glimps centralizes processing without local managers losing control.

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AP cockpit
Live overview
Hospitality
Typical bottleneck
Local approval

A restaurant manager wants quick approval — not phone calls to finance about a €40 variance.

Main control
Location + category

Split beverage and food, post per location, apply correct VAT categories.

Operational gain
Central benchmark

Cross-location, you instantly see where the food cost ratio is out of line.

Benchmark: Ardent Partners (2024) reported $9.40 average cost per invoice, 9.15 days processing time, 32.6% straight-through processing. Source

Context

How invoice processing looks in hospitality

Hospitality finance runs on tempo, scale, and margin. An average restaurant processes 80–200 purchase invoices per month; a 5-location chain quickly hits 500–1,500. Beverage, food, cleaning, gas, delivery costs — often from the same group of suppliers (Sligro, Bidfood, Hanos, Heineken, Bavaria, AB InBev) who deliver and invoice weekly or even daily. A paper or email workflow saturates within weeks.

Hospitality margins are thin and vary by category. Beverage margin sits around 65–75% with good purchasing; food margin around 65–70%. On top of that comes the VAT distinction: beverages fall under 21% VAT, food for off-premise use under 9%, sometimes combined with catering rules. A misposted beverage line with food VAT costs margin directly; structural mispostings cost thousands per quarter and create audit risk.

Multi-location makes complexity exponential. An 8-location chain has 8 local managers who need to approve their own costs, a central finance keeping the total overview, and a purchaser benchmarking across locations. If every location runs its own mailbox and spreadsheet, you get no central food cost ratio, no comparable supplier benchmarks, and no real-time view on overspending.

Glimps solves this with central intake, automatic location and category detection, mobile-first approval for local managers, and cross-location reporting in finance. Result: chain finance sees real-time food cost and pour cost per location, local managers approve from their phone, and onboarding a new location is just adding a new cost object.

Does this match your situation?

Where this solution fits — and where it doesn't

Good fit
  • You operate multiple locations, restaurants, or hotels on one or more Exact Online administrations.
  • Weekly billing with major suppliers (beverages, meat, bread, wholesale).
  • Local managers want to approve their own spend, finance wants the overview.
Less relevant
  • You have a single location with a few invoices per week.
  • You use a hospitality-specific package that already fully automates.

Process design

From intake to controlled posting

Glimps handles the routine so finance can focus on the exceptions — not the data entry.

01

1. Invoice into central inbox

Suppliers send to one central email address or upload via portal.

02

2. Determine location and category

Glimps identifies the right location via supplier, delivery address, and history.

03

3. Local manager approves

Mobile-friendly approval within tolerance. Outside tolerance escalates to finance.

04

4. Post to Exact Online

Posted per location with correct VAT category and cost object.

Where things get stuck

The real value is in the exceptions

High-volume AP automation only pays off when it is clear what can flow through safely — and what must be reviewed by a human.

Focused on exceptions, not data entry

Multi-location without chaos

Three restaurants, five suppliers, thirty invoices per week. Central inbox plus smart routing keeps it manageable.

Beverage vs food

Different VAT, different ledgers, different cost ratios. The split must be exact.

Price fluctuations

Fresh produce varies weekly. Tolerances must be wide enough for normal variation but tight enough to catch errors.

Deep dive

Multi-location: one administration with cost objects vs multiple administrations

The choice between one Exact Online administration with locations as cost objects, or multiple administrations per BV, determines how you set up AP.

Many hospitality chains use a holding BV with operational BVs per location — fiscally and legally logical, but for accounting it means multiple Exact Online administrations with separate suppliers, VAT returns, and ledgers. For every invoice you must determine which BV (administration) it belongs to. For some suppliers (Sligro with separate location numbers, or Heineken with separate hospitality numbers) that's clear; for others (general suppliers, marketing, IT) it must be configured via delivery addresses, email routes, or history.

Other chains — especially smaller ones, or franchises with central bookkeeping — use one Exact Online administration and treat each location as a cost object. Administratively simpler but requires sharp coding: every invoice line must get the correct cost object (location), or the food cost ratio per location won't reconcile. VAT returns happen centrally too, so the split between beverage and food VAT must be exact.

Glimps supports both models. For multi-administration, Glimps uses our multi-entity solution with central inbox and automatic per-administration routing, with approval per the right BV's matrix. For one administration with cost objects, every invoice line is automatically classified by delivery address, supplier category, and usage patterns. In both models, the finance manager sees the same dashboard: status, food cost, and pour cost per location.

In practice, chains from 5+ locations often choose multi-administration because fiscal and operational autonomy per BV is easier to manage. Under 5 locations, or franchise models with central finance, one administration with cost objects often works fine. The choice is fiscal-legal, not software-driven — Glimps adapts.

Deep dive

VAT in hospitality: 9% food, 21% beverage, and the catering rule

The VAT split in hospitality looks simple but is full of exceptions. Catering, take-away, and non-alcoholic beverages with meals have their own rules.

The main rule: food for human consumption falls under the reduced VAT rate of 9%. Beverages (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) fall under the general 21% rate in most situations. A cup of coffee in a restaurant: 9%. A bottle of wine at the table: 21%. A bottle of cola separately delivered by the wholesaler: 21%.

The exceptions: in catering where food and service are delivered together (think corporate lunch on-site), the full amount is invoiced at 9% — including non-alcoholic beverages served with the meal. With take-away, 9% applies only to the food itself; packaging, delivery costs, and beverages each follow their own rules. With canteens and events, different rules apply around resale versus direct consumption.

For purchase invoices this means a supplier like Sligro can send an invoice with 30 product lines where 18 fall under 9% (food for resale), 8 under 21% (beverage, alcohol), 3 under 21% (packaging), and 1 freight line under 21%. Wrong coding is a direct margin leak — for an average restaurant this can reach €5,000–€20,000 per year in unnecessarily paid or non-deductible VAT.

Glimps classifies every invoice line semantically based on product description, supplier category, and historical coding. "Coca-Cola 1L" is recognized not as food but as beverage. "Potatoes 25kg" as food. "Branded stickers" as packaging. The correct VAT code follows automatically, with an audit trail back to the reasoning — useful for the tax advisor or accountant.

Concrete exceptions

How Glimps handles the cases that would otherwise stall

Scenario 1

Invoice posted to wrong location

What Glimps checks

Delivery address, supplier-location pairing, historical bookings.

Action

Route to correct location manager with location suggestion.

Scenario 2

Beverage line with food VAT

What Glimps checks

Product description, semantic class, supplier category, and historical VAT coding.

Action

Auto-correct VAT and flag for finance sample audit.

Scenario 3

Price jump > 15% vs prior week

What Glimps checks

Prior invoices, market price index (where available), seasonal patterns, contract price.

Action

Flag for local manager review before posting.

Scenario 4

Catering line with separate beverage lines

What Glimps checks

Catering exception in VAT (9% on combined delivery), line classification, and supplier rules.

Action

Apply catering rule or split into 9%/21% and flag for review.

Scenario 5

Marketing bonus from supplier without documentation

What Glimps checks

Supplier contract, prior bonuses, revenue thresholds, and activity description.

Action

Route to purchasing for contract linkage.

Scenario 6

Location manager approves invoice above personal limit

What Glimps checks

Approval matrix per location and amount, manager authorization, prior overrides.

Action

Escalate to central finance or regional manager for co-approval.

Software ecosystem

How Glimps fits in your software stack

Glimps works natively with Exact Online including the cost object and project modules hospitality uses for multi-location accounting. For chains with multiple BVs, Glimps supports multi-administration via the same inbox, with automatic routing to the right BV based on delivery address or supplier number.

Many hospitality POS systems feed revenue data to Exact Online via their standard integrations. Glimps works against the same administration and feeds the purchasing side — supplier invoices coded by cost object (location) and VAT category (beverage/food). With both sides reconciled in Exact Online, food cost and pour cost reporting is structurally available.

Many large Dutch hospitality suppliers deliver invoices as PDF (from their own supplier portal or by email). Glimps processes those PDFs directly with semantic extraction — no per-supplier template is needed, so a supplier changing their invoice format does not disrupt processing.

Business case

What it delivers for hospitality

Scenario

Restaurant chain with 6 locations, ~750 invoices/month, multi-administration, 1 central controller and 6 local managers.

Manual time per invoice (incl. location + VAT coding)5–7 minutes
Time per invoice with Glimps30 sec for exceptions
Monthly time saved~70 hours central + ~20 hours per location
Prevented VAT errors (avg)€5,000–€20,000/year
Improved food cost visibility (insight value)1–3% margin improvement
Glimps Professional (multi-entity included)€149/mo = €1,788/yr
Net annual savings, year 1€35,000–€80,000
Payback

Payback typically within 4–8 weeks. For chains with 5+ locations, cross-location insight (food cost, pour cost, supplier benchmarks) often delivers more value than time savings alone — that's the difference between reacting and steering.

Exact Online setup checklist

The prerequisites to get this solution into production.

  • Locations set up as cost objects in Exact Online.
  • VAT categories for beverage and food correctly mapped.
  • Approval matrix per location and amount documented.
  • Central inbox or portal for suppliers set up.

What Glimps automates for you

The concrete parts of the process Glimps takes off your hands.

  • Location recognition by delivery address and supplier.
  • Beverage/food split with correct VAT.
  • Mobile approval for local managers.
  • Cross-location cost reporting.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Specific questions about this solution for hospitality.

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Yes. Glimps supports both multi-administration (a separate BV per location) and a single administration with locations as cost objects. The choice is typically fiscal-legal — Glimps adapts to your structure. See also our multi-entity solution.

Yes. Approvals are mobile-friendly and optimized for managers who aren't at a laptop all day. Push notification to phone, one tap to approve or forward, all context (line, supplier, prior invoice, food cost) visible.

Weekly invoices are fast-tracked — usually posted within 24 hours of receipt once they arrive in Glimps. For aggregate invoices spanning multiple delivery days, the booking stays as one invoice per supplier; per-day analysis requires additional setup in Exact Online.

Yes, all major Dutch hospitality suppliers are supported. Their formats differ, but Glimps uses semantic extraction without templates — every format works immediately, even on format changes.

Glimps detects catering situations (joint delivery of food + service) and applies the exception where fiscally correct. When uncertain, Glimps routes to finance with specific lines and reasoning — useful for later tax audits.

Yes. A beverage supplier with €5,000 invoices can get different routing than a cleaning supplier with €200 invoices. Glimps adjusts the matrix on supplier, amount, location, or category.

Technical Exact Online integration takes minutes. Configuring supplier categories, location routing, and approval matrix typically takes 4–8 hours for a chain with 5+ locations, depending on complexity.

Glimps Professional (€149/mo) suits most chains up to 500 invoices/month. Multi-entity support is included for an unlimited number of entities. Larger groups with 1,000+ invoices choose Business (€399/mo).

Glimps works on the purchasing side. Your POS feeds revenue data to Exact Online via your POS provider's standard integration. Glimps feeds purchasing data into the same administration. Together they form the basis for food cost and pour cost reporting in Exact Online.

Glossary

Terms you'll encounter daily in hospitality

Food cost ratio
Food purchasing cost as a percentage of food revenue. Standard hospitality KPI; target usually 28–35% depending on segment.
Pour cost
Beverage purchasing cost as a percentage of beverage revenue. Target usually 18–25% depending on hospitality type.
9% VAT (reduced rate)
VAT rate for food for human consumption and certain catering situations. All beverages (including non-alcoholic) fall under 21% — except in explicit catering rules.
21% VAT (general rate)
Standard VAT rate for most goods and services in the Netherlands, including beverages and alcohol in hospitality.
Multi-location / multi-site
Hospitality organization with 2 or more physical locations. Requires central purchasing with location-specific approval and cost-object accounting.
Central kitchen
Central production kitchen preparing for multiple locations. Generates its own purchasing streams and internal cost allocations.
SKU (Stock Keeping Unit)
Unique product code in inventory administration. In hospitality, SKU count typically ranges 500–3,000 per location.
Purchasing group
Cooperative of hospitality businesses purchasing jointly to capture volume and annual rebates. E.g. Sligro Inkoopvoordeel, Bidfood Foodservice, or regional purchasing organizations.
Catering rule
VAT exception where food and service together fall under 9%, contrary to separate sales of beverages (21%) and food (9%).
Take-away
Sales for off-premise consumption. VAT rates differ per element (food 9%, beverage 21%, packaging 21%, delivery 21%). Requires separate line classification.

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Ready to automate hospitality?

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