Written by: JJ Tan, Founder, Jelly | Last updated: 22 June 2026
Key Results from a 7-Day Jelly Rollout
- Manual supplier invoice processing wastes 10–20 hours weekly across UK multi-site restaurants, pubs and boutique hotels, and hides true food costs.
- Jelly’s six-step workflow delivers centralised capture, automatic line-item extraction, multi-site cost allocation, real-time price alerts, mobile approvals and one-click Xero push.
- The complete system, including POS integration and live GP reporting, can be fully operational within a seven-day self-serve rollout with no IT resource required.
- Operators typically achieve a 90% reduction in bookkeeping time, 3% lower food costs and a two-percentage-point GP improvement within the first 90 days.
- Book a demo to see how the platform can transform your invoice workflow.
Prerequisites for a 7-Day Rollout
Jelly goes live fastest when a few basics are in place across all sites.
Confirm the following before you start:
- Supplier invoices arriving by email or available to photograph on delivery
- An active Xero account (Sage integration is on Jelly’s roadmap)
- One of Jelly’s supported POS systems: Square, EPOS Now, Lightspeed or Toast
- Admin-level login credentials for both the accounting platform and the POS system
- One person per site with a smartphone and permission to upload invoices
No dedicated IT resource is required. Jelly’s onboarding is self-serve, which means you can start processing invoices immediately without waiting for implementation support. Initial value, specifically price alerts and spending insights, is available within 24 hours of the first invoice being photographed or emailed in. POS connection takes approximately five minutes per site.
Once these prerequisites are in place, the automation workflow unfolds in six connected steps, from invoice capture through to live GP reporting.
Six-Step Automation Workflow Across All Sites
Step 1: Centralised Invoice Capture
Jelly first pulls every invoice into one place. Each site receives a dedicated Jelly email address. Suppliers send PDF invoices directly to that address, and kitchen staff can photograph paper invoices on delivery using the Jelly mobile app.
All invoices from all sites then flow into a single central dashboard. This removes the pile of paper invoices that previously needed manual sorting and data entry.
With everything centralised, the next step is to unlock the data inside each invoice.
Step 2: Automatic Line-Item Extraction and UK VAT Handling
Jelly converts every line item on each invoice into structured data, including quantity, SKU, unit price and VAT, without manual input. This digital record satisfies HMRC’s Making Tax Digital requirements, which mandate that all VAT-registered businesses keep digital records of each transaction and submit returns via MTD-compatible software.
MTD for VAT has applied to all VAT-registered businesses since April 2022, including those voluntarily registered below the £90,000 threshold. Jelly’s digital capture creates the compliant audit trail and removes this compliance burden from the finance team.
With clean, compliant data in place, Jelly can now allocate costs accurately across your estate.
Step 3: Multi-Site Splitting and Cost Allocation
Jelly automatically allocates multi-site invoices to the correct locations. For invoices covering deliveries across several sites, the system splits costs so each site carries only its share.
Each site’s food spend is tracked separately in the Insights Dashboard. Operations managers see a clean, categorised view of supplier spend by site, without spreadsheets or manual allocation.
Multi-site groups in 2026 are prioritising clearer visibility across sites and stronger procure-to-pay discipline as cost pressures from labour and business rates become structural. This step delivers that visibility and sets up accurate monitoring of ingredient prices.
Step 4: Real-Time Price Variance Alerts
Jelly now turns invoice data into live price intelligence. Every time a new invoice is processed, the Price Alert feature flags any ingredient whose price has changed since the last delivery, by supplier and direction.
Chefs and operations managers receive specific, line-level data to challenge supplier price creep, request credit notes or switch to alternatives. Amber restaurant in East London uses this feature to save £3,000–£4,000 per month through faster reactions to price swings, better buying decisions and tighter menu controls.
Once prices are under control, the next focus is approving spend quickly at the right level.
Step 5: Central vs Site-Level Mobile Approvals
Jelly routes invoices for approval based on site, value and risk. Site managers handle routine food and beverage invoices directly from their mobile phones.
Invoices above a defined threshold, or those with a price variance alert, escalate automatically to the operations or finance manager. This mirrors the threshold-based approval routing used by leading UK multi-site operators, where kitchen managers approve routine food spend and area managers or finance validate higher-value items.
All approvals are completed on mobile, with no desktop login required. With approvals in place, Jelly can now push data to Xero and combine it with POS sales for live GP reporting.
Step 6: One-Click Xero Push and POS Integration for Live GP Reporting
Once approved, invoices are pushed to Xero in a single click, with line-item detail and VAT coding intact. At the same time, Jelly’s POS integration connects natively with Square, EPOS Now, Lightspeed and Toast via real-time API and pulls item-level sales data the moment each transaction completes.
By combining these two data streams, invoice costs from suppliers and sales revenue from the POS, Jelly generates the Flash Report. This report shows daily, weekly or monthly gross profit margin per site and per dish.
Sushi Revolution used this combined workflow to achieve gross profits 2–3% higher on average across dine-in and delivery menus. Businesses using automated AP workflows with Xero integration consistently report more than 50% reduction in time spent on accounts payable tasks.
Schedule a chat to see how Jelly’s six-step workflow maps to your sites.
7-Day Rollout Timeline Checklist
This day-by-day checklist shows exactly what to complete each day to get all six workflow steps live within one week. Each day’s tasks typically take 30–60 minutes and can be handled by one person without IT support.
- Day 1: Create Jelly account, set up dedicated invoice email addresses for each site, notify suppliers of new invoice email addresses.
- Day 2: Connect Xero account via Jelly’s Integrations panel, confirm chart of accounts mapping.
- Day 3: Connect POS system or systems using the five-minute integration flow (open Jelly, go to Integrations, sign in to POS, grant permissions, select food and beverage categories), and confirm admin access is available before starting.
- Day 4: Upload or email the first batch of supplier invoices, verify line-item extraction accuracy, review Price Alert output.
- Day 5: Configure approval thresholds per site, assign mobile approvers at site and central level, test one approval workflow end to end.
- Day 6: Map POS items to Jelly dishes in the Kitchen section, build or import top 10 recipes using scanned ingredient data, review the first Flash Report.
- Day 7: Go live across all sites, brief site managers on mobile invoice capture and approval, review the Insights Dashboard with the operations or finance lead.
Central vs Site-Level Approval Matrix in Practice
The matrix below shows how Jelly routes invoices by type and value. Routine purchases stay with site teams for fast sign-off, while higher-risk or higher-value invoices move to central approvers. All approvals can be completed on mobile.
| Invoice Type | Approver | Threshold | Mobile Sign-Off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Routine food & beverage delivery | Site Manager / Head Chef | Up to £500 | Yes, Jelly mobile app |
| Price variance flagged by alert | Operations Manager | Any value | Yes, push notification |
| High-value supplier invoice | Finance Manager | Above £500 | Yes, Jelly mobile app |
| New supplier or one-off purchase | Owner / Finance Manager | Any value | Yes, Jelly mobile app |
Pro Tips and Troubleshooting for a Smooth Launch
Missing admin access to POS: Jelly flags this requirement at the start of the POS connection flow. Resolve it before Day 3 by contacting the POS provider’s support team and elevating the relevant user account to admin level.
Legacy menu items cluttering dish mapping: Jelly’s POS-to-dish linking only surfaces items sold since the integration was connected, so historical menu clutter does not appear. You do not need to clean up old POS data before going live.
Partial deliveries: When a delivery arrives short, photograph the actual delivery note rather than the original invoice. Jelly processes the photographed document as the record of what was received and keeps costs accurate without manual adjustment.
Suppliers not yet sending to the new email address: During the transition, continue photographing paper invoices via the mobile app. Both capture methods feed the same pipeline, so there is no gap in data while suppliers update their records.
Xero coding errors on first push: Review the chart of accounts mapping on Day 2 carefully. Assigning a default nominal code per supplier category, such as food, beverages and packaging, during setup removes most coding queries at month-end.
Measuring Success: 90% Time Reduction and 2-Point GP Gain
The primary KPIs to track over the first 90 days match the improvements outlined in the Key Results section. Focus on 90% less time spent on invoice processing, 3% lower food costs driven by price alerts and supplier negotiations, and a two-percentage-point improvement in gross profit margin.
These outcomes are consistent with reported customer results. Amber restaurant achieved a 68× return on investment at £129 per location per month. Stuart Noble, Head Chef at Cairn Lodge Hotel, reported a 5% food cost reduction within one month of going live.
Jelly’s flat-rate pricing of £129 per location per month means a 3-site operator pays £387 per month for a system that, based on customer outcomes, typically recovers multiples of that figure in reduced food costs and recovered supplier credits within the first quarter. There are no per-user charges and no variable fees.
Next Steps: Menu Engineering and Delivery Costing from Live Data
Once invoice automation is live and GP reporting runs reliably, Jelly can support more advanced decisions using the same data. The Sales Mix report, powered by the POS integration, highlights dishes that are both high-margin and high-volume, so menu engineering decisions become data-led without extra admin.
The Delivery Menu Creation tool then allows any existing menu item to be duplicated with delivery commission overheads included. This produces a separate, accurately costed delivery menu that protects margins on third-party platforms. Sushi Revolution used this approach to protect margins on delivery orders despite 30% platform commissions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Jelly satisfy HMRC’s Making Tax Digital digital archiving requirements?
Yes. Jelly captures every invoice digitally at the point of receipt, either via email or mobile photograph, and stores line-item data including supplier details, quantities, unit prices and VAT amounts. This satisfies HMRC’s MTD for VAT requirement to maintain digital records of all purchase transactions.
Records are retained within the platform for six years, which meets the statutory retention period. Because Jelly pushes data to Xero via a direct integration rather than manual re-keying, it also maintains the unbroken digital link that MTD rules require between source records and VAT return submissions.
How quickly can Jelly be fully operational across multiple sites?
The full system, including invoice capture, Xero integration, POS connection, approval workflows and live GP reporting, can be operational within the seven-day timeline described above. Price alerts and spending insights are available within 24 hours of the first invoice being processed.
POS integration takes approximately five minutes per site. No IT resource or professional services engagement is required, because the entire setup is self-serve via Jelly’s web platform.
What does Jelly cost for a multi-site operator?
Jelly charges the flat rate of £129 per location described earlier, with no per-user fees, no variable charges based on invoice volume, and no additional costs for POS or Xero integration. Pricing remains fully predictable, which helps operators managing cash flow tightly across multiple sites.
Which accounting and POS systems does Jelly integrate with?
Jelly integrates directly with Xero for accounting, with Sage integration on the roadmap. On the POS side, Jelly connects natively via real-time API with Square, EPOS Now, Lightspeed and Toast, four of the most widely used POS systems among independent and growing UK hospitality operators.
Each integration delivers item-level sales data the moment a transaction completes. This enables accurate, real-time GP calculations per dish and per site.
What happens if a supplier increases prices without notice?
Jelly’s Price Alert feature flags every price change, up or down, as soon as a new invoice is processed. The alert shows which ingredient has changed, by how much, and from which supplier.
Chefs and operations managers then have the specific data needed to contact the supplier, negotiate a credit note or switch to an alternative source before the margin impact compounds across multiple sites. Customers consistently use this feature as the starting point for supplier negotiations, with measurable reductions in food costs within the first month of use.
Conclusion: Start Your 7-Day Automation Today
Manual invoice processing across multiple UK hospitality sites is a solvable problem. The six-step workflow described here, from centralised capture and MTD-compliant digital archiving through to real-time price alerts, mobile approvals and live GP reporting via Xero and POS integration, removes 10–20 hours of weekly admin, surfaces food cost variances the same day they occur and delivers measurable GP improvements within 90 days.
At £129 per location per month with the seven-day rollout described earlier, the barrier to starting is low and the return arrives quickly. Start your 7-day automation rollout, schedule a chat with Jelly today.