OTHER SOLUTIONS

CostGuard is the best solution available for lowering food costs. These other solutions all come up short. Click below to learn more:

Excel: Beyond inventory extensions, spreadsheets are very limited and time-consuming. It's easy to make undetected errors that will cost you time and money. And given your busy schedule, it's very difficult to make the time to keep your spreadsheets updated. CostGuard is the next logical step from Excel. Best of all, you can import your spreadsheet inventory items into CostGuard with CG•XL.

Pencil and Paper: If you think about how much time you spend dealing with recipe recosting and inventory extensions, you'll realize how much it really costs to do food costing manually. It's simply inefficient to ignore technology.

The competition: there are other solutions, but they all fall short. They fall into three categories:
> Newcomers. We've seen them come and go for years. Will they be there when you need them? Do you really want to risk your time and money that way?
> Heavy hitters. They try to do everything! But "everything" ends up being very complicated and expensive.
> Lowballers. It's tempting, but low prices mean fewer features! When your needs will expand, and they don't keep pace, then you've wasted time and money. Are these companies healthy?

Here are highlights from an independent, third-party evaluation of the key competitors:

We've evaluated a gaggle of them recently, for both internal use and for our clients. The "gaggle" being IPro, CostGuard, Optimum Control, EGS, and ChefTec. We took a passing glance at MenuLink, Eatec, and FoodTrak.

I personally am not a huge fan of IPro...

CostGuard is kept up to date...very intent on making software which works...probably the best reports.

Optimum Control...I'm not 100% happy with their interface, and, for the money, CostGuard's software does more.

ChefTec...the most expensive product...I'm told they can be quite rude on the phone...

Supplier software. Do you really think a major supplier will provide a way to analyze bids, detect price creep, and allow for multiple suppliers for the same item? Are they in the software or distribution business? The price is right, but the software tends to be narrow and simplistic. And do you think they'll support you when you switch suppliers?

POS companies. Point-of-sales companies specialize in hardware and networks. Their software is more of a marketing hook than a fully-featured application.

Have more questions? E-mail us! Or

Call us at: 914-337-9030 or 1-888-FC-LOWER (325-6937)

Write to us at: At-Your-Service Software, Inc.
450 Bronxville Rd. Bronxville, NY 10708