Excel vs dedicated software · Australia
Excel Recipe Costing vs Chef Pauly: When to Switch
A spreadsheet is a perfectly reasonable way to cost recipes — until your prices change. Here's an honest look at when Excel is enough and when it starts costing you money.
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Quick answer
Excel works fine up to about 15 dishes
If you have a small, stable menu — say a cafe with 8–12 items that rarely changes — a well-built Excel or Google Sheets template does the job. It's free, you probably already know how to use it, and for straightforward menus the manual effort is manageable.
The problem starts when your supplier prices change. In a spreadsheet, a price change on a single ingredient — say, chicken breast goes from $12.50/kg to $14.80/kg — means you need to find every recipe that uses that ingredient and check the numbers. With 15+ dishes, a few sub-recipes, and weekly price fluctuations, that manual process compounds quickly. Things get missed. Dishes quietly become unprofitable.
That's the dividing line: not the size of your menu, but how often your prices change and how much that matters to your margins.
Giving credit where it's due
What Excel genuinely does well
It's free
Google Sheets costs nothing. Microsoft 365 is already in most businesses. For a pre-revenue kitchen or a pop-up just getting started, free is the right choice — and there's no shame in that.
You already know it
Most chefs and managers have some Excel or Sheets experience. There's no onboarding, no new interface to learn, and no subscription to justify to your accountant.
Completely flexible
A spreadsheet can be shaped to fit any costing model. Custom formulas, unusual yield calculations, specific supplier price tiers — you can build exactly what you need.
Works for simple menus
A small, stable menu with a handful of core ingredients is exactly the use case a spreadsheet handles well. If your prices barely change and your menu rarely changes, the manual effort is low.
The real limitations
Where spreadsheets break down
Manual price updates across every recipe
When a supplier price changes, you update the ingredient on your price list — but Excel doesn't automatically flag which dishes are now miscalculated. You have to find them yourself. With a larger menu, some will be missed.
No automatic food cost recalculation
Unless you've built a carefully linked spreadsheet with a single source of truth for each ingredient price, a price change in one place doesn't ripple through to every recipe that depends on it. Most real-world spreadsheets develop duplicate values over time.
Allergen tracking is a separate manual effort
Tracking the 13 standard allergens in a spreadsheet means maintaining a separate tab or column per ingredient and cascading that data into each recipe manually. It gets unwieldy fast, and an error in allergen information carries real legal and safety consequences.
No catering costing (per-head, per-job)
Costing a catering event — where you need to calculate food cost per head, factor in dietary surcharges, apply labour costs, and track it all against a quoted price — is a significant spreadsheet build. Most kitchens end up with a separate sheet per job, which quickly becomes unmanageable.
Invoice scanning is not possible
Supplier invoices arrive as PDFs or photos. Getting those prices into your spreadsheet means reading each line and typing it in — or copy-pasting if you're lucky. There's no equivalent to scanning a Bidvest invoice and having the prices update automatically.
Shared access is messy
Google Sheets helps here, but version conflicts, someone editing the wrong cell, and no audit trail mean that shared spreadsheets in a real kitchen environment are fragile. Who updated the beef price last Tuesday? There's no way to know.
No suggested sell price from your target margin
A spreadsheet can calculate your food cost percentage, but it won't tell you "at your target 28% food cost, this dish should sell for $34.50." You're still doing that math separately for every dish you price.
Side by side
Excel vs Chef Pauly
| Feature | Chef Pauly | Excel / Sheets |
|---|---|---|
| Recipe costing | ||
| Auto-update on price change | ||
| Allergen tracking | Manual | |
| Catering per-head costing | ||
| Invoice scanning | ||
| Suggested sell price | ||
| Sub-recipes | Complex | |
| Stocktake | Manual | |
| AI assistant | ||
| Xero / accounting integration | ||
| Mobile-friendly | Limited | |
| Cost | From $89/mo AUD | Free |
Feature comparison based on standard Excel / Google Sheets capabilities. Last updated June 2026.
The real maths
The hidden cost of a spreadsheet
A spreadsheet is free to use, but it's not free to maintain. Keeping ingredient prices current, updating recipes, checking for errors, and reformatting for your accountant typically takes 20–40 minutes per week in a kitchen that's actively managing costs. Over a year, that's 17–35 hours of someone's time.
The bigger risk is errors. If a key ingredient price drifts out of date and a dish becomes unprofitable without you noticing, the numbers compound fast. A dish underpriced by $2.00 — not uncommon when beef or avocado prices spike — across 50 covers a week adds up to $5,200 lost over a year. That's not a hypothetical; it's a realistic scenario for any kitchen managing more than a handful of dishes in a market where produce and protein prices move regularly.
This isn't an argument to panic about your spreadsheet. It's a way to think clearly about whether the time and accuracy cost of a spreadsheet is worth more than the subscription cost of software designed to eliminate both problems.
Honest advice
When to stick with Excel
Very small or stable menu
Fewer than 10–12 dishes with prices that rarely change. A well-built spreadsheet handles this comfortably.
Pre-revenue or just starting out
Before you have consistent volume, the math is exploratory anyway. Free tools are the right call at this stage.
One-off or infrequent costing
If you only cost recipes occasionally — new menu development, not ongoing management — a spreadsheet is perfectly adequate.
The tipping point
When to switch to dedicated software
10+ dishes and growing
Once your menu reaches this size, manually tracking which recipes use which ingredients — and keeping all their costs current — starts requiring real discipline and time.
Supplier prices changing frequently
If you're in a market where produce, proteins, or dairy prices shift monthly or seasonally, a spreadsheet that's even a few weeks out of date can quietly erode your margins.
Adding catering to your offering
Per-head costing, labour tracking, equipment costs, and quoted prices per job are genuinely hard to manage in a spreadsheet. This is where dedicated software earns its keep.
Allergen compliance matters
If you're serving the public and need reliable allergen declarations — for dietary requirements, council requirements, or simply guest safety — a manual tab in Excel is too fragile.
You want your time back
If maintaining your costing spreadsheet is taking more than 30 minutes a week, you're probably past the point where the free tool is actually free.
You need Xero or accounting integration
Exporting job invoices to your accounting software from a spreadsheet is a manual process. Chef Pauly connects directly to Xero so invoices push through automatically.
Moving across
How to migrate from Excel to Chef Pauly
Most kitchens can make the move in one to two hours. Here's the typical process:
- 1
Import or enter your ingredients
Export your ingredient price list from Excel as a CSV and import it into Chef Pauly. Alternatively, scan your most recent supplier invoices — Chef Pauly reads the line items and populates your ingredient database automatically.
- 2
Rebuild your recipes
Using your existing spreadsheet as a reference, build each recipe in Chef Pauly. Food cost, cost per serve, and suggested sell price calculate in real time as you add ingredients. Most kitchens find this faster than expected because the hard work — knowing your recipes — is already done.
- 3
Set your target margin
Tell Chef Pauly your default food cost target (e.g., 28%) and it will automatically show a suggested sell price for every dish. No separate calculation needed.
- 4
Archive the spreadsheet
Keep your Excel file as a backup for six months if you like. After that, you'll likely find you haven't opened it.
FAQ
Common questions
Is there a free recipe costing template for Excel?
Yes — there are many free Excel and Google Sheets recipe costing templates available online. They work well for simple menus with stable prices. The main limitation is that when a supplier price changes, you need to manually update every recipe that uses that ingredient. Chef Pauly also offers a free recipe cost calculator tool if you want to try a web-based alternative without committing to a subscription.
How do I calculate food cost in Excel?
List each ingredient with its quantity and unit cost, then use a SUMPRODUCT or SUM formula to total the ingredient costs per recipe. Divide the total ingredient cost by the sell price and multiply by 100 to get your food cost percentage. The challenge is keeping ingredient prices current — every time a supplier price changes you need to update the master price list and verify that all affected recipes have recalculated correctly.
When should I stop using Excel for recipe costing?
Consider switching when you have more than 10–15 dishes, when supplier prices are changing frequently, when you are adding catering to your offering, or when you need reliable allergen compliance records. At that point, the time spent maintaining your spreadsheet — and the risk of an outdated price going unnoticed — outweighs the cost of dedicated software.
How long does it take to set up Chef Pauly?
Most kitchens are fully set up within one to two hours. You add your ingredients and current prices (or scan a recent supplier invoice to populate them automatically), then build your recipes on top. The four-step onboarding wizard guides you through the process. A typical restaurant with 20–30 dishes is usually live the same day.
Can I import my Excel recipes into Chef Pauly?
Chef Pauly supports CSV import for ingredients and recipes. Export your ingredient price list from Excel as a CSV, import it into Chef Pauly, then rebuild your recipes on top — or enter them manually using your spreadsheet as a reference. For most kitchens, rebuilding recipes in the app takes less time than expected because the ingredient database is already populated from the import.
How much does Chef Pauly cost vs Excel?
Excel is free via Google Sheets, or included in a Microsoft 365 subscription. Chef Pauly starts at AUD $89/month for the Solo plan. The question is whether the time you spend maintaining your spreadsheet — and the cost of any pricing errors it lets through — is worth more than $89/month. For a kitchen doing 50 covers a day with prices that change regularly, it typically is.
Ready to stop updating spreadsheets?
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