What each input cost, what each product sold for, and whether the gap held.
CostCreep reads your purchase and sales invoices from your accounting software, keeps a dated price history on both sides, and checks every month what you paid, what you charged, what came back, and what one is doing to the other. The bookkeeper gets the few invoices that are wrong, with the evidence and the letter written. The owner gets one email a month with at most three decisions. Your accountant gets the whole portfolio.
Read-only access. We never write to your books, never email a customer, and never send a supplier anything you haven't approved.
Three things to decide
Approve the claim to Packline Ltd, three invoices above the agreed rate. £2,740
Loch Deli Group's rolls have absorbed the March flour rise for six months. Their review date has passed. £9,300 a year
Is the quarterly rebate from Northern Flour Co. still in force? Their invoices say so; your books show none received.
Figures from a sample company.
What it does
Four checks, every month, over both sides of your books.
Large companies split this across five systems and three departments. A business on Xero has the same problems and two invoice histories, a folder of PDFs and a recipe sheet. The four checks are built for that.
Buy — what you paid
Every purchase line against that supplier's own history for the item, against the rate you agreed, against their statement, against the credits and the payments. Duplicates, overpayments, prices above the agreed rate, creep, a unit basis that quietly changed, carriage over rate, rebates earned but never received, a service still billed after it was cancelled.
Sell — what you charged
Every sales line against the agreed customer price, the list price, that customer's own history and the promotion calendar. Invoiced below the agreed price. A promotion that never ended. An increase that reached some customers and not others. A price unchanged for a year while the item's cost moved. One customer paying materially less than the rest at the same volume.
Join — did the gap hold
For every product with a recipe: cost per unit today, from live input prices, against cost at the last price change. Margin by customer at the price each one pays. Which customers absorbed a verified input rise, for how long, and what that cost. The price floor at your target margin. The cost-price-increase pack when the join says one is due.
Cash — what came back
Payments against invoices, both ways. Short-pays with no credit note behind them. Early-payment discounts taken after the date. Payments past terms, with the interest computed. Credit notes with no reason and no item. Customer rebates accrued from the agreed terms against the credits actually issued.
The centre of the product
A supplier puts flour up. Which of your customers paid for it?
Nothing below enterprise scale answers this, and it is the question a goods business runs on. CostCreep answers it from your purchase and sales invoices and one afternoon of recipes.
The pass-through register
A verified input rise opens an interval for every product that uses it and every customer who buys the product. The register records who was repriced, when, by how much, and the margin absorbed since at the volume sold. It runs the other way for input falls, so you know what a customer will ask before they ask it.
Price realisation
You announce an increase once. The product tracks what each customer actually paid against what you intended, from the invoices that follow, and lists the laggards. Most businesses realise about half of what they announce; this shows you the other half, customer by customer.
Before you price
A floor per product at your target margin, from live cost. A quote, a price-list line or an invoice below it is flagged before it goes out. Nothing is blocked; the person is told.
The cost-price-increase pack
In a day, when the join says one is due or a buyer asks for one: cost per unit then and now by ingredient, packaging and energy; the invoice lines behind each; the public index beside each commodity; the increase by customer; that customer's history. Formatted for a buyer's form. The same machinery writes the defence when a customer asks for a decrease.
The margin bridge
Price, volume, mix and cost between this month and last. Four numbers that always add up, on the owner's email.
| Product | Customers | Repriced | Absorbed since |
|---|---|---|---|
| White rolls | 4 | 1 of 4 | £6,200 |
| Bloomer 800g | 3 | 3 of 3 | £0 |
| Pizza bases | 2 | 0 of 2 | £3,100 |
Margin absorbed at the volume sold since March: £9,300. Where customers were repriced, the median lag was 41 days. Northern Flour Co.'s rise ran ahead of the ONS flour index by 9.7 points over the same period.
Figures from a sample company.
Where it reads from
Every fact has a cheapest source. A question to you is the most expensive one.
So the product reads first, forwards second, and asks a person only for what exists nowhere else.
Your accounting software
Xero. Bills, sales invoices, credit notes, payments and their allocations, contacts and items, as far back as the connection allows.
The PDFs already attached to your bills
Read line by line, with quantity and unit, and reconciled to each document's own total before a figure is believed. This is where most of the detail comes from, and it is already in your books.
Supplier statements and price lists
Forwarded to one address, or requested from your top suppliers on your behalf. A statement is the only route to an invoice you never received.
Contracts, terms and rebate agreements
The terms are read off the document, shown with their source page, and confirmed with one keystroke. One contract settles agreed prices, the uplift clause and its cap, notice periods, rebate tiers, payment and delivery terms.
Recipes
For the products that matter: the inputs and packaging per batch, the yield, the units. Labour and overhead as one rate per family, or left blank; the product reports material margin until they arrive.
Public reference data
Producer price indices by sector, Companies House, Bank of England exchange rates, VAT rates and numbers, published tariffs for couriers, utilities and telecoms. Quoted beside your own movement as context, never as a claim.
What only you know
Was this rise agreed? Is this rebate still in force? The few facts that exist nowhere else, asked once, ranked by the money behind them, batched by supplier, with a stated default if no one answers.
How it works
Set up once. Then a few questions a month and one email.
The qualification report
From a read-only connection, one page: what share of what you buy and what you sell can be checked today, how many suppliers, customers and products, and the three actions that would raise it most. Nobody connects who can't reach a useful share.
Connect
Connect your books, tick the organisations, allow us to read the attachments, and forward one email address to whoever keeps the books. The company's name, VAT status, currency and year end are read, not asked. Then we read the history and report progress as invoices are read.
A short list for the bookkeeper
Same item? Same supplier? Same customer? Is this your agreed rate? Ranked by the money behind each answer; spelling differences confirmed in a batch; the small stuff resolved with a written default and listed, not asked.
Recipes and terms
The products that carry most of your revenue and the customers that carry most of your sales. This is the afternoon that replaces a three-month enterprise implementation, and it is asked once.
Before you pay
Unpaid bills carrying a duplicate number, a price above a confirmed rate, or a discrepancy against the supplier's statement. And before every price list goes out, Before you price. Neither blocks anything; both tell the person.
The month
A few questions. A handful of decisions. Under an hour for the bookkeeper. One email to the owner. Nothing already answered is asked again. A clean month reads as a result, with the reasons on both sides.
What you get
Five outputs. Nothing that doesn't change a decision.
Every figure states its basis. What could not be checked is written beside what was, with the reason. Found is a run-rate, recovered is a credit note or payment matched, realised is an invoiced price, and the three are never added together.
The coverage statement
What was checked, against what, and what could not be and why, in order. The floor of the product, and the thing worth paying for in a month when nothing is wrong.
Money to recover
Claims, evidenced and ranked, with the letter written in your voice and the invoices, the price history and the document attached. You approve first and you are in copy on everything.
Money to negotiate
Per supplier, per year: what they took you up, when, on what, at what volume, and what the sector index did over the same period. Not a claim, and it doesn't pretend to be one.
The pass-through register and the margin bridge
Who absorbed what, for how long, and the four numbers that explain the month.
Questions
As few as survive. Each shown only if the answer would change something, with the money behind it and its default.
The bookkeeper's month
One list, both sides, one decision per keystroke. Before you pay. The statements to reconcile. The documents to chase.
The owner's email
Six numbers with their bases, at most three actions, reply to approve. No login needed.
The practice's pack
Per client, monthly, in your branding, reconciling to the screens to the penny. At year end: rebate accruals both ways, credits outstanding, renewal dates, last cost per item for stock valuation.
What it never does
Nothing leaves without you.
A customer relationship is the owner's. A supplier letter goes out in the owner's name. The product's job is to make sure you walk in with the numbers.
- Never emails a customer. The product drafts; the owner sends.
- Never sends a supplier anything you haven't approved, under a ceiling you set that never raises itself.
- Never blocks or makes a payment. Never sets a price: a floor and a pack, never a decision.
- No model near a figure. Every number is arithmetic over stored lines, and every document is reconciled to its own total before it is believed.
- Every figure opens the lines it came from and the document behind them.
- "Not measured" is written where it applies, with the reason. Never £0, never a blank.
- Your numbers are never sold to a supplier or a customer, and stored names never reach a counterparty.
- Your data exports whole and deletes with a manifest, whenever you say.
Why it gets better every month
Your accounting software knows the last price. CostCreep keeps every one.
Every item in your books has one cost field, and every invoice overwrites it. A price that rose a few pence a month for a year looks, from inside your software, like it was always the new price. CostCreep never overwrites a price. After a year on your books it holds what nothing else does for a business this size:
Two price histories
Every price paid and every price charged, per item, per unit basis, per date, with the document each line came from.
One identity record
Every spelling of every supplier, item and customer your books have ever used, resolved once by a person or a spelling rule, never by guesswork.
The agreements, both ways
Supplier rates, lists, notices, rebates, carriage, service contracts. Customer prices with effective dates, trade terms, promotion calendars, review dates. Each with a source and an expiry.
The recipes
Recomputed from live input prices every time a line lands, so cost per unit is today's, not last quarter's.
How each counterparty behaves
Who credits, who disputes, who pays late, who accepted the last increase and how fast. Known before the second letter or the second increase.
The coverage record
What could be checked on each side, what could not and why, and the ranked actions that would raise it.
In time, and only with consent, the same memory across similar businesses: how your prices, your pass-through and your customers' payment habits compare with the sector. Never sold to suppliers, never sold to customers.
For accountants and bookkeepers
The qualification report first. Then the whole book.
One list across your clients, both sides, ranked by money and staleness. A branded pack per client every month. A year-end pack with the accruals, the credits outstanding both ways and the paragraphs for the accounts commentary. And a price conversation your practice can sell: your client's costs moved six percent and their prices moved one; here is the pack for their top three customers.
| Client | Position | Reprice | Checked | Pack |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kelso Bakery Ltd | £38,400 | £22,100 | 94% · 97% | 2 to approve |
| Tweed Valley Meats | £21,700 | not measured | 81% · — | ready |
| Borders Print Co. | £9,050 | £4,300 | 64% · 90% | ready |
| Melrose Timber | not measured | £6,800 | reading | reading |
Questions
What people ask before they connect.
Which accounting software does it work with?
Xero, through their own read-only connections. If your invoices live somewhere else, purchase and sales files, price lists, statements and remittances can all be sent to one address or uploaded, and land in the same place.
My sales invoices are one line each. Does the customer side still work?
It is common: most sales systems summarise before they post. A row-per-line export from that system, or your own invoice PDFs, gives the customer side its prices, and fixing that export improves your own books as well. Until then the customer side says "not measured" with the reason, and the buy and cash checks run regardless.
Do I need to give you price lists or recipes?
Not to start. Purchases are checked against your own price history from the first day. Price lists sharpen the buy side; recipes switch on the join. Each is asked for once, and each is shown with what it would let us check before you go looking for it.
Will it contact my suppliers or customers?
Never a customer. A supplier gets only what you have approved, from your address, with you in copy. With your say-so it can ask your top suppliers for their statements and price lists on your behalf.
What if a price rise was legitimate?
Most are. A rise is not a finding; a rise above your agreed rate is, and a rise your customers were never asked to share is your own exposure. The supplier's year shows every rise and when it happened. Where a public index covers the category, it sits beside the movement, so that you go into a conversation with the facts rather than a complaint.
What does "recovered" mean?
A credit note or a payment that landed in your books and was matched to a claim. Found is what we found. Sent is what you approved. Recovered is what came back. The three are never added together.
Is my data safe?
The connection is read-only and we never write to your books. Disconnect at any time. Your data exports whole and deletes with a manifest. Stored names never reach a counterparty, and nothing about your business is ever shared with a supplier or a customer.
See what can be checked before anyone commits to anything.
The qualification report takes a read-only connection and none of your time: what share of what you buy and what you sell can be checked today, and what would raise it.
Read-only access. We never write to your books. Disconnect whenever you like.