Chef Notepad Boosts Accuracy by Integrating with LIGHTYEAR.

Chef Notepad has now integrated with Lightyear, a tool that efficiently reads invoices and establishes links with various accounting platforms. This exciting collaboration enables you to update all your prices on Chef Notepad with just 2 clicks, ensuring a live and accurate calculation of your food cost percentage.

This represents an excellent method to maintain in control on your pricing.

Step by Step Tutorial

How to Integrate Lightyear with Chef Notepad

Chef Notepad integrates with Lightyear to keep your ingredient prices up to date — making recipe costing and food cost tracking effortless.

How the Integration Works

Lightyear doesn’t create ingredients in Chef Notepad, but it updates the price of any ingredient that already exists in your account.

Chef Notepad identifies ingredients by two key details:

• Product code (found on your Lightyear invoice)

• Price per unit (e.g. per kg, box, litre)

It’s important that these details are entered correctly when you first create an ingredient in Chef Notepad.

Keep in mind that the same ingredient can have different product codes depending on the supplier or pack size — we recommend using the format you purchase most often.

Integration via Report (more accurate, more manual)

This method lets you choose which invoices to use and gives you more control. It requires a few edits to the exported file, but nothing too technical.

Step-by-step:

  1. Go to Archive & Reporting in your Lightyear dashboard

  2. Under Report Type, select Line Item Level (See picture bellow)

  3. Choose a bill date range (we recommend selecting just the most recent week — this avoids inconsistent pricing for the same item and speeds up export)

  4. Choose your supplier(s) or accounts (e.g. Food, Bar COGS)

  5. Click Search then Export Report

  6. Download the CSV file to your computer

  7. Open the file and delete all columns except for Item Number - Item Unit Price Inc Tax

  8. Save the file as a CSV

  9. In Chef Notepad, go to Ingredients > Update the Prices

  10. Drag or upload your CSV and click Import

Your prices will now be updated. Use the “Price Change” or “Price Last Updated” column to sort and review changes.

Common Import Errors:

You might see some missing product codes — this often happens with items not currently used in your recipes (like foil, cleaning products, or bar items).

No stress — these won’t affect your actual costing if your recipes are entered correctly.

Integration via Inventory (faster, less manual)

This method is quicker once you’ve set up the format correctly in Lightyear.

Setup your file export format:

  1. Go to Settings in your Lightyear dashboard

  2. Select: Inventory > Others > Edit Export Mapping (See picture bellow)

  3. Choose:

• Column A: Item Number

• Column B: Item Unit Price Inc Tax

4. Click Save Changes


Export and Import Prices:

  1. Go to Approvals

  2. Select any invoice you want to use

  3. Click + Inventory to add it

  4. Go to Inventory > Select All > Export to Others

  5. Save the CSV file to your computer

  6. Open Chef Notepad > Ingredients > Update the Prices (See picture Above)

  7. Upload the CSV file and click Import

Again, you can sort by Price Change or Last Updated.

Note:

You might get the same warnings for missing product codes. These often come from non-recipe items or newer ingredients that haven’t been entered yet — don’t stress.

Once you add them properly to your menu, they’ll be included in the next import.

Final Tips:

  • Use the most frequently purchased format for your product codes

  • Keep recipes up to date so you’re always costing accurately

  • Review imported data regularly to catch any major price fluctuations