Price Double Check vs InvoiceWatch
Last checked · This page is provided in English.
Price Double Check vs InvoiceWatch comes down to what each compares a forwarded invoice against. InvoiceWatch tracks a restaurant's own price history per item and emails a weekly flag when a price rises against its average. We compare each line with the price list the supplier sent you: the finding is a breach of an agreed price, not a change.
Both services take a forwarded invoice and answer by email, and that is where the resemblance ends. InvoiceWatch is built for an independent US restaurant that buys from Sysco or US Foods on the distributor's own prices and wants to know when those prices creep. Ours is built for a buyer who holds a price list, a quote or an order confirmation from the supplier and wants every invoice checked against it, line by line, by item code. One tool watches a trend; the other enforces a document. Which one fits depends on whether you have an agreed price to enforce.
What InvoiceWatch does, in its own words
InvoiceWatch describes itself as restaurant supplier invoice monitoring for independent restaurants. You forward invoices to a private address or drop in PDFs and photos; the service reads every line and tracks each item's price per vendor over time, across all suppliers. Once a week it sends one email with price hikes, new fees, creeping items and possible short deliveries, and the vendor's example reads: a case of crushed tomatoes went from $4.10 to $4.55, plus 11% against your 8-week average, caught on a named invoice. The vendor says it works with any distributor, needs no POS integration, no recipes and no inventory counts, and that setup takes about two minutes.
The published price is $79 a month, no contract, cancel anytime, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. We found no free tier, no free trial and no per-invoice or per-location limit on the site; the pricing page returns a 404 and the terms sit behind the signup. Prices are in US dollars and the named suppliers are American broadliners, which is a fair reading of the market it serves; no country is stated.
What Price Double Check does, and what it needs
We answer a narrower question with a stricter standard. You forward the supplier's price list once, then each invoice as it arrives, and we reply per invoice with the lines billed at a price other than the list price, by item code, with the billed price, the expected price and the delta in your favour or against you. Before any line is compared we check that the line sums equal the printed total to the cent, and every reply states what it read and what it could not match, with amounts. The purchase order from your Sent folder and the order confirmation join the same chain, so substituted codes and short or over delivery show up in the same reply; new price list against old is a digest that lists what went up and which pack shrank at the same price.
The price for this is a document you must hold: a price list, a quote, a pro forma or an order confirmation with item codes. Without it we have nothing to compare against, and we do not invent a baseline from history. Plans are Free at 10 documents a month, Standard at 100 documents for €29 and Pro at 500 documents for €79; documents are counted, not pages or emails, and colleagues share one account on the paid plans. Content is English; the wrapper is in 17 languages. No login, no dashboard, no integration.
Price Double Check vs InvoiceWatch in one table
| InvoiceWatch | Price Double Check | |
|---|---|---|
| Compares against | Your own price history per item, e.g. an 8-week average | The supplier's price list, quote or confirmation |
| Finding | A rise, a new fee, a creeping item, a possible short delivery | A line billed off the agreed price; a code or quantity that differs from the PO |
| Built for | Independent US restaurants buying from broadline distributors | Distributors, importers, retailers, cafés with a negotiated price list |
| Ingestion | Forward to a private address; PDFs and photos | Forward to a personal address; PDF and text documents, no photos |
| Cadence | One weekly email | Reply per invoice when the list is on file; digests for list-to-list |
| Matching | Item tracked per vendor over time, units normalised | Deterministic by item code, never by description |
| Price | $79 a month, single plan | Free 10 docs; €29 for 100; €79 for 500 per month |
| Terms | No contract, 30-day money-back | Monthly, cancel anytime, free tier stays free |
In Price Double Check vs InvoiceWatch the two rows that decide the choice are the first and the third. A rolling average tells you a price moved; it cannot tell you the price was wrong, because the average was built from the same invoices. An agreed price list tells you the price was wrong, but only if you have one. Everything else in the table follows from that difference.
When InvoiceWatch is the better choice
Pick InvoiceWatch if you run a restaurant in the United States, buy from Sysco, US Foods or a regional broadliner on the distributor's own catalogue price, and have no negotiated price list to hold them to. That is most independent restaurants. There the only baseline is what you paid last month, and a weekly digest of what crept up, plus a short-delivery flag, is exactly the right instrument. Photos of paper invoices from the delivery driver are the norm in a kitchen, and InvoiceWatch accepts them; we do not read photos. A single price with no document counting also suits a kitchen that receives many small invoices a week.
Pick InvoiceWatch as well if what you want is a trend across vendors: which supplier has moved more this quarter, whether the new fee line is spreading. We show a difference against a document and do not judge trends.
When Price Double Check is the better choice
- You have a price list, a quote or an order confirmation with item codes, and the invoice is supposed to match it. A distributor buying from a manufacturer, an importer with a seasonal price list, a retailer with a negotiated tariff, a café with a roaster's trade list.
- You want the answer per invoice, before you pay it, not on Monday. A reply arrives for each invoice while the delivery is still fresh and the credit note is still easy to ask for.
- You send purchase orders and want them checked against the invoice: substituted codes, short or over delivery, quantity. See how we compare a purchase order with an invoice.
- You buy in the UK, Ireland or the Baltics and want prices in euros or pounds with a free tier to try on real documents.
- You care about the arithmetic. In our validation chain, from a sports-nutrition manufacturer through a Baltic distributor to a retailer, 11 of 11 invoices agreed with their printed total to the cent before any line was compared, and 382 lines produced 41 real price differences and 0 misreads. One line billed 17.75% over the list ate 91% of the margin of that delivery; a history-based average would have shown it as a rise and then absorbed it into the next average.
The last point is the one that matters most to a buyer with a contract. A price that was wrong from the first invoice is never a change; it is simply the level. Only a document you hold from the supplier exposes it. That is also why we match by item code and not by description: in the same chain 335 of 442 lines carried a description that did not match the price list wording, and a tool that matches on names would have missed them or paired the wrong ones. The method is in how to check an invoice against a price list.
Price Double Check vs InvoiceWatch is not always a choice
The two do not exclude each other. A multi-site operator that holds a negotiated list from a meat supplier and buys dry goods from a broadliner on catalogue price has one supplier for each tool. The rule of thumb is simple: forward to us the suppliers who gave you a price; watch with InvoiceWatch the ones who did not. Neither needs an ERP, a login or an integration, so running both costs nothing but two forwarding rules in your mail client.
In short
- InvoiceWatch compares against the buyer's own price history, not an agreed price.
- The vendor's site describes tracking each item's price per vendor over time and flags a rise against a recent average, with an 8-week average in its own example. A price that has been wrong from the first invoice is the baseline, so it is not flagged. Price Double Check compares against the price list the supplier sent, so the first invoice is checked as strictly as the fiftieth.
- InvoiceWatch costs $79 a month; Price Double Check starts free.
- InvoiceWatch publishes a single plan at $79 a month with no contract and a 30-day money-back guarantee; we found no free tier or trial on the site. Price Double Check has a free plan of 10 documents a month, then €29 for 100 and €79 for 500 documents.
- InvoiceWatch reads photos of paper invoices; Price Double Check does not.
- InvoiceWatch says you can forward invoices or drop in PDFs and photos, which suits a kitchen that receives paper with the delivery. We read PDF and text documents forwarded by email and do not read photographs, so a paper-only supplier is a reason to pick InvoiceWatch.
- A US restaurant without a price list is better served by InvoiceWatch.
- If the only prices you have are the distributor's own and you want to know when they move, a weekly digest against your history is the right tool and it is built for that market. Price Double Check needs a document to enforce; without one it has nothing to compare an invoice against.
Forward one invoice and the price list to your own address and the lines that differ come back by email, the same day, with the arithmetic shown.