Food Service Ace Review: Features, Pricing & Alternatives 2023
Tim is a Certified QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) Pro, QuickBooks ProAdvisor, and CPA with 25 years of experience. He brings his expertise to Fit Small Business’s accounting content.
Eric is a staff writer at Fit Small Business and CPA focusing on accounting content. He spends most of his time researching and studying to give the best answer to everyone.
This article is part of a larger series on Accounting Software.
Food Service Ace is a cloud-based foodservice management platform that streamlines accounting and management tasks to increase profitability. It provides a toolkit of customized modules that handle supply chain management, back office and accounting, logistics and delivery, and catering needs. Contact the Food Service Ace team to get an exclusive quote for your business.
Overall Score:
3.60 / 5
What We Like
- Forecast sales based on prior data and view required inventory purchases
- Mobile apps allow you to work offline
- Food service distribution software that streamlines customer deliveries
- Use electronic data interchange (EDI) to purchase food through vendors
- Powerful reporting tools that show theoretical food costs and variances
- Allows for unlimited users
What's Missing
- No payroll features available
- No upfront pricing
- No employee scheduling
- No support page with tutorial and how-to articles
If you’re curious about whether general-purpose accounting software might be a fit, check out our recommendations for the best small business accounting software.
Food Service Ace Deciding Factors
Supported Restaurants | For food trucks, carts, and restaurants that deliver food to customers |
Pricing | Custom priced |
Free Trial | None |
Payroll | None |
Standout Features |
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Customer Support | Email and phone |
Food Service Ace Alternatives
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|---|---|---|
Best for: Restaurants looking for a full-service restaurant accounting app | Best for: Caterers who want project tracking | Best for: QuickBooks users who need a restaurant integration |
Cost: Starts at $444 per month if billed quarterly | Cost: Starts at $85 per month for project tracking | Cost: $300 per month, per location |
Food Service Ace vs Competitors
We compared Food Service Ace with its strongest competitors in the restaurant accounting niche, Restaurant365 and MarginEdge. Our evaluation of MarginEdge included a QuickBooks Online integration.
Food Service Ace vs Competitors FSB Case Study
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Food Service Ace Quite-based
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Restaurant365 Starts at $444 per location, per month
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MarginEdge + QBQ $385 per location, per month
Restaurant accounting software prices don’t vary greatly based on our evaluation. MarginEdge takes the lead in pricing because it’s more affordable than Restaurant365—even after the QuickBooks integration. However, we can’t say the same for Food Service Ace because its pricing isn’t published. Nonetheless, it still managed to get a decent score in pricing because we considered other factors like the capacity of the software, such as number of vendors and customers.
In terms of accounting and restaurant features, Food Service Ace offers necessary features for small restaurants. It lags behind in accounting features when compared to MarginEdge but takes the lead in restaurant features. Restaurant365 is still the leader for restaurant-specific features—but that doesn’t mean it’s suitable for all restaurant sizes. We believe that small restaurants, cafes, and food carts won’t require all the exciting features of Restaurant365. Hence, we recommend either Food Service Ace or MarginEdge for small-scale restaurants and family-owned food businesses.
Overall, we commend Food Service Ace for creating restaurant software that’s flexible. What we like most is its offline feature, which can be useful for food carts without internet connectivity. While it isn’t popular (given only a handful of user reviews), we decided to give it an average rating.
Looking for more restaurant accounting software options? Check out our list of the best restaurant accounting software.
Food Service Ace’s pricing is based on the services selected and the number of locations. It’s quote-based, and all packages include a setup fee and a recurring monthly fee. The cost includes access to Food Service Ace, complete data backup, and 24/7 access to the help desk. There’s also no limit to the number of users.
Food Service Ace offers decent accounting features, though not as comprehensive as its competitors. However, we believe it’s more than enough for small restaurants, bistros, and cafes.
General Accounting
There’s a suite of accounting modules available, and they each integrate fully with the back office, catering, commissary/manufacturing, logistics/delivery, and supply chain modules. With these modules, you can perform accounting tasks like A/R and A/P. Food Service Ace will also import sales data automatically from the POS systems nightly. There are also budgeting capabilities, and you can track capital projects and fixed assets.
Back Office
The back office modules provide workflow management for efficient ordering, receipt generation, and inventory. Food Service Ace will also reconcile bank accounts automatically and flag missing or mismatched cash or credit card deposits. You have the option of using the cloud-based inventory module or the mobile app, and the system will calculate inventory variances, identifying problem items for further research.
Example of Food Service Ace Inventory Requisition Page (Source: Food Service Ace)
Procurement & Food Cost Modules
The procurement module sends purchase orders (POs) automatically to vendors via electronic data interchange (EDI), email, or fax—depending on their preferred method of payment. Food Service Ace will even suggest orders based on sales history and current inventory levels.
The theoretical food cost and key indicator reporting modules are also important features. They enable you to generate variance reports that compare actual food usage to theoretical food usage calculated from the sales and recipe data. Key performance indicator (KPI) reports can be customized to measure such factors as labor hours vs sales, overhead vs direct labor, and cost of goods vs sales.
Food Service Ace offers a fantastic set of restaurant features that managers and owners will love. You can plan catering services, delivery routes, and integrate a POS system. However, you can use Food Service Ace’s POS for full compatibility with the system.
Catering
Food Service Ace also offers catering software that lets you create proposals, collect advance deposits, and send invoices. When preparing for the event, you can schedule commissary stations and reserve on-hand inventory. After the event, you can adjust final invoices and account for advance deposits. However, while these features streamline catering both pre- and post-event, Food Service Ace doesn’t track income and expense by project.
POS Integration
Food Service Ace integrates with whatever POS system you’re currently using. It pulls your financial data, time, and attendance records, and it checks details so that you can make informed decisions. The data feed into sales reports automatically, which are broken down by restaurant, revenue center, meal period, and sales category.
Example of Food Service Ace POS App (Source: Food Service Ace)
Logistics/Delivery
Food Service Ace’s foodservice distribution software allows you to plan, produce, and deliver meals efficiently. You can route orders to drivers so that they’ll be delivered within the customer’s delivery window and generate pick lists and packing lists.
Mobile Apps
There are currently four mobile apps available, which are available offline: inventory, POS, staff meals, and institution meals. You can download them from the App Store and Google Play. When you use these apps offline, the data is stored until you go online, and then the transactions will process. Below is a description of each:
- Inventory: This allows you to create location-specific count sheets.
- POS: This is tablet-based and allows for offline payment processing, menu configuration, and access to a full range of reports. By connecting to Bluetooth, you’ll be able to print customer tickets wirelessly.
- Staff meals: Your staff can order their meals quickly, and the app allows for different forms of payment, such as cash, credit card, or payroll deduction.
- Institution meals: Intended for the movement of meals from kitchen prep to food service, this allows you to fully account for every meal.
Food Service Ace provides email and phone support from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET. It also provides hands-on training, along with user documentation at your location, for an additional fee. It even has direct contacts whom you can call. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a full-fledged support page that contains how-to articles about the software. There’s also no community page for users.
Depending on the modules that you need, Food Service Ace has a bit of a learning curve, which is mainly due to the vast amount of information available. Much of this information is summarized in the dashboards, which compile data related to operations, purchasing, accounting, commissary, and financial information. There are three different types of dashboards: management, sales, and labor.
Example of Food Service Ace Management Dashboard (Source: Food Service Ace)
There are no Food Service Ace reviews on popular review websites like G2 and Software Advice. The software is featured in Capterra, but it has zero reviews and ratings as of this writing.
How We Evaluated Restaurant Accounting Software
We evaluated restaurant accounting software using six criteria:
- Pricing: Software cost can be a major deciding factor for small restaurants. In evaluating this criterion, we considered the annualized cost without any discounts, the number of users the software can accommodate, the capacity of the software, and the availability of a monthly contract option.
- Accounting features: We took into account the general features like payroll, double-entry accounting, A/P management, A/R management, and project tracking. These features must be present in most programs to facilitate proper and easy accounting of all transactions.
- Restaurant features: This criterion focuses more on restaurant-specific functions outside general accounting like POS integration, location and class tracking, recipe management, employee management, budgeting, and forecasting.
- Ease of use: The difficulty of using the software is a factor worth considering. At Fit Small Business, we strive to provide software recommendations that are easy to use even if you don’t have accounting experience. Aside from that, we included auxiliary services that improve ease of use, such as assisted bookkeeping, customer service availability, and software accessibility.
- User reviews: We looked at user review websites to gather firsthand information from actual software users. Our user reviews rating is based on the score of the credible user review website with the most number of reviews.
- Expert score: This is our rating of the software as a whole. Our expert analysis took into consideration the software’s functionality, harmony among all functions, and overall impact to small business accounting.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Do you need to install Food Service Ace?
No, the software is hosted on the web and stored in Food Service Ace’s data center. Aside from the web-based version, Food Service Ace also has mobile apps that can be used with or without an internet connection. They can record all transactions—and they’ll sync automatically with Food Service Ace once you reconnect to the internet.
How can I learn about Food Service Ace?
Food Service Ace offers hands-on training to customers. This program teaches every module of the Food Service Ace software so that customers can understand how every module works.
Bottom Line
Food Service Ace interfaces with your existing POS system, and its apps are available either à la carte or as a complete and integrated suite. It was built for multi-service operators needing flexibility and highly actionable management information. With custom-built dashboards, flash reporting, and KPIs, you’ll have access to all financial data. Its foodservice distribution software is ideal for food delivery services, and its mobile apps allow you to work offline, which is an attractive feature for food trucks that may not have a Wi-Fi connection.
