Documentation
What the importer accepts from a supplier file
The formats that work, the two columns that decide everything, and why a unit is never assumed when the parser is unsure.
Last reviewed against the product on .
Novus Restaurant reads supplier files so that your own costs, not a national average, drive what you see. This page describes what the importer accepts, what it refuses, and why it refuses more than you might expect.
What it accepts
CSV, TSV and XLSX, plus PDFs that contain real text. A scanned PDF is an image of an invoice rather than an invoice, and nothing can read a price out of it without guessing.
The two columns that decide everything
A price is meaningless without the quantity it is a price for, so the importer cares far more about units and pack size than about column order or spelling.
| Field | Required | If it is missing |
|---|---|---|
| Item name | Yes | The row cannot be matched to anything |
| Price | Yes | The row is rejected |
| Unit | Yes | The row waits for you, it is never assumed |
| Pack size | If the unit is a pack | The row waits for you |
| Date | No | The import date is used, and says so |
Measured from the import parser at src/lib/imports.
Why it refuses to guess a unit
So a row the parser is not sure about is held rather than written. Resolving it once teaches the importer that supplier's shape, and the next file arrives mostly resolved.
What happens to the file
The file is parsed and the normalised values are kept. Raw supplier documents are not retained beyond what processing needs. See the privacy notice for the full statement.