The Profit Leak Audit
One audit. Every place your profit is leaving.
An independent review of three months of your operating numbers, run personally by Mel Cox, delivered as a written document with every finding priced and ranked. This page is the whole thing: who it suits, what you send, how it is done, what you receive and what happens if it does not find anything.
01 Who it is for
This is built for one kind of business.
A fixed price only works when the work is a known shape. Here is the shape.
A good fit
- An established venue: cafe, restaurant, bar, bakery or a small group of them.
- Turning over roughly $700,000 a year or more. Below that, the leaks are usually smaller than the fee, and I will tell you so.
- A point of sale that can export its data as a file. Lightspeed, Square, Toast, Kounta and most others can.
- You pay your suppliers by invoice and you run a roster or a timesheet.
- The owner or the person who can actually change a roster will be in the room for the walkthrough.
Not a fit, and I will say so
- You opened in the last few months. There is not enough trading history yet for the analysis to mean anything.
- You want someone to run your business. This is a diagnosis, not a management contract.
- You want a subscription, a dashboard or software your team logs in to. Leak does not sell that.
- You need help with your books, your BAS or your tax. That is your accountant's work and I will say so.
- You are looking for confirmation rather than findings. If your numbers are fine, the report will say your numbers are fine.
02 What you send
Four files. Half an hour of your time, once.
You already have all four. Nothing is installed, nothing is integrated, and I never need access to your accounts or your bank.
01
Your POS sales export
Item-level sales for roughly three months. Most systems export this as a CSV in two clicks. If yours can also export transaction detail with times, discounts and refunds, send that too: it unlocks the register and daypart analysis.
Lightspeed, Square, Toast, Kounta, Impos and similar
02
A wage or roster report
Gross wages by week is the minimum. Per-shift or per-day detail is much better, because it is what makes day-level over-rostering visible rather than just a weekly percentage.
Deputy, Tanda, RosterElf, Xero payroll, MYOB
03
Your supplier invoices
PDFs are fine. Photos of paper invoices are fine. The more of them, the sharper the supplier analysis, because price creep is only visible against that supplier's own history with you.
Email, your accounting inbox, or the folder on the counter
04
Your current menu
A photo of the board or a PDF. It is what lets the analysis connect what you buy to what you sell, which is where theoretical versus actual food cost comes from.
Anything current and legible
If pulling the files is the hard part
It often is. Book the call and I will screen-share and pull them with you in twenty minutes. Files go through a private upload link, not email attachments and not a shared drive: one link, one venue, nothing pooled.
03 Method
A documented library, then a person.
Most operational reviews are one person's opinion on the day. This one is worked against a written library of 109 known hospitality profit leaks across 12 areas of the business, and then judged by someone who has run a floor.
Every leak has a written rule
Each of the 109 modules carries its own detection rule, the dollar formula that prices it, the confidence levels at which it can be claimed, and its own false-positive test with the way to rule it out. That is what stops an audit becoming a list of whatever the auditor happened to think of that week.
Findings are measured or advisory, never in between
A measured finding is priced from your own files on stated, conservative assumptions. An advisory finding is something your data points at that cannot honestly carry a dollar figure, so it never gets one. In the sample audit, 4 of 12 findings were measured. The other 8 tell you where to look rather than sell you a number.
Nothing is counted twice
Where one finding sits inside a larger one, it says so, and its dollars are part of that larger figure rather than added on top. Every total on the cover reconciles to the pages behind it.
The period total is the headline, not the annual figure
The number on the cover is what your files actually showed over the weeks I read. Where a yearly figure appears it is labelled a run rate: the same behaviour carried across a year if nothing changes. It is arithmetic, not a forecast.
A person reads every line
I review each finding against what I know about running a cafe and strike out the ones that do not apply to your business. Struck findings are named in your report along with the count, so you can see what was rejected rather than wonder.
The gaps are reported too
Where your systems cannot currently tell you something, the audit says so and tells you what it would take to know. A finding I cannot support is worth more to you named than dressed up.
The library and the analysis engine are Leak’s own, built by Mel over the last year. They are not for sale and you never log in to them. They exist so that one person can do, thoroughly and repeatably, work that would otherwise take a week and still miss things.
04 Timeline
From the call to the walkthrough, inside a week.
Day 0
A fifteen minute call. I check the audit is right for you, and tell you if it is not.
Day 0
You pay, and receive a tax invoice with my ABN. A private upload link comes with it.
Day 1
You send the four files. Half an hour of your time, once. I confirm the set is complete before the clock starts.
Days 1 to 3
The analysis runs, then I read every finding myself and strike out what does not hold up.
By day 5
Your written audit is delivered. 5 business days from the complete file set.
That week
Your 90 minutes walkthrough, on video or in person in Perth. The document is yours to keep.
The 5 business days clock starts when the last file arrives, not when you pay. If something is missing I tell you the moment I notice rather than quietly waiting. If I am going to miss the window you will hear it from me before the deadline, with a new date and a reason.
05 What you receive
A 14 page document, and an hour and a half of my attention.
Not a login. Not a slide deck. A printed report, written for your venue, that you can put on the pass and hand to your accountant.
- A cover that answers the only question that matters: what your files show leaving the business, over what period, and what that is worth a year.
- A note from me, before the numbers, telling you what I actually think is going on and the one thing I would do first.
- A week-by-week table of the whole period, so you can see which weeks were clean and which were not.
- A ranked plan: every opportunity in the order that pays back fastest, with the single action to take this week called out on its own.
- One page per priced finding: what was found, what it cost, four immediate actions, the operational changes that stop it returning, what to monitor, and what success looks like.
- Advisory findings, with no dollar figure attached, telling you where to look next.
- Every assumption, every gap in the data, and what it is costing you not to know.
- A 90 minutes walkthrough with me, and the document to keep.
14 pages, no email required.
06 Frequently found
What turns up most often.
Not a promise about your venue. These are the leaks that appear again and again in hospitality businesses that are otherwise well run.
Quiet days rostered like busy ones
Weekend hours producing less per hour than weekdays
Overtime built in by the shape of the roster, not by demand
A supplier charging above their own trailing average, quietly, for months
Duplicate invoices paid twice
Delivery fees, fuel levies and small-order surcharges nobody agreed to
The gap between what your recipes should cost and what you actually spend
Milk waste, and beans bought against cups sold
A tail of items nobody orders that still cost you prep, stock and space
A hero item priced years ago and never repriced
Discounts, refunds and voids at the till that nobody authorised
Delivery platform orders losing money once commission is counted
07 Outcomes
What you can expect, stated honestly.
What the audit gives you
- A dollar figure on every leak it can price, with the working shown.
- The order to fix them in, and the one to start this week.
- Language and evidence to take to a supplier, a manager or a landlord. Several owners have said the permission to act was worth more than the analysis.
- A clear list of what your systems cannot currently tell you, and what it would take to know.
- A document your accountant can read, which usually changes the conversation you have with them.
What it does not give you
- Banked savings. I find the money. Acting on it is yours, and nothing changes until a roster or a supplier does.
- A forecast. Annual figures are a run rate, which is arithmetic, not a prediction.
- Certainty beyond your files. If your POS is mis-categorised or invoices are missing, the findings inherit that, and the report says where.
- Tax, legal or employment rulings. Where a finding touches those, it is flagged for someone qualified.
The arithmetic of the fee
$1,500
what the audit costs, once, including GST
$0
what you pay if it does not identify more than it cost you
$13,728
found in the sample venue, which scored 89 out of 100 for profit health
One over-rostered shift a week, left alone for a year, costs more than this audit. That is the whole case for it.
08 The guarantee
The Findings Guarantee.
Your audit will identify more in costed, evidenced opportunities than it cost you, or you pay nothing and you keep the report.
I do not guarantee you will save the money. I can find it. Only you can bank it.
Claimable within 14 days of your walkthrough, refunded in full to the card you paid with within five business days, and you keep the document either way. The full wording is on the terms page.
The fee
$1,500
Including GST. Paid once, before work starts. Tax invoice with my ABN. Nothing invoiced afterwards.
The first 3 venues
$750
An exchange, not a discount: a named case study, two introductions, and an honest hour on what was wrong with the report. Same audit, same guarantee.
Book the fifteen minute call.
No obligation and nothing to pay. If an audit is not the right thing for your business right now, I will tell you on that call rather than sell you one.
Book a Profit Leak Audit