Built by a food truck operator

Most food operators don't know if last week was profitable.

CostGuard watches your cash, food cost, tax position, and events — so you always know exactly where you stand. Built by a food truck operator — for trucks, caterers, and small restaurants.

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Costs less than one late GST penalty

Canada · US operators welcome

📦 Pantry

All purpose flour

14.4 kg $1.12/kg

Ground beef

3.2 kg $8.40/kg

Shredded cheese

0.6 kg $11.60/kg

📋 Recipe costing

Bannock Taco $5.22 / serve

Bannock dough (180g)$0.20

Ground beef (4 oz)$1.77

Shredded cheese (4 oz)$1.85

Toppings, prep & packaging$1.40

Total recipe cost $5.22

📊 Menu food cost %

How it works

Your financial watch
officer, always on duty

Import your bank statement. Snap a receipt. CostGuard does the watching — you only hear from us when something needs your attention.

🏦

Import your bank

Drop in a CSV from any major Canadian or US bank. CostGuard detects the format, categorizes transactions, and builds your cash picture in minutes.

📸

Capture receipts

Snap a photo of any receipt. Our OCR engine extracts the vendor, amount, and tax — then matches it against your bank transactions automatically.

⚓

CostGuard watches

Sit back. CostGuard monitors cash runway, tax owing, food cost, and penalties — and only buzzes your phone when something needs your attention.

The shoebox on your dash

One photo.
Booked, stocked, and taxed.

Most apps read the total and stop. CostGuard reads every line and puts each one where it belongs.

🧾
Every line, sorted — and it learns
Each item lands in the right category. Tell it once where something goes, and the same line drops into the right bucket next time.
📦
Straight into inventory
The ingredients you bought are stocked into your pantry automatically, feeding recipe costs and usage.
🧮
Tax on every line
GST, PST, deposits, fuel tax — each line read correctly, so your tax position stays current.
🔗
Lines up with your bank
The receipt reconciles against the transaction. Nothing double-counted, nothing missed.

Snap it in the parking lot. By the time you're back on the road, it's books, stock, and tax — done.

Receipt lines · Wholesale Club

✓ Reconciled — $222.97 across 8 items

✓Ground beef, 80/20Ingredients$64.94

✓Bologna, Club PackIngredients$38.99

✓Nacho Cheese BlendIngredients$36.99

✓Pullman CheeseIngredients$22.99

✓Sour CreamIngredients$20.99

+ 3 more lines · all stocked to pantry

Food cost intelligence

Know your cost.
Down to the penny.

CostGuard connects your pantry to your recipes to your menu — so you always know what every dish actually costs to make, and what that means for your margin.

📦 Pantry

All purpose flour

14.4 kg $1.12/kg

Ground beef

3.2 kg $8.40/kg

Tomatoes

6.8 kg $3.20/kg

Shredded cheese

0.6 kg $11.60/kg

Lettuce

9 heads $1.80/ea

📋 Recipe costing

Bannock Taco $5.22 / serve

Bannock dough (180g) $0.20

Ground beef (4 oz) $1.77

Shredded cheese (4 oz) $1.85

Lettuce (30g) $0.18

Tomato (60g) $0.19

Prep & packaging $1.03

Total recipe cost $5.22

📊 Menu food cost %

$200

One point of food costis worth about this on a $20K month — real money, once you can see it

$5.22

Your Bannock Taco, to the centevery dish costed from your real receipts — not a gut number

$99

First Matecovered the month it catches one drifting dish

Last month · The Bannock House

Food sales (net of tax)$19,840

Food ingredients$4,910

Packaging$340

Gross profit$14,590

Labour · wages$4,280

Prime cost · 48% of sales$9,530

Payment processing fees$410

Operating expenses$4,700

fuel · repairs · supplies · vehicle · utilities

Operating profit

26% of sales

$5,200

GST/PST net owing this period: $1,940 · tracked in Tax Center

Did last month actually make money?

Not a guess.
The real number.

Food cost % tells you about a dish. A profit & loss tells you about the business — and CostGuard builds it for you.

💵
A real profit & loss (P&L)
Money in, money out, and what's left — restaurant-format, no spreadsheet to keep.
📆
Every month, closed out
What you made, what it cost, and where the margin went — prime cost and labour share included.
📈
Today, so far
Sales net of tax, wages, and supplies, with the biggest drivers laid out.

"Know if last week was profitable" isn't a slogan here. It's a screen.

Know before you go. Know after you're back.

The only tool that closes
the loop on every event.

Plan your labour and fuel cost before a market. Attach your receipts and sales after. CostGuard tells you which events are worth returning to — and which ones aren't.

📋

Pre-event planning

Set expected attendance, ticket average, staff hours, fuel, and fees before you load the truck.
🧾

Attach receipts & labour

Link your actual receipts, sales, and clock-ins. Everything reconciles against the plan.
📊

Planned vs actual P&L

See what you projected vs what actually happened — by category, by event, by season.

⚡

Doing a revenue-sharing event?

Put in their percentage. CostGuard shows you which menu items go underwater, what you keep after the cut, and what you'd need to charge to protect your margin.

Event intelligence on First Mate & Captain plans.

Event P&L · Saturday Farmers Market

Planned revenue

$1,800

Actual revenue

$2,140

Food & supplies $618

Labour · 3 staff · 8h $320

Fuel & transport $84

Event fee & permits $116

Net · 56% margin

$1,202

+$340 vs plan ↑

3 receipts attached
Labour confirmed

June summary: 4 events · $4,810 net · Regina Farmers Market your top performer

For the jobs you quote, not just the days you drive

Know what a catering job
actually paid you.

Build a price per head from your real recipe costs. See the margin before you commit — then attach the receipts and hours after, and see what it truly made.

📋
Price per head
Built from what the food actually costs you, not a gut number.
💰
Margin before you commit
See what you keep at 50 guests, or at 200.
✅
Planned vs. actual
The quote, then the truth, side by side — so you bid smarter next time.

Quote · Wedding, 120 guests

Price per head$18.50

Revenue$2,220

Food & supplies$726

Labour · 3 staff$540

What you'd keep

$954 · 43%

"I finally know what each catering job actually made me. Before CostGuard it was just a gut feeling."

Rolling Pin Catering — Regina, SK

One truck or a whole fleet

Every location on its own,
and all of them together.

See each site's numbers separately, or the whole operation at once. Sales attribute to the right location, tax files to the right account, and nothing gets mixed up.

🏪 Per-location P&L

Which site is carrying the others — in plain numbers.

🔀 Combined view

The whole operation at a glance, correct to the penny.

🧾 Tax kept straight

Separate businesses stay separate. File right, every time.

Up to three locations for one price. $45 a location after that — versus $199+ a location on the big platforms.

The coast guard philosophy

Watches quietly.
Speaks when
it matters.

Most software shouts at you constantly. CostGuard is different — silent when things are steady, flags only what's worth your attention.

🔕

Silence is the default

No daily alerts, no gamified dashboards. If your numbers are fine, you won't hear from us.
👁

Observational, never prescriptive

CostGuard tells you what it sees — "food costs have been creeping up" — never "you should raise your prices."
🔒

You confirm every entry

Nothing gets written to your books automatically. Every transaction is reviewed and confirmed by you.

Live Dashboard · Tonight

Cash Runway

47 days

GST Owing (estimated)

$1,284

Food Cost %

31.2%

Watching quietly — no flags tonight

GST filing due in 11 days

🚫

We don't shame

Bad months happen. CostGuard presents data — never judgment.

🤫

We don't panic

Numbers surfaced with context. No alarm bells for small fluctuations.

📋

No perfect paperwork

Partial data is better than none. CostGuard works with what you have.

🤝

Your data is yours

Export everything, anytime. No lock-in. You own your books.

The notification that pays for itself

The 1 AM buzz
that saves you $400

CostGuard tracks your tax obligations and estimates what a late filing would cost. When a deadline approaches, you get a quiet nudge — not a lecture.

CostGuard

1:06 AM

GST filing due in 3 days. Remitting on time avoids -$17.43 in estimated penalties.

"Costs less than one late GST penalty" — that's not marketing. That's math.

Built from the inside

Why I built
CostGuard

"Eight years on the road and I still got blindsided. Late penalties. Inventory I didn't know I was losing. The numbers were always there — I just had no way to see them."

CostGuard is what I needed and couldn't find. Financial visibility built for operators who are too busy running their business to chase their books.

Pamela

Founder, CostGuard · Owner, The Bannock House Food Trailer

Years operating

$400+

Average late GST/HST penalty

Setup fee. Ever.

"I finally know what each catering job actually made me. Before CostGuard it was just a gut feeling."

Rolling Pin Catering — Regina, SK

Simple, honest pricing

Watch what you need. Pay for what you run.

Deckhand & First Mate are flat. Captain: 3 locations included, then $45/location to 10; custom beyond.

Deckhand

One location. Full intelligence.

$59/mo

1 location · Up to 5 stations (stockroom included)

✓ Bank statement import (6 Canadian banks)
✓ Cash waterline & runway tracking
✓ Tax position & penalty estimator
✓ Push notifications (coast guard watch)
✓ Receipt capture & OCR
✓ Vehicle tracking (fuel & maintenance)
✓ Events, daily margin, monthly summary
✓ Supplier tracking

Start free trial

The questions you're
already asking.

Do I have to switch banks or accountants?

No. CostGuard reads a CSV from the bank you already use, and exports a clean package — income, expenses, tax summary, and receipts — for whatever accountant you've got. Nothing to switch.

I'm behind on my books. Can I still start?

Yes. Partial data beats none. Start with this month — snap what you've got, drop in a bank CSV, and CostGuard works with what you have. You don't need a clean slate.

Do I need to be good with numbers?

No. Snap a receipt, drop in a bank file — CostGuard does the math and explains what it means in plain language. No accounting background, no spreadsheets. And no AI writing your books.

What if the receipt scan gets something wrong?

You confirm every entry before it's booked — nothing posts on its own, and anything read with low confidence gets flagged for a quick look. Categorize an item once and it remembers, so it gets faster the more you use it.

Does it really work for caterers and small restaurants, or just trucks?

Built for trucks first — but the food-cost, P&L, tax, and catering-quote tools fit caterers and small restaurants just as well. If you buy ingredients, pay staff, and owe GST, it's for you.

Is there a contract? What does it cost to start?

No contract, no setup fee — ever. 14 days free, no credit card to start, cancel anytime. It costs less than a single late GST penalty.

Most food operators don't know if last week was profitable.

Your financial watch
officer, always on duty

One photo.
Booked, stocked, and taxed.

Every line, sorted — and it learns

Straight into inventory

Tax on every line

Lines up with your bank

Know your cost.
Down to the penny.

Not a guess.
The real number.

A real profit & loss (P&L)

Every month, closed out

Today, so far

The only tool that closes
the loop on every event.

Pre-event planning

Attach receipts & labour

Planned vs actual P&L

Know what a catering job
actually paid you.

Price per head

Margin before you commit

Planned vs. actual

Every location on its own,
and all of them together.

The numbers you'd work out
on a napkin.

Watches quietly.
Speaks when
it matters.

Silence is the default

Observational, never prescriptive

You confirm every entry

The 1 AM buzz
that saves you $400

Why I built
CostGuard

Watch what you need. Pay for what you run.

The questions you're
already asking.

Ready to know
your numbers?

Most food operators don't know if last week was profitable.

Your financial watchofficer, always on duty

One photo.Booked, stocked, and taxed.

Every line, sorted — and it learns

Straight into inventory

Tax on every line

Lines up with your bank

Know your cost.Down to the penny.

Not a guess.The real number.

A real profit & loss (P&L)

Every month, closed out

Today, so far

The only tool that closesthe loop on every event.

Pre-event planning

Attach receipts & labour

Planned vs actual P&L

Know what a catering jobactually paid you.

Price per head

Margin before you commit

Planned vs. actual

Every location on its own,and all of them together.

The numbers you'd work outon a napkin.

Watches quietly.Speaks whenit matters.

Silence is the default

Observational, never prescriptive

You confirm every entry

The 1 AM buzzthat saves you $400

Why I builtCostGuard

Watch what you need. Pay for what you run.

The questions you'realready asking.

Ready to knowyour numbers?

Your financial watch
officer, always on duty

One photo.
Booked, stocked, and taxed.

Know your cost.
Down to the penny.

Not a guess.
The real number.

The only tool that closes
the loop on every event.

Know what a catering job
actually paid you.

Every location on its own,
and all of them together.

The numbers you'd work out
on a napkin.

Watches quietly.
Speaks when
it matters.

The 1 AM buzz
that saves you $400

Why I built
CostGuard

The questions you're
already asking.

Ready to know
your numbers?