One of your restaurant customers has sent you a Certified Analysis & Audit Report identifying discrepancies in what they were billed. This page explains what that document is, how it was produced, how to check it yourself, and what a useful response looks like. It is written for the person who has to evaluate the claim — a billing analyst, an account manager, a controller, or counsel. It is not a sales page.
A CAAR is a reconciliation report. It compares what you billed a customer against the customer's own transaction records and the rate schedule in the agreement you both signed. Where those three sources disagree, the report says so, states the amount, and cites the specific records the finding rests on. It was produced by FohBoh | Sentry™, an independent certification service — nobody at the operator's business calculated the figures, and nobody at FohBoh negotiated them. The report is the output of a fixed rule set applied to sealed data. A spreadsheet from a customer invites a conversation about methodology; a CAAR is designed to make the methodology the least interesting part of the conversation, so the two of you can talk about the money.
An auditor paid a percentage of what it finds has a reason to find more. This one does not. If you were preparing to discount the findings as motivated, that argument does not apply here.
The engine has no model, no inference, no sampling, no extrapolation and no estimation in the variance calculations. Given the same inputs and the same rule version, it returns the same result — the same figures, and the same hash. That property makes the report reproducible rather than merely plausible. Where a report states a count — thirty-four batches, four hundred and seventeen pickup orders — every one is identified in the evidence manifest.
A practical note: the certified recoverable amount on the cover is a calculation under the stated rules and evidence. It is not an invoice, and it is not an assertion that a court has decided anything. It is the number the record supports.
Every run produces a Trust Score from 0 to 100. It measures evidence coverage — how much of the data needed to check a finding was actually present — rather than confidence in the conclusion.
A CAAR is issued. Evidence coverage was complete enough to stand behind the figures. This is the only tier you will ever receive.
A sealed report goes to the operator listing every evidence gap and how to close it — but no CAAR, and no certified amount.
A sealed report goes to the operator with the gaps itemised. Again no CAAR, and no certified amount.
If the evidence had been thin, you would not be holding this document. Nothing reaches you until the coverage threshold is met — so the Trust Score on your cover page is not a hedge; it is the residue of a gate the run had to pass before the report existed.
A CAAR is sealed the moment it is generated: its hash is computed over the final rendered document, which is written to an append-only vault under retention controls. From that point it cannot be edited — not by the operator, not by their accountant, not by FohBoh. The same applies to the source evidence, hashed at receipt before any rule ran. Two things follow, and they cut in both directions:
Practical consequence: if you re-save, re-export, or print the PDF to a new file, the hash will no longer match — not because anything was falsified, but because the bytes changed. Keep the original as received; forward it rather than re-generating it.
You do not need anything from FohBoh to check the seal. The hash is printed on the report — compute it on the file you received and compare, character for character.
shasum -a 256 CAAR-M02-2026-07-000418.pdfGet-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256 .\CAAR-M02-2026-07-000418.pdfA match means the document is exactly as issued. It does not, on its own, mean you agree with the findings — that is section 10 — but it removes one whole category of argument from the table, which is usually in everyone's interest.
Not because anyone wants a courtroom — because the way this document is built determines how much of a conversation is left to have, and it is worth knowing what your counsel will see when you forward it.
Rule 1006(b) requires the offering party to make the underlying records available to the other side — the most common reason summaries get excluded. The evidence pack below is that tender, prepared in advance. None of this decides whether anything is owed; it means the argument, if there is one, will be about the numbers and the contract rather than about whether the document says what it says.
Alongside the CAAR, the operator can provide the complete evidence pack: every source record the reconciliation relied on, sealed, with the manifest tying each one to the findings it supports — including your own settlement and statement files exactly as you issued them. The pack exists so your team can reproduce the calculation independently. If your figure differs, working through the pack will show where the two diverge — a different denominator, a different effective date, a rate table never loaded, an amendment never provided. That is where most disagreements actually live. If you received the CAAR but not the pack, ask the operator for it.
Findings are numbered. A response that addresses finding 4 specifically moves things forward; one that addresses "the claim" does not.
An amended addendum or countersigned tier change resolves a finding immediately — and if it was never provided to the operator, it could not have been loaded.
Give the transaction, batch or order identifiers. The manifest makes them directly comparable.
Partial resolution is normal. Separating agreed items from disputed ones shrinks the conversation quickly.
A general denial, a restatement of policy, or a referral to a self-service portal will not close a certified claim — and it is itself preserved in the claim file. Operators track rejections; a third one typically moves the matter to outside counsel with the sealed pack attached, a worse outcome for both sides than a substantive reply now.
Notice what is not on that list: whether the numbers were assembled honestly, whether the evidence was selected to suit the conclusion, and whether the document was altered since issue. Those are the arguments the seal and pre-analysis hashing are designed to retire.
The amount, the credit, the timing — go to the operator. It is their claim; FohBoh will not discuss it on their behalf or intervene in it.
How a rule works, what a Trust Score band means, how to verify a seal — certification@fohboh.com. We answer for either party, because a methodology only one side understands is not much of a standard. See the example report before yours arrives.