How do I start a menu import, and what does it cost?

Start an import from photos, a PDF, your menu web page or a spreadsheet — what it costs, how much fits, and why leaving loses nothing.

Part of How do I import my menu instead of typing it in?. This part covers starting an import: why nothing is added until you press Add, what it costs, the four ways in, and how much fits in one import.

Nothing is added until you press Add — and leaving loses nothing

This is the important bit, in two halves.

First: whichever way you bring your menu in, ResoFlow never creates anything straight away. You always check every dish it read, and nothing touches your real menu until you press the button on the last step — which always names exactly what it's about to do, like Add these 48 dishes. On the way there you can change any dish's name, description and price (Edit on its row), move a dish into a different section, rename a section (Rename beside its name), and leave out any dish or section you don't want. You can also add a dish (Add a dish at the foot of each section), add a whole section (Add a section under the last one), and undo a change straight away with the Undo button that appears after one — so a mis-tap on a long list never costs you a dish.

Second: leaving the import doesn't lose your work. Close it — deliberately or because the phone rang — and everything is kept as a draft: the menu that was read and every correction you've made to it. The next time you open Import menu you're offered the draft first, so you pick up exactly where you left off. Drafts are kept for 7 days; ignore the offer and start fresh whenever you'd rather. Your real menu is untouched either way, because only that last button changes it.

The photo or PDF you upload is deleted as soon as it has been read — we don't keep your file, and it is never used to train anything.

What it costs

Reading a menu uses Rezo credits: 1 credit a page — a photo is one page and a web page is one page, so six photos are 6 credits. A PDF is 1 credit a page too, so a three-page PDF is 3 credits. The spreadsheet lane is free (no AI reads it). Pro includes 30 Rezo credits a month and Complete 100; Free and Plus get 10 welcome credits once, and after that you buy a one-off pack from Account → Top-ups (50 credits for £5, 150 for £12, 400 for £25 — packs never expire). The button that starts the read names what Rezo will read and what it costs — like Rezo reads 3 photos · 3 credits — and the credits are taken when you press it. A page Rezo can't read gives its credit back straight away, and the page says which; the other pages are kept. If nothing can be read at all, every credit goes back. Beside the first step, What happens shows the same cost and how many credits you have left. Rezo reads up to 12 pages in one import — a longer PDF is turned away before anything is charged ("That PDF has 20 pages — Rezo reads up to 12 pages at a time. Save just the menu’s pages as a PDF of their own, or send photos of them."). See How do I buy credits or add-ons?.

The four ways in

The first step asks Where is your menu now? Pick whichever matches what you've got, and what that way needs appears right underneath — on the same screen, with What happens beside it: the three steps (Rezo reads it, you check it, you add it), what this import costs and how many credits you have left, that asking Rezo for help is always free, and what happens to your file.

For the first three, the button at the bottom says what Rezo will read and what it costs (it stays off, with the reason beside it, until there's something to read), and pressing it shows the Reading the menu… screen, which reads your menu page by page — each page says Reading…, then how many dishes Rezo found on it, or why he couldn't read it and that its credit is back. If a page couldn't be read, the screen stops to say so: Carry on without it, or Choose other photos to try again (Choose another PDF for a PDF). It usually takes a few seconds; a long, photographed menu can take up to five minutes, and you can leave the window open while it works. If you close it (or the tab) while it's still reading, nothing is wasted — the reading carries on in the background, and the next time you open Import menu you'll be offered the finished result — Pick up where you left off?, naming when you started it — where Carry on takes you straight to checking the dishes (the reading is already done, so nothing is charged again) and Start again lets it go.

Photos are shrunk in your browser before they're sent. If a big batch still comes to more than the 24 MB we can read in one go, you're told before anything uploads — the first pages that fit are kept, and you import the rest afterwards.

How much fits in one import

One import can bring in up to 500 dishes, across up to 40 sections, with up to 150 dishes in any one section. If your menu is bigger than that, you're told what was left out — "Only the first 500 dishes were imported — please add any others by hand" — and you can import the rest afterwards. (Separately, one venue's menu can hold up to 2,000 dishes in total, which no real menu comes near.)

Related: How do I import my menu instead of typing it in? · How do I check the dishes a menu import read? · How do I add an imported menu, or undo it? · What are Rezo credits, and what does each Rezo job cost?