Recipes and costs (café plan)

What it is for

With the café plan, every product sold (a café au lait, a mint tea) can have a recipe: 7 g of coffee, 150 ml of milk, 1 cup. With each sale, the till takes these ingredients out of stock, and Recipes and costs shows what each drink costs and the margin it leaves. For the owner and managers only.

Ingredients

Open Recipes and costs › Ingredients.
The first time, the starter list suggests the usual ingredients (coffee beans, milk, sugar, green tea, mint, cups, bread / msemen): tick what you buy, adjust the name, then Create ticked ingredients.
Otherwise, New ingredient: the name, Measured in (grams for what is weighed, millilitres for liquids, pieces for what is counted), and a first pack size if you like.

An ingredient is a product like any other: receiving, purchasing, alerts and exports work as usual. Choose an existing product turns a catalogue product into an ingredient. A product tracked by batch cannot be an ingredient.

Pack sizes and opening stock

A pack size (“1 kg bag”, “1 L bottle”, “Box of 50”) lets you receive “2 bags” instead of “2000 g”. In Stock › Receive and in Purchasing, choose the pack size: the till works out the quantity and the unit cost, and shows any rounding.
Current stock and Pack price when creating record an “Opening stock” delivery: the average cost starts out right. A price on its own becomes the stated cost.
Alert levels and minimum or maximum stock are entered in pack sizes or in grams, millilitres, pieces.

Recipes

In Margins, tap a product (or Create recipe), or open the product's record in the Catalogue › Recipe.
Add one line per ingredient with its quantity for one unit sold.
Save.

A recipe goes on a product sold by the unit. Once it exists, the product no longer reduces its own stock: its ingredients go down instead. The first time, if the product still had stock, the Reset this product's stock to 0 box (ticked by default) sets it to zero with a stock count line. Remove recipe goes back to the old behaviour.

Option effects

An option can change the recipe: Replace (“Almond milk replaces Milk”), Multiply (“Double: coffee × 2”) or Add (“+ syrup 20 ml”).

The default effect is set once in Catalogue › Options › Default effect: it applies to every product linked to the option, wherever the recipe contains the ingredient concerned.
In a recipe, Override for this product or No effect for this product changes the effect for that product only.

Cost and margin

Margins shows for each product the price excl. tax, the cost and the margin, with the default options. Costs are excl. tax, as on invoices.
An ingredient's cost is its average cost (it follows your costed deliveries), otherwise its stated cost (flagged), otherwise unknown cost: the recipe then shows no cost and names the missing ingredient. An unknown cost is never counted as zero.
Recipe to review: an ingredient has changed unit, moved to batch tracking or been removed. Meanwhile, the sale reduces the product's own stock; open the recipe and fix it.

Refunds and returns

A prepared item that is refunded or returned puts its ingredients back into stock and immediately records them as waste (“Waste — return”): stock does not change, and the waste stays visible.
When refunding a café order, Drink already made? is ticked when the drink went to the kitchen (or when there is no printer and no kitchen screen). Untick it if the drink was not made: its ingredients go back into stock with no waste.
In Return and Exchange (Sales), tick Not made on a line that was not prepared.

Waste

At the till, Waste (next to “Sold-out mode”) opens Record waste for everyone: the reason (Breakage, Expired, On the house), the ingredient in grams, millilitres or pieces, or the prepared product (its ingredients are removed according to its recipe, with the default options).
Recipes and costs › Waste shows the waste for a period with its value: waste recorded, items cancelled after being sent to the kitchen (“Cancelled after sending”) and prepared items returned (“Prepared item returned”).

Stock count

Stock count gives one line per ingredient: the expected stock, and the counted amount in pack sizes (“2 × 1 kg bag”) plus the remainder in grams, millilitres or pieces. Leave blank what you do not count; 0 means “none left”.
Count before opening or after closing: a sale during the count skews the variance.
Confirm stock count shows the number of corrections before saving them. The count in progress stays on this till until it is confirmed. An ingredient's first count is an “initial count”.
Ingredients are counted here, not in Stock › Adjustment › Stock count, which sends you to this sheet.

Variances

Variances compares a stock count with the previous one: between the two, the opening stock, the deliveries in, the theoretical (used by the recipes sold), waste and what is left. The count variance is what the count corrected; the variance % compares it to expected usage, and the value puts a figure on it. “Current cost” flags a value estimated at today's cost. An ingredient “not counted at the previous stock count” has a variance in value but no variance %: its drift runs from a count older than the period.
With only one stock count, there is nothing to compare. Custom period reads the variances between two dates (stock counts in the period included). Export CSV downloads the table.

Ordering in time

In Ingredients, tap the ingredient › Alert levels: Alert below flags low stock in the Stock alerts; Minimum stock and Maximum stock trigger an order suggestion. Enter them in pack sizes (“2 bags”) or in grams, millilitres, pieces (Entered in). An alert never blocks a sale.
As soon as an ingredient is at or below its minimum, Stock › Suggested reorder suggests the quantity To order to get back to the maximum, by supplier: the Usual supplier on the product's record in the Catalogue, otherwise the supplier of the last delivery. Export CSV downloads the list; place the order in Purchasing, in pack sizes.
On this card, quantities are in the stock unit (kilograms, litres or pieces), not in pack sizes.

Out-of-stock ingredient

When an ingredient runs out, a banner on the till shows what depends on it: Mark sold out… suggests the products and options to mark as sold out for today (nothing changes until you confirm), Later hides it until tomorrow. In Sold-out mode, Options marks an option as sold out by hand.

Stock also shows the Ingredients out of stock card: each ingredient with no stock, the number of products and options that depend on it, and the same Mark sold out… button.

Prepared items (syrups, cold brew)

A prepared item is an ingredient you make yourself in batches: a vanilla syrup (sugar + vanilla extract + water), a cold brew (ground coffee + water), a caramel syrup.

First create it as an ingredient (New ingredient, for example “Vanilla syrup” measured in millilitres).
In Preparations, New preparation: the prepared item, the ingredients and their quantities for one batch, the batch yield (what you get, for example 1500 ml) and, if you like, Keeps for (in days). Tap water is not added: the yield takes it into account. A prepared item can contain another one (caramel → caramel syrup), up to 3 levels deep.
Use the prepared item in drink recipes like any ingredient (“Vanilla latte: 20 ml of vanilla syrup”).
When you make it, Produce (in Preparations, or on the till next to Waste, for everyone): the number of batches and the quantity obtained. The till takes the ingredients out of stock, adds the prepared item and works out its cost per ml: the cost of the ingredients divided by what you actually got. The difference (“Loss” if you got less than planned, “Gain” if more) is shown on the batch and included in its cost.

A prepared item's cost follows its batches (average cost). Before the first batch, it is estimated from the formula.
A prepared item is counted in the Stock count, recorded as Waste and appears in Variances like other ingredients: its batches count as deliveries in, and the ingredients they used count in expected usage.
It does not appear in Suggested reorder (you do not buy it): To produce flags it when its stock is at or below its minimum.
With Keeps for, each batch has a “use by” date. Assuming the oldest go first, Expired since… flags stock from batches past their date; Record waste records it as “Expired”. It is only an indication: the sale is never blocked.
A recorded batch cannot be undone: correct a mistake with the Stock count or Waste.

Waste here and in the café reports

Here, waste is valued at the cost of the ingredients (current cost). The Café reports › Waste show something else: items removed from an order after it was sent to the kitchen, estimated at selling price. The two figures do not add up.