Inventory

What it does

Inventory tracks the goods your kitchen holds — how much you have, what it cost, and which delivery it came from. You record deliveries as they arrive, write off what gets used or spoiled, and count the shelf whenever you want to check the system against reality. Every change is kept in a history you can look back through, and because each delivery is priced separately, the value of your stock is what you actually paid rather than an average.

Getting started

1. An admin turns on the Inventory feature for your venue in Settings → Feature access, if it isn't already on. Inventory then appears in the side menu with Stock, Products, Suppliers, Movements, Deliveries, Stocktake, Supply planning and Configuration.
2. Open Suppliers and add the businesses you buy from — name, contact person, phone, email, tax ID, address. You can skip this and add suppliers later, but recording them makes deliveries easier to trace.
3. Open Products and add each good you want to track: a name (e.g. "Carrot"), an optional SKU, and the unit it is counted in. Optionally set a minimum stock level, a shelf life in days, and a default supplier.
4. Open Stock and tap Receive to book your first delivery: pick the product, enter the quantity and the price per unit, and — optionally — an expiry date, a lot number and the supplier's invoice number. Leave the lot number blank and one is generated for you.
5. Use Consume for stock used in the kitchen and Write off for stock lost — expired, damaged, spilled, or lost in preparation. Both are on the toolbar and on each product's row.
6. Open Movements at any time to see the full history: what came in, what went out, when, by whom, and what it cost.
7. When you want to check the system against the shelf, open Stocktake, tap Start a count, enter what you actually counted, and tap Complete count.
8. Open Deliveries to see every receipt as it arrived — one row per delivery rather than one per product — and open one to see its lines, what each cost, and how much is left.
9. Open Shortfalls if something was sold that stock couldn't cover. Tap a row to jot down what happened and mark it reviewed. The list should normally be empty.

Key things to know

• Each delivery is its own lot, and the oldest is always used first. Expand a product's row on the Stock page to see its open lots listed in exactly the order stock will be drawn from them, with the quantity remaining, the unit cost and the value of each.
• Costs are exact, not averaged. If you consume 12 kg that spans a delivery bought at 4.00 and one bought at 4.50, the history records both parts separately at their own price. This is what makes your food cost figures trustworthy.
• A product is counted in one unit, but you can work in any unit that measures the same thing. Receive in kilograms and consume in grams — the system converts. Units that measure different things stay separate: pieces and portions are never interchangeable, because there is no correct way to convert one into the other. Only compatible units appear in the pickers.
• If a product's unit list comes up empty and flags the unit as out of date, the unit it was originally set up with was later changed or removed in the menu's unit settings, so nothing currently matches it. Repairing it means putting the product's unit right, which has to be done by whoever manages your catalog — quantities already recorded against it may need converting at the same time, so it is not a change to make on your own.
• Units themselves are set up in the menu, not in Inventory — see Configuration under Menu & Catalog. You can rename the built-in units into your own language, and add your own, defining each as a multiple of another.
• Stock history is never edited. A correction is a new entry, not a change to an old one, so the ledger always adds up to what you have on hand. Nothing you record disappears later.
• Set a minimum stock level to get a "Low" flag. The Stock page has a Below minimum only filter so you can see everything that needs reordering in one view.
• Shelf life prefills the expiry date. If a product has a shelf life of 5 days, the receive form suggests an expiry five days from today — you can always override it.
• The Stock page colours an expiry problem so it's easy to spot. A whole row turns red once its expiry date has passed — today itself doesn't count, a lot dated today is still good. A row turns yellow once it has sat longer than the product's shelf life, whatever its expiry date says — nothing says it's actually gone off, only that it's worth a look, which is why yellow and not red. Where a lot is both, it shows red, the more serious of the two. The colour shows on the product's row and on the lot itself inside the expanded list. Nobody is notified — you have to open the page to see it.
• A stocktake changes nothing until you complete it. You can start a count, enter figures over the course of an hour, and cancel it — stock is untouched, and nothing appears in the history. Only one count can be open at a time.
• Leaving a product blank skips it; counting zero is a finding. A blank line means "I didn't count this" and is left alone. Entering 0 means "there is none left" and posts a correction. Use Clear count to put a line back to uncounted.
• A count is measured against stock at the moment you complete it, not when you started counting. If a delivery is booked while you are still counting, the correction accounts for it and the row is highlighted in the count's detail, so you can see why the numbers moved.
• A surplus found by a count is valued at the product's most recent known cost, or at zero if it has never been purchased. Stock that appeared without a delivery has no price of its own, and inventing one would overstate what your stock is worth.
• A shortfall means someone sold something the stock couldn't cover. It's recorded whenever a cashier went ahead past the warning. Each row shows the product, how much was needed, how much there was, and how short it came up. The list should be short — every entry is worth reading, because it means a recipe, a delivery, or a count is wrong somewhere.
• Marking a shortfall reviewed changes no stock. Nothing moved when the row was recorded, so there is nothing to reverse; it just moves the row out of your way. To correct what is actually on the shelf, run a stocktake. Tapping an unresolved row opens a small dialog where you can leave a note about what happened — the delivery was miscounted, the recipe was wrong, stock turned up elsewhere — before confirming; the note is optional and stays with the row for whoever looks at it later. Reviewed rows stay visible behind Show resolved — they're history, not clutter — and are no longer clickable, since there's nothing left to do with them.
• Permissions are separate for each area. A venue can let a cook write off waste without letting them edit products, or let a manager run counts without giving them supplier access. Staff who can view Inventory but not manage it simply don't see the action buttons.
• You can't write off or use more than what's actually on the shelf. If you type a bigger quantity than there is, the field brings itself down to match what's really there — treat it as shorthand for "all of it" rather than an error.
• The Movements page opens showing the current month, not your full history. Change it with the same period picker as the Reports pages — quick choices like This week or Last month, or your own From/To dates — and the list updates in place without hiding what's already on screen.
• Counting on Stocktake has +1/−1 buttons alongside typing a number. Tapping them repeatedly doesn't send a request for every tap — it waits briefly after you stop, then saves once, so the count and the difference shown update immediately while only one save goes to the server.
• Deliveries are grouped by what actually arrived, not by how many times you booked it in. The movement history lists one row per product, which is right for tracing a single ingredient and wrong for checking a supplier's invoice. The Deliveries page brings it back together as one row: date, supplier, delivery note, how many lines, what it cost, and how much of it is still on the shelf. If the same invoice is booked in more than one pass — the chilled goods now, the dry goods later — entering the same delivery note both times keeps it as one row instead of splitting it in two. Open a row to see every line it brought together, however many times it was booked.
• Record the supplier's delivery note number when you receive. It is shown on the Deliveries page, on the stock lot, and against every movement that draws from that stock — so months later you can tell which invoice a batch of goods came in on. You can also search the Deliveries page by it.
• Recipes connect Inventory to your menu, so that selling a dish deducts its ingredients automatically. See Recipes.
• A recipe's ingredient costs also drive what a dish costs to make and whether it's priced right — see Food Cost.
• What stock actually cost to sell over a period — cost of sales, waste, refunds and gross margin, by menu item and by product — is its own report now. See Cost Report.

FAQ

Q: Do I have to track every ingredient?
A: No. Track what is worth tracking — expensive items, things that run out at bad moments, anything you want food-cost figures for. Products you don't add are simply not tracked, and the rest of the system works exactly as before.

Q: Why can't I pick grams for this product?
A: The unit picker only offers units that measure the same thing as the product. If a product is counted in pieces, grams won't appear, because there is no fixed conversion between a piece and a gram. You can change a product's unit between units of the same kind — kilograms to grams — at any time, and its stock is unaffected. Switching a product to a different kind of measure altogether is a different matter: bring its stock to zero first, then change the unit and receive it again, otherwise the quantity you already hold is reinterpreted under the new measure.

Q: My product's unit list is empty and says the unit is out of date. What do I do?
A: The unit the product was originally set up with has since changed or been removed in the menu's unit settings, so there's nothing current to match it against. Ask whoever manages your catalog to put the product's unit right. It is not a change to make on your own: if the product already holds stock, the unit's scale may have moved — kilograms redefined as grams, say — and the quantities on record have to be converted in the same step, or they will read wrong afterwards.

Q: I entered the wrong quantity on a delivery. Can I edit it?
A: Stock history can't be edited, on purpose — it is a record of what happened. Correct it by writing off the difference, or by running a stocktake and counting the true figure. Either way the correction is visible in the history rather than hidden.

Q: What's the difference between Consume and Write off?
A: Consume is stock used as intended — cooked, served, sold. Write off is stock lost: expired, damaged, spilled, or ruined in preparation. They are separated so you can see how much you are losing and why, instead of it disappearing into normal usage.

Q: What does it mean when a row turns red or yellow on the Stock page?
A: Red means the expiry date has passed — today itself doesn't count as expired. Yellow means something different: the lot has sat longer than the product's shelf life, whether or not it carries an expiry date, so it's worth a look even though nothing has technically expired. If a lot is both, you'll see red, the more serious state. Neither colour removes the stock or blocks a sale on its own — it's a flag for you to act on, not an automatic write-off.

Q: What does the Low flag mean?
A: The product has fallen to or below the minimum stock level you set for it. Set minimums on the product, then use the Below minimum only filter on the Stock page as a reordering list.

Q: Can two people count during the same stocktake?
A: Yes — a count is shared, so several people can enter figures for different products at the same time. Only one count can be open at once, which prevents two counts posting conflicting corrections.

Q: A delivery arrived while we were counting. Did it break the count?
A: No. The correction is measured against stock at the moment you complete the count, so the delivery is taken into account. Rows that moved after counting began are highlighted when you open the completed count, so you can see exactly which ones were affected.

Q: I counted a product and got it wrong. Can I undo it?
A: Before you complete the count, yes — retype it, or use Clear count to put the line back to uncounted. Once the count is completed, its corrections are in the history and can't be removed; fix it with another count or a write-off.

Q: Why is my stock worth less than I paid?
A: Value is the sum of what remains in each open lot at that lot's own price. If your cheaper delivery is still untouched and the expensive one has been used up, the remaining value reflects the cheaper price — which is the correct answer, because that is what's left.

Q: Who can see cost figures?
A: Anyone who can view Inventory can see stock values and costs today. If your venue needs to hide prices from floor staff, don't grant them the Inventory view permission.

Q: Where do I see what stock cost to sell over a period?
A: On the Cost Report, under Reports. It moved out of Inventory, but it still reads Inventory's numbers — cost of sales, waste, and (where a dish has a recipe and a matched sale) gross margin, by menu item and by product.

Q: What do I do about a shortfall?
A: Treat it as a question, not a task. It means the recipe asks for more than you think, a delivery wasn't booked, or a count is wrong. Fix whichever it is, run a stocktake if the shelf and the system disagree, then mark the row reviewed.

Q: I marked a shortfall reviewed. Did that fix my stock?
A: No, and it isn't meant to. Nothing moved when the shortfall was recorded, so there's nothing to reverse. A stocktake is what corrects what's on hand.

Q: Can I explain why a shortfall happened when I mark it reviewed?
A: Yes — tapping an unresolved row opens a dialog with an optional note before you confirm. It's there for whatever is useful to whoever looks at it later: the delivery was miscounted, the recipe needed more than expected, stock was found elsewhere. Leaving it blank is fine too.

Q: I typed a bigger quantity than what's on hand into Consume or Write off. What happened?
A: The field brought the number down to match what's actually there. You can't take out more stock than exists, so a quantity larger than what's on the shelf is treated as "use it all" rather than rejected outright.

Q: Why does Movements only show this month by default?
A: The ledger only grows over time, and most questions asked of it are about recent activity. Change the period at the top — pick another quick range or set your own dates — and it stays that way until you change it again.

Q: Does selling a dish reduce its ingredients automatically?
A: Yes, once the dish has a recipe. Without one, nothing is deducted when it sells and you record usage yourself. See Recipes.

Q: I booked a delivery. Where can I see it?
A: On Deliveries, at the top of the list — it is the newest. You will also see the stock rise on the Stock page, with a new lot under the product's row, and one Receipt entry per product in Movements. The three answer different questions: Deliveries is the invoice, Stock is what you have now, and Movements is the audit trail.

Q: What is the difference between a delivery and a lot?
A: A delivery is one arrival; a lot is one product within it. A van bringing eleven things is one delivery and eleven lots, each with its own price and expiry date, because stock is consumed lot by lot from the oldest first.

Q: How do I find the delivery for a supplier's invoice?
A: Search the Deliveries page by the delivery note number or the supplier's name, and narrow the date range if you need to. If the note number was not recorded at receipt, search by supplier and find it by date and value.

Q: I received one invoice in two batches — will it show as one delivery or two?
A: One, as long as you enter the same supplier and the same delivery note number both times. Deliveries groups by supplier and note, not by how many times you booked something in. Leave the note blank and each booking shows as its own delivery instead, since there's nothing to tie them together.