Tutorial
Cost a recipe from a supplier invoice
Import a supplier file, resolve its units, and read a plate cost you can defend line by line.
About 12 minutes. Last reviewed against the product on .
By the end of this you will have a plate cost you can defend line by line, and you will know which parts of it are measured and which are assumed.
Before you start
You need one supplier file. A CSV, TSV, XLSX or a text PDF invoice will do. It does not need to be tidy: resolving a messy file is most of what this tutorial is about.
1. Import the file
Open Imports and upload the file. The importer reads it and shows you what it found before anything is saved. Two columns matter more than the rest:
- the unit, because a price per kilogram and a price per case are not comparable, and
- the pack size, because that is what converts one into the other.
2. Resolve what did not match
Anything the importer could not confidently map waits in a queue rather than being written. Resolve each one by saying what it is; the answer is remembered, so the same supplier's next file arrives mostly resolved.
3. Build the recipe
In Menu costing, create the dish and add each ingredient with the quantity the recipe actually uses. Use prepared quantities, not purchased ones, wherever the two differ: a kilogram of onions bought is not a kilogram of onions on the plate.
4. Read the result
You now have a cost per portion. What makes it defensible is that each line names where its price came from and when that price was read.
- What is measured
- Ingredient cost
- from your own supplier file
- What is assumed
- Yield and waste
- until you record your own
Measured from the menu costing surface at /app/menu-costing.
What this does not include
Labour, packaging, energy and overhead are not in this number unless you have added them. A plate cost is not a plate margin, and treating one as the other is how a menu that looks profitable stops being so.