Inventory reports
Stock & Recipes is an add-on. See What's included, and what's an add-on.
What this is for
The payoff. Everything you've recorded turns into these.
Inventory › Reports, with tabs for each. All take a period — daily, weekly or monthly — a date range, and a filter to a single item or all of them.
Usage Trends
Actual usage against expected usage, with the variance between them.
Expected usage is what your recipes say you should have consumed, given what you sold. Actual usage is what really left your stock.
The gap is the single most useful number in this whole section.
| Reading | Usually means |
|---|---|
| Over usage — actual above expected | Portions are heavy, waste isn't recorded, the recipe is understated, or something is leaving unaccounted. |
| Under usage — actual below expected | The recipe overstates the portion, or a delivery was received twice. |
| Variance near zero | Your recipes match your kitchen. |
Read this weekly. A dish whose variance grows month on month is telling you something changed — usually a portion, sometimes a supplier, occasionally a problem.
Forecasting
Projected requirements over a chosen forecast period — 7, 15, 30, 60 or 90 days — from your usage history.
Useful for:
- Ordering ahead of a known busy period.
- Deciding how much freezer space you actually need.
- Spotting an item you're steadily using more of.
It's an extrapolation, not a promise. It doesn't know about the bank holiday, the function you've booked, or the weather. Use it as a starting point and apply what you know.
Turnover Rate
How fast each item moves through your stock.
- Fast turnover — you're holding the right amount. Money isn't sitting still.
- Slow turnover — cash tied up in a shelf. Worth asking whether you need to hold that much, or hold it at all.
- Very slow — often an item bought for one dish nobody orders. That's a menu decision, not a stock decision.
Every slow-moving line is money you've already spent that isn't earning. It's also usually the stuff that expires.
Cost of Goods Sold
What the food you sold actually cost you, over the period.
Against your sales for the same period, this is your food cost percentage — the number the industry runs on.
Two cautions worth stating plainly:
- It's only as complete as your recipes. Dishes without recipes contribute nothing to this figure, so partial coverage makes it look better than reality.
- It counts what was sold, not what you bought. Those differ in any period where stock levels moved.
Profit & Loss
Revenue against cost of goods, giving gross margin.
The useful cut is per dish. Your best seller and your best margin are frequently not the same plate, and knowing which is which changes what you push, where it sits on the menu, and what you price.
A dish with poor margin isn't automatically a problem — it might be what brings people in. But it should be a decision you've made rather than one you've drifted into.
Batch Production and Batch Consumption
For batch recipes: what you produced, and what got consumed against it.
The gap between them is batch waste — chai made and thrown away, sauce that expired. It's usually the fastest waste to fix, because the answer is normally "make smaller batches more often".
A reading routine
Weekly, ten minutes:
- Usage variance on your top items. Anything moving?
- Low stock and expiry list.
- Any purchase orders sent and not received?
Monthly, half an hour:
- Cost of goods against sales — your food cost percentage, and its trend.
- Profit and loss by dish. Which are earning?
- Turnover — what's sitting still?
- Waste by reason. What's the biggest cause, and is it fixable?
The trend matters more than the number. A food cost of 32% means little on its own. A food cost that was 29% three months ago means a great deal.
Exporting
Reports export, and the inventory stock list exports to Excel. Useful for handing to an accountant or building your own comparison over a longer period than the screen shows.
Good to know
- Show Inventory Report is its own permission, separate from managing stock. See What each role can do.
- Periods follow your operating shifts, not midnight — an overnight service belongs to the day it started. See Opening hours and shifts.
- Reports are per branch.
- Everything here depends on recipes being right. If a report looks wrong, check the recipe before doubting the report.
Next
Stock is covered. Next add-on: setting up a kiosk.