Items, categories and units
Stock & Recipes is an add-on. See What's included, and what's an add-on.
Units first
A unit is how you measure something: kilogram, gram, litre, millilitre, each, bottle, case.
Add them under Inventory › Units with a Unit Name and a Unit Symbol (kg, g, L,
ml).
Keep the list short. Six or seven covers almost any restaurant:
| Unit | Symbol | For |
|---|---|---|
| Kilogram | kg | Meat, vegetables, dry goods |
| Gram | g | Spices, garnishes, anything measured small |
| Litre | L | Oil, stock, milk |
| Millilitre | ml | Spirits, syrups, sauces |
| Each | ea | Eggs, lemons, portioned items |
| Bottle | btl | Wine, beer |
Pick the unit you'll write recipes in. If your recipes say "150 g", hold that item in grams or in kilograms — not in "cases". A unit that matches how you cook removes a conversion from every recipe, and conversions are where mistakes live.
Item categories
Groups for your ingredients — Inventory › Inventory Item Categories.
A working set:
- Meat and poultry
- Fish and seafood
- Dairy and eggs
- Fruit and vegetables
- Dry goods
- Frozen
- Beverages — alcoholic
- Beverages — soft
- Cleaning and consumables
Categories drive filtering and grouping in reports, so make them the cuts you'd actually want to see your spend broken down by. Five to ten is right; thirty is a filing system nobody maintains.
Inventory items
The ingredients themselves — Inventory › Inventory Items › Add Inventory Item.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Item Name | Specific. "Salmon fillet, skin on" beats "Salmon". |
| Description | Identifying notes so staff can tell similar items apart. |
| Category | |
| Unit | How you measure and write recipes for it. |
| Threshold Quantity | The level at which you want warning. |
| Preferred Supplier | Who you'd reorder from. |
| Auto Reorder Quantity | How much a reorder should be for. |
| Item Photo | JPG, PNG or WEBP up to 2 MB. |
Naming items properly
Your future self is searching this list at 6 pm.
- Be specific enough to distinguish. Two olive oils at different prices are two items.
- Lead with the noun. "Chicken, breast" and "Chicken, thigh" sort together; "Breast of chicken" doesn't.
- Don't put the supplier in the name. That's the preferred supplier field.
- Don't put the pack size in the name if you hold it by weight.
Setting thresholds
The threshold quantity is what turns stock into a warning. Below it, the item shows as low stock and appears in the daily summary email.
Set it to what you use between deliveries, plus a buffer.
If you get fish twice a week and use 8 kg between deliveries, a threshold of 10 kg gives you warning with time to act. A threshold of 1 kg tells you when it's already too late.
Set it too high and everything is permanently "low" — which trains people to ignore the list, and then the list is worth nothing.
Preferred supplier and reorder quantity
Preferred Supplier is required to raise a purchase order automatically when stock drops below the threshold. Fill it in for anything you reorder regularly.
Auto Reorder Quantity is how much that order should be for — typically enough to get you back to a comfortable level, not a token amount.
The photo
Genuinely useful for a kitchen with staff who don't share a first language, or where two items look similar and cost very differently. Skip it for the obvious ones.
Bulk import
Bulk Import loads items from a CSV or Excel file.
Supported columns:
name (required), description, category, unit, unit_symbol, unit_purchase_price,
threshold_quantity, reorder_quantity, preferred_supplier
The import reports back what happened — created, updated and skipped counts — so you know whether it did what you expected.
Best used for the initial load. Get your supplier's product list into a spreadsheet, tidy the names, and import in one go rather than typing two hundred items.
Stock levels
Once items exist, Inventory › Inventory Stocks shows what you're holding, with a status:
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
| In Stock | Above threshold. |
| Needs Attention | At or below threshold. |
| Critical | Out of stock. |
Filter by category and status, search by name, and export to Excel.
The counts at the top — "4 items below threshold", "2 items out of stock" — are the morning check. Thirty seconds, before you order anything.
Good to know
- Deleting an item used in a recipe or on a purchase order isn't clean. Check before you remove.
- Sync Stock and Menu Items links inventory to the menu where they should correspond.
- Stock is per branch.
- Expiry dates can be recorded against stock, and items nearing expiry appear in the daily summary.