Recipe costing and inventory tracking: How CashSheet connects your kitchen to your books
The gap between your POS and your books
Most restaurants know their sales. Few know their actual food cost in real time. The gap between what you sold and what you used is where profit disappears. CashSheet closes that gap by connecting every sale to its ingredient cost automatically.
Set up your recipes (Bill of Materials)
In the Inventory module, go to Recipes and define the ingredients for each menu item. For example, a Chicken Sandwich might use 1 Jumbo Chicken Tender ($1.85), 1 Potato Roll Bun ($0.55), and 3 oz of Coleslaw Mix ($0.054). Total plate cost: $2.45.
CashSheet supports multi-level recipes — a "Red's Combo" can reference a "Sandwich" sub-recipe which in turn references individual ingredients. The system explodes the full Bill of Materials automatically.
What happens when you make a sale
Every time a menu item is sold via Quick Sale, CashSheet:
- Creates a Product Mix record (qty sold × item)
- Explodes the recipe to find all leaf ingredients
- Records a PR (Product Mix) transaction per ingredient
- Posts COGS to the GL: DR Cost of Goods Sold / CR Inventory Asset
Theoretical usage vs. actual usage
Theoretical usage is what you should have used based on your recipes and sales. Actual usage is what you did use based on physical counts. The difference is your variance.
A variance under 2% is acceptable. 2-5% needs monitoring. Over 5% means something is wrong — over-portioning, waste, or theft.
Run a variance report
Go to Inventory → Variance Report. Select your date range. CashSheet calculates: Beginning Inventory + Purchases − Ending Count = Actual Usage. Compare that to Theoretical Usage to get your variance in both quantity and dollars.
Keep ingredient costs current
When you receive a purchase invoice in the Inventory module, CashSheet updates the average cost of each ingredient automatically. Recipe costs recalculate in real time — so if chicken prices go up, your menu cost reports reflect it immediately.
