Making a batch of sauce and day-dotting it
A prep item with a recipe, a produce run that takes its ingredients from stock, and a use-by that expires on its own.
3 min read
A prep item is something you make in-house from other stock — sauce, dough, stock. Producing a batch pulls the ingredients out of stock, puts the finished amount in, and starts a use-by clock.
The scenario
Tomato sauce, 5 litres a batch, good for 72 hours. Monday morning there are 2 L left and lunch needs more.
Set the prep item up once
- 1On Inventory › Stock, press New item and choose the type Preparation. Call it Tomato sauce, unit L, a Target level of 10 and Shelf life (hours) 72.
- 2Open its Recipe (in the item’s drawer, or Prep recipe in its row menu): Add ingredient — tomatoes 4 kg, onions 0.5 kg, oil 0.2 L — and set Yield per batch to 5 L. Leave When it runs out on Automatic (below). Press Save recipe.
Monday morning
- 1Open Inventory › Production. On Today, under To make, the sauce shows 2 / 10 L on hand and suggests 2 batches (10 L). It also checks the pantry first: Ingredients in stock for this run. under the name (or Short, with what’s missing).
- 2Press Produce, set Batches to 2 and press Produce again. Tomatoes, onions and oil go down; sauce goes up by 10 L. Two entries appear under Live batches, each Fresh, with its use by time 72 hours out. Print the day-dot labels for the containers.
What you’ll see
- Batches age from Fresh to Use soon to Expired on their own, and an expiring batch shows up under Expiring batches and in your alerts.
- A batch that didn’t get used: Discard batch. It confirms Discard batch … The remaining amount is written off as waste. — so the waste report tells the truth.
- Dishes whose recipe uses the sauce now cost themselves from the sauce’s real ingredient cost.
When it runs out
- In the sauce’s recipe, When it runs out decides what a sale does once the sauce is gone. Automatic (the default) uses the sauce first; when it reaches 0, each dish takes the tomatoes, onions and oil instead. The sauce never goes below 0, and your ingredients stay right even on a day nobody records a batch.
- Prep only makes a sale take only the sauce. It can go below 0, and the ingredients go down only when you record a batch. Ingredients only keeps no sauce stock at all: every dish takes the ingredients, Production doesn’t suggest batches for it, and it’s left out of stock counts and out-of-stock alerts (the Stock list shows it as Not stocked).
- With Automatic, counting more sauce than recorded counts as making it: approving the count uses its ingredients, and the count sheet tells you exactly what before you approve. Ingredients you counted in the same count keep the number you counted.
- Stock activity shows these as Ran out — made from ingredients on the sauce and Used to make Tomato sauce on each ingredient.
TipSet the target level to what a busy day uses, not to what the fridge holds. Suggestions are only as good as the target they aim at.
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