Understand Ingredients, Recipes, Costing & Purchasing

Overview

• MiniTill Costing connects Business-level Ingredients and Recipes with Store-specific supplier purchasing data and the Products you sell.
• The basic chain is Supplier product / purchase option → Ingredient unit cost → Recipe batch/unit cost → Product cost → food-cost percentage and gross margin.
• Supplier purchasing choices are Store-specific, so the same Business recipe can calculate differently at different Stores when suppliers, pack prices, or Store selling prices differ.
• Costing is included from the Starter plan and is intended to work together with Menu, Inventory, supplier purchasing, and reporting rather than as a separate spreadsheet.

When to use this

• Use Costing when creating menu items, changing recipes, onboarding suppliers, comparing pack prices, reviewing supplier price increases, setting food-cost targets, or checking whether a product margin still makes sense.

Step-by-step

1. Set the Business target food cost and optional Store overrides.
2. Create reusable Ingredients with correct base units and usable yield.
3. Connect Store supplier products/purchase options to those Ingredients.
4. Create Recipes with output quantity, components, and labour where used.
5. Link one costing Recipe to the menu Product it represents.
6. Review Product Costs, the Costing Dashboard, Cost Reviews, and Savings regularly.

Common mistakes

• Do not start by typing an estimated food cost directly onto every Product; build the ingredient/recipe path so supplier price changes can flow through.
• Do not treat an incomplete Recipe as a trustworthy margin.
• Do not assume the cheapest supplier is automatically used in Costing; MiniTill respects the selected purchasing preference.

Troubleshooting

• If a Product has no cost, work backwards through Product → Recipe → components → Ingredient purchase options until the missing cost path is found.
• Use the Costing Dashboard to identify missing recipe costs, uncosted products, supplier issues, unlinked supplier products, and pending price-change reviews.