What a recipe costs

What was asked for

Tie the ingredients in a recipe to the inventory items they actually are, then make a batch from the recipe and have the stock move on its own. This release is the first half. Once an ingredient is a real item with a real price, the recipe has a cost, and an owner can see what a medium latte costs to make without a spreadsheet.

How linking works

Linking uses the fields a recipe line already has. As you type an ingredient, your inventory items that match are offered, and picking one links the line. A line already named exactly as an item offers it in one tap. If the item is not there yet, create it from the same list with the unit you count it in. Picking honey for the medium size picks it for the large one too. An ingredient you just type, like water or ice, stays exactly as you typed it and is listed as not counted.

Once a line is an item, the unit field lists that item's units, including every measure it can be read in. If the recipe uses a unit the item does not have, add it from the same list against any unit the item has, like 1 case = 48 buns or 1 fluid ounce = 4 pumps. An item with no size yet can be given one, like 1 bottle = 25.4 fluid ounces or 1 pound of flour = 3.6 cups, and every spoon, cup and ounce of it reads from that. Whatever you add is saved on the item, so the next recipe already has it. The line suggests the likely fix in one tap, like fluid ounces for ounces of milk.

How a recipe is costed

Open a recipe and each size shows what it costs, and each linked line shows its share, from the price your supplier last charged. A price over a month old says how old it is. When a linked line cannot be costed, the size reads as at least the sum of the rest and the line says why: an item with no price yet, with a link to set one, or a unit the item does not have yet. A partial number never passes for the whole.

A syrup or a batch you make ahead can say which inventory item it makes and how much each size makes. The drinks that use it are then costed through its own recipe, so the cost of a latte follows the vanilla in it all the way down to the sugar.

Who sees costs

Owners and admins, the same people who see prices on the Items page. Everyone else on the team sees recipes exactly as before.

Also fixed

Use It Up grounds its ideas in your own recipes, and it had been reading every recipe as having no ingredients at all. It reads them now.