Mapped items pull purchasing details from their associated vendor items to ensure accurate recipe costing.
To optimize cost calculations, include as much purchasing information as possible when creating vendor items in opsi.
The following fields are provided for purchasing details:
Price - total price of the vendor item
Packaging Unit - the purchase packaging unit (ex. case)
Inner Pack Qty - the quantity included within the packaging, associated to the inner pack unit
Inner Pack Unit - the inner pack unit (ex. bottles)
Unit Qty - the quantity associated to the unit of measurement (ex. ml)
Unit of Measurement - the primary unit of measurement (ex. lbs)
Set "Inner Packaging" measurements as equal - By turning on this option, the Inner Pack Qty / Inner Pack Unit will be treated as equivalent to the Unit Qty / Unit of Measurement. This is particularly useful for vendor items like produce. For instance:
Without the option:
Inner Pack Qty / Inner Pack Unit: 10 heads
Unit Qty / UoM: 1 lb (each)
This implies each head weighs 1 lb.
With the option enabled:
Inner Pack Qty / Unit: 10 heads
Unit Qty / UoM: 1 lb (in total)
Here, 10 heads together are considered to weigh 1 lb.
Activating this feature changes the interpretation of the measurements from per-item to per-pack basis.
Note: not all of these fields are required, but the more provided the easier recipe costing will be.
Let's use an example of a vendor item of Olive Oil. You purchase Olive Oil for $100 by the case, which includes 6 bottles, each bottle is 250ml. This may read on an invoice as "case/6/250 ml btl".
The proper way to input these details into an opsi vendor item would be:
Price: $100
Packaging Unit: case
Inner Pack Qty: 6
Inner Pack Unit: bottle
Unit Qty: 250
Unit of Measurement: ml
When you use opsi's invoice processing feature, our system will automatically extract and associate as much information from your invoices as possible. With integrations like Ottimate, these fields are automatically pulled from the invoices and applied to your vendor items.
Now, here's the fun part (we know, the above is a drag). Because you provided all of those purchasing details for Olive Oil, and mapped it to an "Olive Oil" item, that item can be used in a recipe as any volume unit (ml, l, tsp, tbsp, fl oz, cup, pint, quart, gallon) or as bottle and be costed properly. This is because you specified both a volume unit in the purchasing details, and the bottle unit, and opsi can do all the conversion magic.
What if you wanted to use the Olive Oil item as a weight unit within a recipe instead of volume? You would then need to create a volume to weight conversion on the item level.
Understanding how vendor item purchase details affects item costing is the first step to mastering recipe costing.
Read next: Item conversions, prep methods and yields