Before reading this article, we recommend reading Understanding product conversions for costing first.

Now that you know how an ingredient can be costed by using a product's purchase details, let's cover the scenarios where you may need to use ingredient conversions, prep methods and yields to refine costing.

Conversions are used when your ingredients need to be converted from one unit vertical to another (ex. volume to weight).

Say you purchase a Red Peppers product in lbs (weight unit), but want to use that product's mapped ingredient as cups (volume unit) in your recipes. Because you purchased in lbs, you can use it in a recipe as any weight unit, but a conversion will be required to use it in volume units.

Conversions are typically specific to a prep method. For example, when converting a red pepper from weight to volume it's likely being chopped. Depending upon the prep method, this will result in different conversion outcomes. Many of the conversions built into opsi ingredients will have a prep method associated to them. However, a prep method is not always required when creating a conversion.

Red pepper conversions example:

Also, prep methods typically have a yield amount associated to them. Yield is the % of total usable product after preparing or cooking. In the above conversions example, both chopped and sliced red peppers would yield about 84% (after coring, deseeding, and trimming). This means that the cost of your ingredient, when used in a recipe with any of those prep methods, will be 16% higher in price because that percent of the product is unusable.

​Red pepper prep methods and yields example:

Lastly, opsi ingredients also have a primary yield field. If specified, this yield will always be factored when costing, whether or not there is a prep method defined. If a prep method is defined, however, the yield associated to that prep method will override the primary yield.

Now that we covered conversions, prep methods and yields, let's learn how to create them!