Before taking inventory, it's important to understand some terminology and key elements of the inventory feature.
Inventory Items
Opsi provides the flexibility to take inventory on products (vendor items), ingredients, and recipes. Products are the items that always carry the cost and unit information. Without a product you cannot take inventory.
When products are mapped to ingredients, those products will appear grouped under the ingredients within your guides and inventory count sheets. For example, you may have two different Red Onions products, ordered from two different purveyors, but they should be mapped to the single Red Onions ingredient.
If you have recipes that are marked as inventoriable, corresponding products will be created for those recipes and appear grouped under each recipe in guides and inventory sheets.
It's important to understand that you are always taking inventory on a product, which is either standalone or mapped to an ingredient or recipe, as products contain that necessary cost and unit information. However, for consistency and organizational purposes, we always recommend you map all products you are taking inventory on to an ingredient.
By default, the value of an ingredient is determined by last in pricing on its product(s). For example, if two products are mapped to an ingredient, the value factored for that ingredient on the inventory sheet will be based on the most recent order received from either of those products. If you wish to define a preferred product on an ingredient for pricing, you can do so while editing an ingredient.
The value of a recipe is determined by the Cost of Recipe and recipe Yield, which get carried over to that recipe's mapped product after being marked as inventoriable. More on this in Units and Conversions below.
Inventory Guides
In order to take inventory you must first create an inventory guide. Inventory guides allow you to create a template of your inventory items which you can reuse to save time. When creating a guide, opsi offers the ability to add "Sections" of items. Sections should be named, and ordered, according to how you take inventory. For example, if you take inventory based on storage areas, then each storage area should be its own section.
Once you create a section you can start adding items to those sections. You can further re-arrange the items within these sections in any order for shelf to sheet counting! Additionally, you can set which count unit you would like to be the default on each item.
More on how to create an inventory guide can be found here.
Financial Reporting Period
Setting a financial reporting period is required before taking your first inventory. This setting tells opsi how often you report a full inventory report for financial purposes (ex. calendar months).
By setting a reporting period, opsi is also able to send a reminder to you on days that an inventory count is due.
More on how to setup a financial reporting period here.
Units and Conversions
Products & Ingredients
For both products and ingredients, value is always determined on the product level factored against its unit(s). Opsi provides three unit fields on a product; Packaging Unit, Inner Pack Unit, and Unit of Measurement. You can take inventory on an item with any of the units that are entered into these fields.
For example - you have a product on an inventory sheet that contains the following information:
Red Wine Vinegar
Packaging Unit: case
Inner Pack Unit: bottle
Unit of Measurement: ml
Price: $62
When taking inventory of Red Wine Vinegar you can choose either case, bottle or ml as the count unit which will factor against the price. Additionally, since ml is entered, you can choose any volume unit (ex. tsp, tbsp, ml, l, fl oz, gal, pnt, qt) as opsi knows those conversions!
More on packaging units can be found here.
Recipes
For recipes, value is determined by the cost of recipe and yield defined.
For example - you have a recipe marked as inventoriable that contains the following information:
Veggie Broth
Yield: 300 fl-oz
Cost of Recipe: $17
When taking inventory of that recipe you can choose either fl-oz or any other volume unit as the count unit, which will factor against the cost of recipe to get value details.
More on how to take inventory of a recipe can be found here.