Food Costing and Shrinkage

Are you buying herbs whole but removing the stems? And you know what that means, each recipe is costing you more. You are paying for the whole herb, but you are only using part of it.

What percentage of the herb are you losing when you remove the stems? 5%? Maybe more? So you’ll have to add that percentage of loss to every recipe using that herb.

CostGuard does it for you. Tell the system what your shrinkage percentage is, CostGuard will recalculate the cost of the item and that new cost will ripple through every recipe using that item.

Now you’ve got a more accurate food cost!

CostGuard: Shortcuts to better food costing

• If you currently use Excel to count your inventory, you can import those items directly into CostGuard with CG•XL™
• Submit orders to your vendors electronically without calling them or retyping the information
• Pack size changes? Switching from homemade to purchased? Save hours with CostGuard’s recipe subsitution feature.
• Enter similar inventory items and recipes fast with the Copy Command (for example, copy a 6oz burger from a 4oz burger)
• You don’t have to repost the same information in multiple software programs, thanks to our Accounting, POS, and VendorTransport Interfaces
• All inventory transactions allow you to enter case and/or pack units, eliminating time-consuming errors
• CostGuard calculates Inventory levels based on Receipts, so you don’t have to go back and adjust your Orders for products that don’t show up
• SmartScaling™ converts between units automatically, so you see ’1 cup’ instead of ’48 tsp’
• CostGuard ‘remembers’ previous requisitions as templates for the subsequent ones
• Every transaction includes an ‘auto-fill’ option, so you don’t have to do things one at a time

Restaurant Management Software Part 2 Inventory Control

CostGuard Food Costing and Inventory Control Software for Restaurants does even more:

• Inventory Control: Count by broken cases, store items in multiple locations, print count sheets, and sort items by sub-locations to match your layout. Count as often as you want. Print extension reports instantly by locations, groups (e.g., domestic beer, premium vodka etc), cost centers, etc. You can also import count information from liquor control systems and other inventory control software.
• Purchasing: When goods arrive, simply recall the matching purchase order (or enter the quantities manually). We’ll warn you if there’s a price creep, and let you know if the total dollars you’ve entered don’t match the total amount invoiced. Automatic page totals let you reconcile page by page instead of waiting till the end of the invoice. These controls alone can save you many hours and thousands of dollars.
  You can also import receipts from suppliers using the Vendor Transport Interface.
• Track your sales mix information for any period of time. CostGuard provides an instant analysis of your most and least popular and profitable items. Customized reports help you make informed decisions about your bar’s cost-effectiveness. Sales Analysis provides an instant “perfect” or “theoretical” cost based on your most current inventory costs.
• The POS interface reads the sales mix directly into Sales Analysis, CostGuard combines this information with your actual inventory prices to give you correct food costing resulting in correct decisions.
• Report: by inventory levels, purchasing history, shrinkage/variance, Actual Usage, Ideal Usage, Variance (compares actual vs. ideal), Re-order, pricing Alerts.Reports can be summarized by group (e.g., meat, seafood, bottled beer, etc.,) and by, major cost centers( e.g., food, bar, supplies etc.,), date range (day, week, YTD, custom, etc.), details (y/n), preview, etc. You can even choose to see some or all items.

Restaurant Food Costing and Inventory Control Software Part 1

There’s so much you need to know to correctly manage the BOH of your restaurant.

 

CostGuard Food Costing and Inventory Control Software does it all.

• Recipe and menu costing: Instant “pre-cost” information updated automatically based on your most current food costs. Standardize recipes using unlimited ingredients and/or sub-recipes. Stylized entry of your recipe method that can include multi-media.

• SmartScaling™: converts recipes to larger and smaller yields and also converts units intelligently.
• Overhead: You can’t accurately calculate your costs unless you include overhead. CostGuard calculates and adds it to your food costs.
• Target your inventory items by groups: this allows you to cost your food, beverages and supplies separately.
  This can be done globally or by category (e.g.,entrees, appetizers, desserts, etc.)
• Suppliers:CostGuard will track prices from Vendors for you, and later, you can use this information to create orders. CostGuard calls this process a Bid.
• Bids: CostGuard considers a Bid a promise from a Vendor. When you enter a Bid, it can be used to fill in the pricing for Orders and Receipts. If you are pricing out a party, you can use the Bid feature to calculate your ingredient costs.
• Counts:Simply counting your inventory puts workers on notice that someone is watching. That process alone can and will lower your food costs.

 

For all your restaurant management needs it’s CostGuard Food Costing and Inventory Control Software for restaurants

Wrong Number!

Call us at CostGuard and the one thing you’ll never hear us say  is “we can’t help you”.

So when a customer emailed to complained that it happened to him we were shocked.

Until we discovered he had dialed the wrong number… It wasn’t us he called, after all.

Sigh of relief.

Bakery Software for Inventory and Food Cost Control

What’s the most important aspect of good baking? Weights and measurements. That’s why CostGuard Food Costing and Inventory Control Software calculates all bakery formulas in weights.

You’ll get accurate measurements so your baked good come out exactly as you’d like them.

Batch recipes are a must. Batch recipes: create large scale prep recipes, and portion them out in your selling recipes (catchweight, slice, piece, by container, etc.)..Change the batch recipe once, and it ripples through all of your selling recipes automatically!

A successful bakery MUST have accurate recipe pre-costing.

You need to use batch and prep recipes freely in other recipes, and you need to portion batch recipes easily into serving recipes. Price changes should be entered once, and ripple through all the affected recipes. Actual to target food costs are essential in monitoring your profitability, and managing price creep.

CostGuard food costing and inventory control software provides all these features, and more:

• Production
• Recipe scaling/converting
• Accurate food costing: the key to your profitability is a selling price that achieves your profit target. You can only accomplish this WITH ACCURATE FOOD COSTS. CostGuard ALWAYS calculates recipes at your current costs, so you’re assured of accuracy.
• Batch recipes: create large scale prep recipes, and portion them out in your selling recipes (catchweight, slice, piece, by container, etc.)..
• Change the batch recipe once, and it ripples through all of your selling recipes automatically!
• Bakery formulas calculated in weights

PREP BUILD

Prep Recipes are batch recipes that you make in large quantities such as soups, stews, or lasagnas. When you make a prep recipe you are using ingredients that are in CostGuard’s Inventory Module.  After you make the recipe, CostGuard needs to know what you used so it can subtract the ingredients quantities from inventory. Prep Build is the command that does that for you.

Why do you need to use this command?  A physical count entered into CostGuard will catch that the Inventory Item is now at a lower level then before. generally do not have a direct matching sale, the ingredients will show up as a variance or a difference between actual and ideal usage.  Another issue may arise with delays between a count and ordering. Prep Build subtracts on the day you do it, while a physical count may be a day or two later.   Someone else using CostGuard for requisitions or ordering during that lag time will not know the Inventory items are not on the shelf as CostGuard indicated.

CostGuard’s Inventory Module generates several Reports that may be affected by Prep Build  When you run the Prep Build command, the built prep recipes are treated like receipts, so they are in the “Actual” usage reports.  The individual ingredients are listed in the “Ideal” usage Reports.  Using the Prep Build command, instead of simply making the recipes and adjusting the Inventory, helps to keep the Reports accurate and up-to-date.

Some companies require perpetual or up-to-moment accurate counts of each individual item, inventories of all items.  If this applies to your establishment, Prep Build is the only way to account for the differences in Inventory for your Prep Recipe ingredients.

Just remember CostGuard depletes prep recipes as whole units.  For example, if you build a lasagna recipe, and one ingredient is a prep recipe for marinara sauce, then Prep Build will subtract out Marinara Sauce, not the tomato products and the spices that make up the sauce.  If you want to account for the tomato products, then change the marinara sauce to a serving recipe within the Lasagna recipe.  When you make the Marinara Sauce, the Prep Build command will deplete the tomato products.

Prep Build is different from the Prep Tab in Recipes.  The Prep Tab assigns a location to your Recipe for counting Inventory Purposes.  Use Prep Tab to count the Marinara Sauce, use Prep Build to subtract the tomato products from the storeroom shelves and ‘build’ inventory levels of the Marinara Sauce.

Recipe Costing

   Lower Actual Food Costs

1. CostGuard instantly identifies price creep. This provides tremendous leverage when you’re working with your suppliers.
2. The software compares bids to actual receiving prices. You’ll always know when a delivery doesn’t match your bid.
3. After you enter your counts and receipts, CostGuard tells you your actual food costs. You’ll quickly identify over-used items.

  Reduced Ideal Food Costs

1. CostGuard automatically posts price changes to all your recipes.
2. You’ll instantly see if price creep is eroding your ideal food cost.

System Simplification

A young guy who owns his first place and wants to keep growing:

As a user the main advantage of CG [CostGuard] for us is that it 
simplifies what is otherwise an incredibly arduous task. 

Right now we have something like 12 back office spreadsheets 
tracking everything including product
prices from different suppliers, inventory, and cost of goods sold.
Creating and updating each one is a several hour long process. 
Once the initial setup is done, CG [CostGuard] 
can give us all that info with one click.

Most bar/restaurant guys we know have a system in place, 
be it spreadsheets or slips of paper. Anybody who doesn't have one 
will probably be out of business within a year anyway. 
Put another way, 
I think we are all looking to 
streamline our existing system.

CostGuard will absolutely help us save money, 
certainly as a
byproduct of system simplification, 
which is the core benefit. 
I always say simpler systems, higher profits! 
And that's what we're getting 
with CostGuard, so thanks for creating the program!
Less time in the office, more money in my pocket, that's cool!

New Web Page Launch

Looking for the best way to control your food costs and overhead, scale your recipes, plan menus,  keep track of your inventory, take accurate counts, request bids, follow your receipts and invoices,

The best part -

the video gives a terrific overview of how CostGuard works.