The walk-in is full, the invoices keep arriving, and the price of a plate is a guess. A kilo of fillet disappears, a supplier puts a price up, and nobody sees it until the month-end figures. Inventory gives every ingredient a pack price and every dish a recipe, so each plate shows what it costs to make, and a stocktake shows what went missing.

Sidebar → InventoryMenu → Costs & margins

TUTORIAL FILM · 1:28Every click, recorded on the live TableSpark app. The written steps below carry the detail. Watch on YouTube ↗

TRY IT YOURSELFSTEP 1 / 14PRACTICE RUN — a safe copy, nothing real changes

In the sidebar, click Inventory — the stock page opens on the Stock tab.

The sidebar with Inventory between Menu and Media

The Inventory tab bar with Stock, Recipes, Stocktake, Variance, Reorder and Suppliers

The Suppliers panel with three suppliers listed and a fourth typed in the form below

The Add an ingredient form filled in for Dijon mustard

The Inventory tab bar with Recipes selected

The dish list scrolled to Pommes purée, marked no recipe

The recipe editor with Maris Piper potatoes chosen and 300 g typed

The Menu page header with the Costs and margins button

The Costs and margins table with cost and GP for the costed dishes

The Receive form for cod loin with 1 pack and a new price typed

The Waste form for beef fillet with 150 g and Dropped or spilled chosen

The stocktake form with counts typed and the Submit the count button

The Inventory tab bar with Variance selected

That’s the whole stock loop.

Suppliers and ingredients added, a recipe built so the dish carries its cost, costs and margins read, a delivery received, waste logged, the shelves counted, the variance read and the reorder list opened — stock and recipe costs on one page.

WHAT YOU NEED: A recent invoice pack sizes and prices
TIME: About 10 minutes
PLAN: Growth or Full Inventory is part of both
CAN I BREAK IT?: Not in the demo the practice run changes nothing

IN PLAIN WORDS / TAP A TERM

What is a pack price?

What one pack of an ingredient costs you on the invoice, such as a 5 kg box of beef cheek. TableSpark works out the price per gram from it.

What is a par level?

The amount of an ingredient you never want to fall below. When stock reaches it, the ingredient turns red and joins the reorder list.

What is GP?

Gross profit: what is left of a dish’s price, before VAT, after its ingredients are paid for. It is shown as a percentage.

What is a stocktake?

A count of what is physically on the shelves, which resets the figures to the real amounts and records the difference.

What is variance?

The gap between what the numbers say should be left and what you counted. A shortfall points to waste, big portions or a recipe that needs updating.

STEP 01/ 10i

Open Inventory

Click Inventory in the sidebar. The page opens on the Stock tab, and a line under the title sums it up: how many ingredients you track, the stock value and how many dishes are costed by recipe. Six tabs run along the top: Stock, Recipes, Stocktake, Variance, Reorder and Suppliers. Inventory is part of the Growth and Full plans. Owners, admins and editors set it up; everyone on the team can read it and log waste.

The Inventory page on the Stock tab: the Add an ingredient form above the stock table with on hand, par and pack price columns — **FIG. 01**The Stock tab on Maison Rouge. The footnote gives the rule for every figure: on hand is the last count plus deliveries, less sales by recipe, less waste.

Each row of the table shows the ingredient with its pack size and the price per kilo or litre, where it is stored, what is On hand, the Par level, the Pack price and the Value of what you hold. When the amount on hand is at or below par it turns red, so a short ingredient stands out as you scroll.

STEP 02/ 10ii

Add your suppliers

Start with the people you buy from. Click the Suppliers tab, type the supplier’s Name and the Order email you send orders to (a phone number is optional) and click Add supplier. Maison Rouge buys from three: a wholesaler, a fishmonger and a dairy. Each supplier appears in a list with its contact details and a Remove button, which asks you to press once more before it deletes.

The Suppliers panel listing three suppliers with their order emails and the Add supplier form below — **FIG. 02**Three suppliers on the list, with the form to add the next one underneath.

You choose a supplier for each ingredient in the next step, and the reorder list at the end groups what you need to buy by supplier, so the order email is the one that gets used.

STEP 03/ 10iii

Add your ingredients

Go back to Stock. The Add an ingredient panel takes everything TableSpark needs to cost your dishes from the way you actually buy:

Name: for example Double cream or Beef cheek.
Counted in: grams, millilitres or each. Everything is counted and costed in this unit.
Pack size: what one pack holds, such as 5 kg, 750 ml or 12. kg, g, l and ml are all understood.
Pack price: what one pack costs you, in pounds. The price per gram or millilitre is worked out from the pack.
Par level: the amount you never want to fall below, typed with or without a unit (2 kg and 2000 mean the same for something counted in grams).
Storage: the shelf or fridge, which groups the stocktake sheet later.
Supplier: chosen from the list you just made.

The Add an ingredient form filled in for Dijon mustard: grams, 1 kg pack, 9.50, par 500, Dry store, Rungis Wholesale London — **FIG. 03**The form filled in for a new ingredient, ready to click Add.

Click Add. The ingredient joins the table with nothing on hand yet; you set its opening amount with a stocktake or by receiving a delivery. Maison Rouge tracks 22 ingredients in this way, from beef cheek and cod loin to egg yolks and vanilla pods.

STEP 04/ 10iv

Build the recipes

A recipe says how much of each ingredient goes into one portion of a dish. Click the Recipes tab. Every dish on your menu is listed with its Price, Food cost and GP, and the small line under its name tells you how many ingredients it has, or no recipe.

The Recipes tab: every menu dish with price, food cost and GP, some already costed and some marked no recipe — **FIG. 04**The dish list. A dish with a recipe shows its cost and GP; the others wait for theirs.

Click a dish to open its editor. Choose an ingredient from Add an ingredient…, type the amount per portion (for example 180 g or 0.2 kg) and click Add. Each line shows its cost, so you can see where the money goes. Change an amount in the box and it saves; click Remove to take a line out.

The recipe editor for Hereford sirloin with frites: sirloin, potatoes, frying oil and butter with the cost of each line — **FIG. 05**The recipe for the Hereford sirloin: four lines, a food cost of £7.80 and a GP of 72.5% on the price before VAT.

The dish’s food cost is the total of its lines, and it updates by itself whenever a supplier price changes. GP is worked out on the price before VAT and is coloured to help you read it: green is comfortable, amber is under 68%, red is under 60%.

STEP 05/ 10v

Costs and margins

Open Menu in the sidebar and click Costs & margins at the top. The table lists every dish with its Price, its Cost (£) and its GP. A dish with a recipe takes its cost from the recipe, so the figure is already there and follows your supplier prices. The line at the foot counts how many priced dishes are costed and gives the average GP.

The same panel lets you paste costs from a spreadsheet, one dish and cost per line, for dishes you cost by hand, and Export CSV downloads the table. A cost applies to sales from now on; past sales keep the cost they were sold at. Click Close when you have finished reading.

STEP 06/ 10vi

Receive a delivery

When a delivery arrives, go to Stock and click Receive at the end of the ingredient’s row. A small form opens under the row. Type what came in as packs (2 packs) or as a weight or volume (10 kg), and, if the invoice price has changed, type the new pack price. Click Receive.

The Receive form under Cod loin with 1 pack and a new pack price of 84.00 typed — **FIG. 07**The Receive form for cod loin, typed but not pressed: one pack at a new price of £84.00.

The quantity is added to what is on hand. A new pack price replaces the old one straight away, and every dish that uses the ingredient is re-costed with it, so a supplier increase shows up in your margins the day the delivery lands.

STEP 07/ 10vii

Log waste

Waste is stock that left the shelf without being sold. Click Waste beside the ingredient, type the quantity (150 g) and choose a reason: Spoiled / out of date, Dropped / spilled, Cooking error, Staff meal, Returned by a guest or Other. Click Log waste.

The Waste form under Beef fillet with 150 g typed and Dropped or spilled chosen — **FIG. 08**The Waste form for the beef fillet, ready to log 150 g as dropped.

The quantity comes off the amount on hand and is recorded with its reason, so you can tell the difference between waste you knew about and stock that simply went missing. Anyone on the team can log waste, which makes it easy to capture at the moment it happens.

STEP 08/ 10viii

Run a stocktake

A stocktake is a count of what is really on the shelves. Open the Stocktake tab. The ingredients are grouped by the storage area you gave them, and each box shows what TableSpark expects to find. Type the amount you count (units such as 1.5 kg work), and leave a line blank to skip it. Add a note if you like, then click Submit the count.

The Stocktake tab listing ingredients by storage area with an expected amount in each count box — **FIG. 09**The stocktake sheet: dairy fridge and dry store first, with the expected amount in each box.

Submitting sets each counted ingredient to your figure, keeps the difference as a record, and shows the stock value of what you counted. The first count you submit is your opening stock; the next one is the one the variance is measured against.

STEP 09/ 10ix

Read the variance

After two counts, open the Variance tab. For every ingredient it shows the Opening count, what you Received, what was sold by recipe, what was logged as Waste, the Expected amount, what you Counted and the Variance in units and in pounds, largest loss first. When a dish with a recipe is sold, its ingredients come off the stock automatically, and a void puts them back, so the sales column fills as the restaurant trades.

The Variance table: opening, received, sold, waste, expected, counted and variance for each ingredient, with shortfalls in red — **FIG. 10**The variance between Maison Rouge’s two counts. The sold column reads zero because no dishes were sold between them.

A shortfall usually means portions larger than the recipe, waste nobody recorded, or a recipe that needs updating. Read the biggest line first, then check the recipe or the portion on the pass.

STEP 10/ 10x

Work from the reorder list

Open the Reorder tab for At or below par. It lists every ingredient that has reached its par level, grouped by supplier, with what is on hand, the par, and the number of packs and the cost needed to get back to par. Click Copy order to copy a ready-written order for that supplier, or Email to open an email to the supplier’s order address with the order filled in.

The Reorder tab: ingredients at or below par grouped under Brixham Day Boats, Hackney Dairy and Rungis Wholesale London, each with packs and cost — **FIG. 11**The reorder list, grouped by supplier, with the packs to buy and their cost.

Count the shelves, read the gap, order what is short, and let the recipes tell you what each plate costs. The next count is easier than the last, and every dish carries its margin.

Next · know your costs

Next: open Inventory

Add your suppliers and your first ten ingredients, then cost your best-selling dish.

Open Inventory All tutorials