Production accounting is not only for large factories. It matters for coffee shops, bakeries, small food producers, assembly lines and any business where the finished item is made from raw materials or components.
QUINCEFIN supports several production scenarios. For standard output you can use a bill of materials; for recipes that change over time there are separate recipe cards with versions and validity periods.
A bill of materials and a recipe card are different documents
A bill of materials describes the composition of a product for an ordinary production output document: materials, labour, wages, waste and planned figures. It helps fill in the output document and calculate production metrics.
A recipe card is designed to manage the recipe as a document in its own right. With it you can:
- create new versions instead of editing an already published recipe;
- set a start date and an end date for each version;
- describe the ingredients and their quantities per base output;
- document the process, raw material requirements, equipment and quality controls;
- use the current version to calculate requirements from actual sales.
So a bill of materials is not an “old name” for a recipe card, and a recipe card does not replace every production bill of materials. They are two separate tools for two different processes.
Why recipe versions are needed
A recipe can change because of a new supplier, seasonality, a different pack size or a change in the process. If you simply overwrite the old composition, it becomes hard to explain which recipe last month’s production was made to.
In QUINCEFIN a published version of a recipe card stays unchanged. For a new recipe you create the next version and set the date from which it takes effect. That way sales on any given date are tied to the recipe that was actually in force.
Before publishing, make sure that:
- a product is selected;
- the base output is greater than zero;
- at least one material ingredient with a positive quantity is specified;
- the validity period does not overlap another published version for the same product.
How production and cost from actual sales work
For a coffee shop or a restaurant it makes no sense to create a separate production document after every cup or dish. In practice the process looks like this:
- You publish a current recipe card for the in-house product.
- The cashier sells the item and posts the receipt through the normal POS flow.
- For a product with the “prepare on sale” method, the receipt immediately writes off the ingredients per the card and produces the actual cost.
- No separate production document or stock movement of finished goods is created.
- The manager opens the “Production from sales” report and sees the number of receipts, the goods produced, the ingredients, revenue, cost and profit.
If there is no current published card for the sale date, or several versions are in force at once, QUINCEFIN does not guess a recipe and does not post the receipt. The validity periods have to be fixed first.
An example for a coffee shop
Suppose the recipe card for a drink contains coffee, milk and syrup. During the shift the cashiers post receipts, and the system accumulates the actual number of drinks sold.
At the end of the shift the manager or the technologist reviews the requirement. If 40 servings were sold, the quantity of each ingredient is scaled to the base output of the recipe card. Once confirmed, an output document for 40 servings is created and the calculated raw materials are written off.
This means you do not have to create a production document after every receipt, while still keeping the link between sales, the current recipe and the stock movements.
What the system controls
The production module helps you to:
- avoid back-dated changes to already published recipes;
- select the card by the actual date of sale;
- avoid double output against the same receipt line;
- see requirements, drafts, posted and problem operations;
- stop posting if there are not enough materials or the recipe data is incorrect;
- keep stock movements and production documents in one accounting loop.
An important limitation for hospitality
Recipe cards and output from receipts cover production and stock accounting. They do not replace dedicated restaurant features such as table management, floor orders, menus or a kitchen display. The QUINCEFIN POS is aimed primarily at the retail scenario.
The functionality belongs to the production module in the BUSINESS plan and is enabled under that module’s current terms.
Where to start
First decide which products need recipe cards, check the units of measure and mark those products as in-house production. Then create the first version of the recipe, test it over a short period, and only after that move on to closing the shift regularly.
There is an overview of the other capabilities on the Manufacturing page.