Pantry inventory and stock tracking
Pantry and stock
Your pantry is the list of ingredients and supplies you buy, what each one costs and how much of it you hold. Stock tracking sits on top of that: switch it on for an item, give it a count and ibakepro keeps that count moving as orders are confirmed, produced and cancelled, with every change written to a ledger you can read back.
Why it exists
The number that matters is rarely the one on the shelf. Half of that tub of white chocolate is already spoken for by Saturday's order, so "we have 4 kg (about 9 lb)" and "we can sell 4 kg" are different statements, and the gap between them is where a Friday night supplier run comes from. A stock figure that does not know what is committed is a figure you cannot plan against.
Reserved is not deducted
This is the distinction the whole system turns on.
Reserved stock is still physically in your store room. It has been claimed by an order, so it is no longer available to sell, but nobody has weighed it out. A reservation is made when an order moves from pending to confirmed, which happens when a deposit lands or when you confirm it yourself. Quotes and unconfirmed orders reserve nothing.
Deducted stock has left. Deduction happens when the order moves into production. If an order never gets marked as in production, it is deducted once the event date arrives, so the shelf figure catches up on its own rather than drifting forever.
available = on hand - reserved
Available is deliberately allowed to go negative, because "you are committed to 2 kg (4.4 lb) more than you hold" is a real and useful answer, and rounding it up to zero hides it.
One more wrinkle worth knowing: an order more than three months out does not hold stock. The reservation is created and marked deferred, and it activates when the event comes inside the window, so a wedding booked next winter does not make this week's flour look short.
One ledger, and every movement in it
Every change to a count is an event, and the ledger and the balance can never disagree. Receipts, waste, breakage, samples, write-offs past best-before, stock take corrections, opening balances, reservations, releases, deductions and refunds all land in the same append-only log, and you read it on the item's own page.
Quantities are converted on the way in. A recipe written in grams against an item held in kilograms converts, and a pair of units that cannot be converted fails loudly instead of quietly costing wrong.
A normal week
What you do
- Add an ingredient or supply, set the unit you measure in rather than the unit you buy in and switch stock tracking on. Flour bought in a 5 kg (11 lb) sack but weighed in grams is tracked in grams.
- Enter a minimum. That is the level you would reorder at.
- Use the Restock tab to record what arrived. It defaults to showing only items that are low, and there is a barcode scanner if you would rather scan than search.
- Use the Stock take tab when you count. Enter what you actually found and ibakepro writes the difference as a stock take correction, rather than making you work out an adjustment.
- Write off spoilage as it happens, choosing waste, breakage, sample or past best-before, so your loss numbers mean something later.
Packaging counts too. Boxes, boards, ribbon and dowels are supplies like any other, and a product's packaging selections are requisitioned against the same pantry when the order is deducted. Packaging can also be tagged to particular fulfilment methods, so a courier carton is consumed by a delivered order and not by one collected from your door.
Alerts
Stock alerts are automations, and you switch them on yourself: go to Automation, open the stock alerts card, choose who is told and enable the ones you want. Three are offered: below minimum, out of stock and an order reminder that projects your upcoming orders against what you hold and warns you while there is still time to buy, using the supplier lead time on the item.
Alerts fire when an item crosses its threshold, so an item sitting below its minimum all week does not email you daily. If you set a minimum and no explicit critical level, ibakepro treats a fifth of your minimum as critical. There is more detail in how do I get an alert before I run out of an ingredient.
Design decisions
- Alerts arrive while there is still time to order. The purchase stays between you and your supplier.
- Stock is tracked at item level, and expired stock is written off with its reason recorded, "expired, past best-before", like any other movement.
- A half-finished production run raises a reconciliation alert naming the stage it stopped at and what to check. The correction is deliberately yours, rather than a reversal ibakepro guessed at.
- The count reflects what is recorded. A handful of something taken for a test bake and never written off is a discrepancy you meet at your next stock take. The stock take tab is where the shelf and the ledger meet, and production planning and waste covers the habit side of it.