Docs / Inventory
Inventory
Receiving stock, moving it, counting it, and what each of those does to your costs.
How Spicy treats drinks and food differently
This rule is the most important thing to understand about Spicy's stock. It explains much of what the reports show.
Spicy deducts drinks when you sell them. A bottle leaves the shelf for each sale, and Spicy knows exactly which bottle. It reduces the count and costs the sale immediately.
Spicy does not deduct food when you sell a dish. A sold plate of jollof rice tells you that one portion left the kitchen. It does not tell you how much rice, oil, tomato, or chicken went into it. Only the kitchen knows that, because the kitchen staff saw the actual pots.
So Spicy asks the kitchen to count what it used at the end of the day. Spicy uses that count as the real cost of your food. It shows the quantity the recipes expect next to the count, for comparison.
If the kitchen does not count, your food cost shows as zero. Spicy will warn you on the profit and loss statement. The fix is to count. See Reports.
Warehouses
Spicy has three warehouses, and they mean different things:
| Warehouse | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Store | Deliveries arrive here before you move them to the Kitchen or the Bar. |
| Kitchen | This warehouse holds your food ingredients. You count them at the end of the day. |
| Bar | This warehouse holds your drinks. Spicy deducts from it when a drink is sold. |
Manage them under Inventory → Warehouses. Each has a current quantity and cost per unit for every item in it.
Receiving a delivery
Go to Inventory → Purchase receipts and create one. Choose the supplier, the delivery note number, and add the items and what you paid per unit.
Submitting the receipt puts the stock into your Store and calculates the cost per unit for you. If you buy by the crate, enter the crate quantity and price — Spicy converts using the conversion you set on the item.
A purchase receipt records goods arriving. It does not record the bill. When the invoice comes, create it against the receipt in Accounting. The two are deliberately separate: goods can arrive weeks before the supplier bills you.
You cannot cancel a receipt after you create the invoice. If the delivery was wrong, cancel the supplier invoice first, or file an adjustment. This stops you from losing track of money you still owe.
Buying at market
For produce and staples you pay for on the spot, use Inventory → Stock entries with purpose Material Receipt. The stock result is the same. You pick the payment method you paid with — "Paid from" — and there is no supplier to owe.
Moving stock to the Kitchen and Bar
Go to Inventory → Stock entries with purpose Material Transfer. Move from the Store to the Kitchen or the Bar.
There is no price to enter on a transfer. Spicy moves the value at what that stock already cost you, which keeps your accounts in order.
You cannot transfer out more than you have. You also cannot cancel a transfer after the destination warehouse uses the stock. Transfer the remainder back, or file an adjustment.
Counting
Go to Inventory → Reconciliations. Pick a warehouse and a reason:
| Reason | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Opening Stock | Use this for a brand new warehouse. It only works once, on a warehouse with no history. |
| Adjustment | Use this to fix a mistake, up or down. |
| Consumption | This is the end-of-day kitchen count of what you used. Use it for food items in the Kitchen warehouse. |
| Waste / Damage | Use this when something spoiled, broke, or was over-prepared. |
For Consumption, enter the remaining quantity. For Waste, enter how much you lost. They work in opposite directions.
A consumption count cannot be higher than what the kitchen bin holds. If it is, your last count or a transfer went unrecorded.
The daily kitchen count
This is the routine that makes your food cost real. At the end of service:
- Go to Inventory → Reconciliations.
- Set the warehouse to Kitchen and the reason to Consumption.
- Enter the remaining quantity of each ingredient — rice, oil, chicken, and so on.
- If the kitchen threw anything away, add a second count for Waste / Damage.
- Submit each count.
Spicy calculates what you used and values it at what it cost you. That becomes the day's food cost.
Do this every day. If you skip it, the day's food cost shows as zero, with a warning on the profit and loss statement. If you do it consistently, your food cost is one of the most useful numbers you have. Over-preparation and unrecorded waste will appear as variances.
How Spicy calculates costs
Spicy keeps a running average cost for every item in every warehouse.
- When stock arrives, Spicy blends the new cost into the average. If you had 100 bottles at ₦200 and buy 24 more at ₦260, the average moves to reflect both.
- When stock leaves — a drink sold, a transfer out — Spicy values it at the current average.
You can ignore this detail and still run Spicy. It matters when a figure surprises you. If you bought a drink much cheaper than usual, the average cost of everything in that bin changes.
Recipes
Manage recipes under Inventory → Recipes, or from the item itself. Each recipe lists what goes into one portion of a dish, in the ingredient's own unit.
Recipes give you the plate cost — what one portion should cost you at current prices. Use it to check that your menu prices are sensible and to see which dishes are quietly losing money.
They also let Spicy tell you what you should have used against what you actually used. See Food usage under Inventory.
A dish you sell with no recipe has no food cost. It will appear on the food usage report as having no recipe, so you can spot it. Add recipes for everything on your menu.
Reports
- Stock balance — this report shows the quantity and value of every item in each warehouse.
- Stock ledger — this report lists every movement, with what happened, when, and why. Filter it and export to CSV.
- Food usage — this report compares what the recipes say you should have used against what the kitchen counted. It also lists any dishes with no recipe.
When something looks wrong, the stock ledger is the place to start. It shows every movement in order with the document that caused it.
Things Spicy will not let you do
- You cannot sell a drink that is out of stock.
- You cannot move stock out below the quantity that open orders reserve.
- You cannot count consumption higher than you actually have.
- You cannot edit or delete a stock movement. Corrections use an adjusting entry, so the history stays intact.
- You cannot book stock into a warehouse with existing history as "Opening Stock".
More in Troubleshooting.