Create Guide

Subassemblies are intermediate items that you produce and then use as components in other recipes or products. For example, a cake decorator might have a "Buttercream" subassembly that goes into multiple cake recipes.

Subassemblies use the same fields as other inventory items (Name, SKU, Description, State, Tracking Unit, Photos, Bin Location, etc.) and can be selected as the Target Inventory of a recipe. When you complete a production run for a recipe, the resulting quantity is added to the subassembly's inventory. Subassemblies (and finished goods) are producible and purchasable but not sold directly — you assemble them into a sellable product. See sellable vs. purchasable for how the categories fit together.

Equipment items track the tools and machines you use in your business. Beyond standard inventory fields, equipment has specialized features for depreciation tracking, maintenance scheduling, and usage logging.

Depreciation Fields

When depreciation is configured, the system automatically calculates and displays: Current Book Value, Accumulated Depreciation, Annual Depreciation Amount, and Remaining Useful Life.

Maintenance Tracking

The Maintenance History panel shows all logged maintenance events with date, type (routine, repair, inspection, replacement), performer, cost, and notes. You can export the log as CSV.

Usage Tracking

Equipment usage hours are automatically logged when equipment is assigned to production runs. The Usage History panel shows all usage records with date, procedure name, duration, and notes. You can filter by date range and export as CSV. The system also calculates Lifespan Used as a percentage based on total hours versus expected useful life (assuming 2,000 work hours per year).

Finished goods are the end result of your production process. They are created by selecting the finished good as a recipe's Target Inventory. When you complete a production run, the produced quantity is added to the finished good's inventory.

Finished goods support variants (different sizes, flavors, or configurations), each with its own SKU and optional price override. They can also have custom attributes defined in Settings, and support barcode/QR code generation for labeling.

Recipe Fields

The target is locked once a recipe is saved — you cannot change an existing recipe's Target Inventory (or its variant or batch unit). This is intentional: it keeps the costed history of past production runs consistent. To build a sibling recipe for another variant of the same item — a new scent or size — use Duplicate: it asks what to call the copy and, when the target item has variants, which variant the copy should target. Every ingredient, step, and piece of equipment carries over, so you edit only what actually differs. To produce a different item, create a new recipe against it; Duplicate keeps the original's target item, so it won't re-point a recipe for you.

Drafting a Recipe

Set the State to Draft to save a recipe you are still working out — a draft can be saved with no ingredients at all, so you can capture a formula idea in one sitting and come back to it later. Drafts do not need the materials on hand: a draft inventory item (something you have not bought yet) can be picked as an ingredient, and appears with a "Draft" badge in the ingredient list. Once the recipe has at least one ingredient you can switch it to Active, which is what makes it available for production runs. A production run always needs its ingredients to be active items with stock behind them, so promote any draft ingredients to Active before you make a batch.

Ingredients Section

Add ingredients by searching your inventory. For each ingredient, specify the quantity and unit. The system automatically calculates the cost per ingredient based on current inventory costs, and shows a running total. Ingredients can be reordered by dragging. If an ingredient's current stock is insufficient, an "Insufficient quantity" warning appears.

The same item may appear on more than one row — sugar in the batter and again in the frosting, or a fragrance split across two stages. Keep the stages as separate rows if that is how you actually work: each row is costed and consumed in its own right, so the totals come out the same as a single combined row, and the production run records a line per row.

Equipment Section

Add equipment from your inventory to track which tools are needed. Optionally specify usage hours per piece of equipment. These hours are automatically logged to the equipment's usage history when a production run is completed.

Steps / Instructions

Add numbered steps with instruction text, optional duration (minutes, hours, or days), and optional labor assignment (select a labor inventory item to include its cost). Steps can be reordered by dragging. The total recipe duration is the sum of all step durations.

Recipe Costing

The recipe detail view shows the total cost of all ingredients, equipment usage, and labor. As your ingredient purchase prices change, recipe costs update automatically. Use this to set selling prices with your desired profit margin. Ingredient costs use your weighted-average cost per unit — see how costing works for the full chain from purchase to sale.

Production Run Fields

Batch Tracking

Each production run is assigned a batch number (auto-generated as PRD-YYMMDD-XXXX). Individual ingredients can also carry their own batch/lot numbers for traceability. This chain of batch numbers enables full forward and backward traceability in the Traceability Report.

Ingredient Verification & Scaling

A production run copies its ingredients, equipment, and steps from the source recipe and checks current stock against the scaled quantities — ingredients you don't have enough of are flagged with an Insufficient quantity warning. Being short doesn't stop you saving: keep the status on Initiated or In Progress and the run is stored as a plan you can come back to once you've restocked. Only Completed requires the stock to be there, because that's the point inventory actually moves. Use Batch Quantity to run the recipe multiple times and Recipe Scale to resize a single batch; ingredient consumption scales by both.

Below the batch fields, a line shows exactly how much the run will add — for example "This run will add 70 unit to Lavender Soap". Qty in Batch is what one batch yields; Batch Quantity is how many batches. The two are multiplied, so a yield of 1 run 70 times adds 70, while a yield of 0.5 run 70 times adds 35. If you re-point the run at an item measured differently (units instead of ounces, say), Qty in Batch is cleared rather than carried across, and a note asks you to re-enter it in the new unit.

Status Workflow

Production runs progress through: Initiated (planned), In Progress (actively producing), Completed (finished — inventory is updated), or Canceled. Only completed runs deduct ingredient quantities and add the produced item to inventory.

Production transactions are automatically created when production runs are completed. They record the cost of materials consumed, the quantity produced, and link back to the source recipe and batch number. These transactions feed into your Cost of Goods Sold calculations in financial reports.

The transaction detail shows all consumed ingredients with their quantities and costs, the total production cost, and the resulting cost per unit of the finished product. The output's cost is the rolled-up ingredient and labor cost at your current weighted averages — see how costing works.