Source Guide
Managing the materials, supplies, vendors, and purchases that power your business
Overview
The Source section covers everything involved in acquiring materials for your business. This includes managing ingredient and supply inventories, tracking packaging materials, MRO supplies, labor costs, vendor relationships, and purchase transactions with purchase order PDF generation.
Ingredients
Navigate to Inventory → Ingredients to manage raw materials you purchase and use in recipes.
Fields
Name
The name of the ingredient. When using the food database, this is auto-populated from the selected food item.
SKU
A unique identifier for this item. Click the auto-generate button to create one automatically, or enter your own.
Category
Set to "Ingredient" for raw materials. Choose "Food" to access the food database with nutrition and allergen data.
Description
Optional notes about this ingredient, up to 2,048 characters.
State
Draft (not yet in use), Active (currently tracked), or Archived (no longer used but preserved for history).
Tracking Unit
The base unit for measuring this ingredient (e.g., kg, lb, liters, pieces). All quantities and costs are tracked in this unit.
Bin Location
Where this item is physically stored (e.g., "Shelf A3", "Freezer 2"). Helps with physical inventory counts.
Photos
Upload up to 20 photos per item. Photos appear as thumbnails in the list view.
Replenish Point
When quantity on hand drops to this level, the item appears in Low Stock alerts.
Replenish Quantity
The standard amount to order when you restock this ingredient.
Food Database Integration
When you select the Food category, you can search the built-in food database to auto-populate nutrition information and allergen data. Allergens are automatically tagged from the following list: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame. These are the nine major food allergens recognized by the FDA.
Density Conversions
For items measured in both weight and volume (like flour or liquids), density conversion factors are automatically populated from the food database when you link an item to a food entry. These factors — kg per Liter, Units per kg, and Units per Liter — enable automatic unit conversions when using ingredients in recipes.
Replenish Management
Set a Replenish Point (quantity threshold) and Replenish Quantity (how much to order). When stock falls to or below the replenish point, the item appears in the Low Stock Alert dashboard widget.
Packaging
Navigate to Inventory → Packaging to manage boxes, bags, labels, containers, and other packaging materials.
Packaging items share the same core inventory fields as ingredients (Name, SKU, Description, State, Tracking Unit, Photos, Bin Location, Replenish Point, etc.). They are tracked separately to give you clear visibility into packaging costs versus raw material costs.
Packaging items can be assigned to recipes as components, letting you include packaging costs in your per-unit cost calculations.
MRO Supplies
Navigate to Inventory → MRO to manage maintenance, repair, and operations supplies.
MRO (Maintenance, Repair, and Operations) items are consumables that support your production but don't end up in your finished products — items like cleaning supplies, gloves, parchment paper, or printer ink. They use the same inventory fields as other categories.
Tracking MRO separately helps you understand the full cost of operating your business beyond just raw materials.
Labor
Navigate to Inventory → Labor to define labor cost items that can be assigned to recipe steps.
Labor items represent the cost of human work. You define labor types (e.g., "Baker", "Decorator", "Assembly Worker") with an hourly or per-unit rate. These can then be assigned to individual recipe steps so that labor costs are included in your recipe costing calculations.
Labor items use time-based units (hours, minutes) and track cost per unit of time. They are not physically inventoried but are essential for accurate per-product cost calculations.
Vendors
Navigate to Entities → Vendors to manage your supplier relationships.
Fields
Name
The vendor or company name.
State
Draft, Active, or Archived.
First Name / Last Name
Contact person at this vendor.
Vendor email address for communication.
Phone
Vendor phone number.
Website
Vendor website URL.
Street Address
Full mailing address (street, city, state/province, postal code, country). Displayed on generated purchase order PDFs.
Vendors are linked to purchase transactions. The Top Vendors and Vendor Concentration dashboard widgets use vendor data to show spend rankings and dependency analysis.
Purchases
Navigate to Transactions → Purchases to record materials and supplies you buy from vendors.
Transaction Fields
Transaction Number
A reference number for this purchase (e.g., PO number, invoice number). Can be auto-generated or manually entered.
Vendor
Select the vendor you are purchasing from. Links to your vendor records.
Status
Initiated, In Progress, Completed, Canceled, or Returned. Only completed purchases affect inventory.
Initiation Date
The date the purchase was placed or started. Defaults to today.
Completion Date
The date goods were received and the purchase was finalized.
Tax Category
IRS Schedule C category for tax reporting. Assign to categorize this expense for tax time.
Payment Methods
Select one or more payment methods. Method fees (fixed + percentage) are auto-calculated.
Line Items
Each purchase contains one or more line items. For each item you specify the inventory item (or a free-form description), the package unit and quantity, cost per package, and optional batch/lot number, brand name, country of origin, and expiration date. The system calculates total quantity, cost basis, and portion of purchase cost automatically.
Costs & Totals
Beyond item costs, you can record surcharges, discounts, tax, shipping, and miscellaneous fees. Payment method fees are auto-calculated based on your configured transaction methods and their fixed/percentage fee structures. The total is: items + surcharge - discount + tax + shipping + fees + method fees.
Purchase Order Generation
You can generate a PDF purchase order for any purchase transaction. The purchase order includes your company name, vendor name and address, PO number, date, an itemized list of items with quantities and prices, and all totals. Generate a purchase order from the row actions menu in the purchase list, or from the Generate Purchase Order button in the purchase detail view.
Transaction Status
Purchases move through statuses: Initiated (created), In Progress (for multi-day orders), Completed (received and finalized), Canceled, or Returned. Only Completed purchases update your inventory quantities and cost calculations.
Common List Features
All inventory and transaction lists share these features:
- Search — filter by name, SKU, or description
- State filter — show active, draft, or archived items
- Sorting — click any column header to sort ascending or descending
- Bulk actions — select multiple rows to change state or delete in batch
- Pagination — choose 10, 25, 50, or 100 items per page
- Column visibility — toggle which columns are shown (saved to your browser)
- Export — export list data to CSV
- Import — import data from CSV files
- Audit trail — view the full change history for any individual record