Summary
A Master Product groups the same (or very similar) products from different suppliers into one overall "product" - for example Whole Milk you buy from two different suppliers, counted and costed as one.
Master Product groups appear on your COGS reports, so you can look at costs and variances for the group as a whole rather than chasing individual supplier products across your reports.
Each group is priced using its Weighted Average Cost (WAC) — the average of what you've actually paid, worked out per site. See how Master Product costs works below.
Creating a Master Product Group
Head to Suppliers & Products, then Master Products.
In the top right, select Create Master Product.
Enter the Name, the Unit of Measure, and a Class and Category.
You can edit any of these later from View details.
Adding and removing supplier products
There are two ways to add a supplier product to a group.
Option 1 - via the product's details
Go to Suppliers & Products > Suppliers and find the product.
Select Edit next to it.
In the Master Product field, choose the group to assign it to.
Select Save Changes.
Option 2 - via the Master Product group
Go to Suppliers & Products > Master Products and select View details on the group.
In the Linked Supplier Products section, select Add supplier products to the list.
Search for and select the product(s).
Select Add Product.
To remove a supplier product, select the bin icon next to it in the group, or clear the Master Product field on the product's details page.
⚠️ Once a supplier product is added to a group it no longer appears as an individual product in Live Stock Levels, COGS, Storage Areas, Waste, or Transfers - it's tracked under the group instead.
Unit of Measure compatibility
A supplier product can only join a group if its unit is compatible with the group's Unit of Measure. It doesn't have to be identical - just convertible:
If the product has a Unit of Measure set (e.g. Gram, Litre), Edify checks if it is the same or converts to the group's UoM. Compatible units in the same family work - for example a product in kg can join a group set to g.
If the product has no Unit of Measure, Edify falls back to its Single Unit Type. Single unit types that are real measurement units (G, Kg, L, ml, Oz, Lb) are converted the same way. The rest are container types (Box, Carton, Sachet, and so on), which all convert to each other 1:1 - so any container-type product fits a group that uses 'each'
If neither field gives a compatible conversion, the product can't be added.
💡 If a product is rejected as incompatible, check its Unit of Measure (or Single Unit Type) on the product details page. You may need to update it before it can join the group.
How Master Product cost works
Each Master Product is priced using its Weighted Average Cost (WAC) — the average cost of the products you've actually bought, weighted by how much you bought.
A few principles:
WAC is worked out per site. Each site has its own cost based on what that site purchased, so site-level COGS reflects reality.
WAC is fixed within a stocktake period and recalculates when a stocktake is closed. For any date, Edify uses the WAC from the last closed stocktake on or before that date - so a waste entry or transfer with a past date is costed at the WAC that was valid then, not today's.
WAC isn't rewritten retrospectively. Adding or removing supplier products from a group doesn't change WAC for past stocktake periods - those values are frozen once calculated.
What happens at each stocktake close, per site:
Situation | Cost used |
Purchases were made in the period | WAC = total purchase cost ÷ total quantity, converted to the group's UoM |
No purchases this period, but a previous WAC exists | The previous WAC is carried forward unchanged |
No purchases and no previous WAC | An estimate: the simple average of the linked products' list prices |
No supplier products linked | Cost is 0 |
Worked examples
Example One - one supplier, two deliveries
Purchase | Quantity × price | Cost |
Delivery 1 | 100 × £10 | £1,000 |
Delivery 2 | 10 × £15 | £150 |
Total | 110 units | £1,150 |
WAC = £1,150 ÷ 110 = £10.46
Example Two - two suppliers blended
Purchase | Quantity × price | Cost |
Product A | 100 × £10 | £1,000 |
Product A | 10 × £15 | £150 |
Product B | 5 × £12 | £60 |
Product B | 8 × £17 | £136 |
Total | 123 units | £1,346 |
WAC = £1,346 ÷ 123 = £10.94
Example Three — carrying cost forward
Period | Purchases | WAC |
Period 1 | Bought stock averaging £3.00 | £3.00 |
Period 2 | No purchases | £3.00 (carried forward) |
Period 3 | Bought stock, averaging £7.00 | £7.00 |
The Cost section on the group
Open a group's View details to see the Cost section. It shows the company average WAC and the range across sites, then a per-site breakdown:
Column | Description |
Site | The site. |
WAC | That site's Weighted Average Cost. |
Variance | How that site's cost compares to the others. |
Last Calculated | When the WAC was last recalculated (i.e. the last closed stocktake). |
Sites that haven't purchased the product show a greyed-out figure tagged Estimated (no purchases) — that's the simple-average fallback until the site makes a purchase and closes a stocktake.
Updating recipes to use a Master Product
If a supplier product is still used directly in a recipe after it's been added to a group, Edify flags it so you can switch the recipe over to the group.
On the Master Products list, a warning icon (⚠️) appears next to View details for any group that has recipes to update.
Select it to review the affected recipes and update them to use the Master Product instead of the individual supplier product.
💡 Pointing recipes at the Master Product means COGS uses the group's WAC, so your recipe costs reflect whatever supplier each site actually buys from.
Using Master Products in recipes
Add a Master Product to a recipe instead of a single supplier product whenever you buy the same ingredient from more than one supplier. Edify understands any product in the group could be used, and costs the recipe using each site's WAC.
To add one:
When adding an ingredient, set the ingredient type to Master Product.
Search for and select the group.
Set the Quantity and Unit of Measure.
Master Products can also be set as variable ingredients.
Seeing the cost breakdown
In a recipe, the Ingredient Cost reflects the view you're in: viewing all sites shows the average cost across all sites; viewing a single site shows that site's cost.
Select an ingredient's cost to open the breakdown - the Total Average Cost, the range (lowest to highest), the number of sites, and the Weighted Average Cost by site listed out. When you're viewing as a particular site, that site's row is shown in bold.
POS matching
Menu items and modifiers can be POS matched to a Master Product group, so the system depletes stock and calculates COGS from your actual sales. When matching, an MP symbol in the dropdown marks Master Products apart from individual recipes and products.
This is useful when a product could come from several suppliers - for example, if you sell bottled Coca-Cola sourced from two suppliers, match the menu item to the Coca-Cola group. When a bottle sells, Edify depletes stock from the group and costs it using the group's WAC.
Stocktakes and Live Stock Levels
Counting Master Products in a stocktake
A Master Product can be added to Storage Areas just like an individual product, and once a supplier product is in a group you count it under the group rather than on its own.
Rather than only counting in the group's single Unit of Measure, you can count by the pack types of the linked supplier products - so an Avocado group isn't stuck only counting in "each".
Where several linked products share the same pack type, Edify combines them into a counting group, so a single input line can cover multiple products. This means you enter one figure for all your 4-pack avocados, rather than counting each supplier's 4-pack separately.
⚠️ If a supplier product is already in a storage area and you then add it to a group, the individual product converts to the group — or is removed if the group is already in that storage area.
Master Products in Live Stock Levels
Master Product groups appear in Live Stock Levels alongside individual products, with Master Product shown in the Type column. In the logs you'll see both the overall movements for the group and the individual purchase logs for each supplier product within it.