How do I enter ingredient costs? We have created many resources to help you learn about Entering Costs in meez. Check out the one(s) that work best for you!
Want a walkthrough on how to enter Costs on your Recipe? See it here!
Have you seen our Community Page? Check out our Essential Topics and Tutorials section to see how to cost videos!
To read our Help Article click here!
By importing a spreadsheet or .csv file Learn Here!
Or learn about invoice processing to have them uploaded for you here!
Need a little more advice from the pros? Check out our Webinar! Top 5 Reasons Your Recipes Aren't Showing Costs
Questions and Answers about Costing Ingredients.
My recipe's ingredients have costs, but my food cost calculator isn't showing a cost?
We have an article for everything you need to know about the food cost calculator!
How do I enter a Vendor Name and Latest Invoice to my ingredient costs?
These cannot be entered manually. They are added automatically when your costs are updated through direct invoice or spreadsheet uploads.
What is a Purchase UoM?
Your Purchase UoM is however you bought the item. "lb" for if you bought your ground beef by lb. Bought flour by the "50lb Case". Vinegar by the "Gallon".
Reminder: If you use a container unit, such as Case, Box, Bag, or Jar. You will need to create/add and define a new purchase unit of measure!
How do I add a new purchase UoM?
You buy your pickles by the case, but how do we know how much is in that case? This is when we add a custom purchase UoM. Check out a Walkthrough!
First we have to know: how many jars are in that case? How many oz per jar? Say we have 10 jars at 16oz per jar our custom UoM would be: case=10/16oz.
When you enter this in the purchase UoM section it will ask you "Add new unit called" Click this and it will ask you to define what that measurement is.
For our example case=10/16oz will equal 160 for the quantity and oz for the units. Click Add Unit and you have entered your new custom purchase UoM! See image below!
I have error messages in my Costing tab. What do they mean?
"Ingredient Cost Not Yet Set" and "This ingredient is not yet set with a purchase cost and unit"
You will see these notifications if no price or costing information has been set for the ingredient.
All ingredient cost calculations come from one place - your purchase cost. In order to break down the cost of an ingredient into the ounces, tablespoons, or grams used in your recipe, you (and meez) need to know two things:
How much did I buy? (purchase unit)
How much did I pay for it? (purchase cost)
If one of these is missing, there's no way to see how much the ingredient costs in your recipes. In that case, just add the purchase cost and purchase unit to the ingredient like this:
What does a black exclamation point (!) next to my cost mean?
This means costing data has not been set and/or the ingredient has not been purchased for the current location the recipe belongs to. It will then display the average cost of the ingredient using cost information from your other locations.
There's a warning that says "This ingredient is missing the unit conversion needed for cost calculations." What does that mean?
This ingredient is missing the unit conversion needed for cost calculations. Double check your ingredient page. When costing, each ingredient needs defined units of measure. Check a quick walkthrough here!
UoM Equivalencies are necessary for ingredients and recipes to translate between different types of units.
The unit equivalency for each ingredient can be found on the ingredient detail page by clicking on the "UoM Equivalency" tab:
To get the ingredient cost to calculate, compare the purchase unit on the ingredient page and the unit used with that ingredient in the recipe. If they are different types of units, you'll need to add an equivalency for those two types.
For example: if you purchase flour for $1 per pound (a weight unit) and you use it in a recipe by the cup (a volume unit), you'll need a unit equivalency (shown above) to know how much a cup of flour costs.
Need more explanation about Equivalencies? See this article here learn more!
When I look at my recipe cost, I see a hyphen ( – ) instead of a cost. Why?
This means the ingredient is not being included to determine the cost of the recipe. For instance if you added Salt "to taste" or Water "as needed" or any ingredient where the amount is too small to measure a cost.
I uploaded my costs and they are not showing up. Why are my costs under "default location"?
When uploading a spreadsheet the costs can either not appear or show up under "default location" when the Location ID was not set up properly on the uploaded spreadsheet. See this article to learn more.