Understand products, recipes and stock items
Keep what you sell, how you make it and what you have on hand clear.
A product, a recipe and a stock item each describe a different part of the operation. Keeping those roles clear makes quantities and costs easier to follow.
A product is what you offer
A product is the item customers can buy. Its name, description, price and availability explain the offering. A menu category helps organize those products for the customer.
A scheduled Special controls how an offering is presented over time. It uses the product's canonical price; scheduling a Special does not itself create a discount.
A recipe describes how you make it
A recipe connects ingredient quantities to an expected yield. The yield matters when relating a batch to the amount you can sell. Keep measurement units understandable and review a changed recipe against the work it affects.
A planning example should make its assumptions explicit. A dozen saleable items and a dozen items produced are not always the same result if some are lost or used elsewhere.
Stock records describe quantities on hand
Stock items and their units help describe ingredients and other tracked supplies. Receiving records an arrival; an adjustment records a correction or other supported change. Neither should be confused with creating another sellable product.
Use the appropriate record for the actual event, and avoid entering the same receipt twice.
Connect the records carefully
Before relying on a result, check that the product, recipe, stock item and measurement units represent the same real operation. If a cost is missing, use the food-cost guide before treating the total as complete.