Margin

Margin is where the money lives. It answers two different questions, one under the other, and the order matters: what your sales actually made, and what your menu says each dish should make.

What each margin includes

Every margin on this page has VAT still inside it, so it is labelled Margin incl. VAT, and the (i) beside it says what it holds. The page works margins out in more than one way, and they can show different figures for the same dates:

• Dashboard tiles and the Boxes view — sales of products with a recipe, VAT included, after discounts. Refunded and part-refunded orders are left out. Cost is each recipe today, with sizes and add-ons. An ingredient with no cost counts as £0, and a cost that looks like a pack price is still counted (the tile shows Check costs).
• What you actually made (the top of the Spreadsheet view) — the same sales, with voided items left out, and each dish costed the same way as the tiles: units converted (a recipe in grams against a price per kg) and prepped ingredients at their prep cost. A drink poured by measure can still come out differently, because this block follows the measure poured.
• Menu margin and Menu engineering — each product's base price, VAT included, minus its recipe cost today. Not what a sale took: a menu with its own price (say a cheaper Wednesday menu) and size prices are not used.

For what you made with VAT and refunds taken off, see Profit after costs on Reports → Daily sales.

Open Margin

From the sidebar, open Inventory → Margin. If you run more than one site there is a location picker at the top, and a Weekly / Monthly switch that sets the period for the top block.

Three views (beta, off by default)

If dashboards are switched on for your account, the Weekly / Monthly switch is replaced by three views and a row of date buttons — Today · Yesterday · This week · This month · Last 90 days · Custom.

• Dashboard — tiles you can drag around, add and remove, exactly like your home page. Every tile answers the dates you picked.
• Spreadsheet — the page described in the rest of this article. Unchanged.
• Boxes — one card per product with what you keep on each.

Two things worth knowing about the dates. They drive the top block and every Dashboard tile. They do not drive menu engineering, price changes or stock checks: those read fixed periods, each named on its own block, and the page says so above them rather than leaving you to notice.

Tiles that show a percentage of margin only do so when at least half your takings has a recipe behind it. Below that the tile shows the pounds and says why it will not show a percentage — a margin worked out over a fifth of your sales is the margin of that fifth, not of the business.

The Boxes view

One card per product, biggest earner first, showing what you kept on each over the dates you picked — not what the menu says it should make. Each card carries the pounds, the pence in the pound, how many you sold, what it really sold for and what its ingredients cost.

A product whose cost cannot be trusted shows the reason where its margin would be rather than a number: no recipe, an ingredient has no cost (which would make its margin read high), or cost looks like a pack price (which is what makes a margin read −400%). Nothing is hidden from this view — it is your whole menu, and a card that quietly went missing would be worse than one that says what is wrong.

Ask us to switch dashboards on if you would like them; without them the page is exactly as described below.

What you can put on the Dashboard

Tiles are grouped by family in the Add widget gallery. The Margin family answers the whole-business questions:

• Left over — what was left after ingredients, VAT included, in pounds and in the pound. Its figure is labelled Margin incl. VAT.
• Kept in the pound — how many pence you keep in every £, period by period.
• Took vs cost — what you took beside what those sales cost you to make. The two do not subtract: "took" is all your takings including the keypad, while the cost covers only the part with a recipe behind it, and the tile says which part.
• Did we make money — took, ingredients, wastage and what was left over. Took is all your takings, keypad included, but left over starts from the sales that have a recipe, so when some takings have none the tile says so rather than claiming the four add up. Wastage is priced at each ingredient's unit cost.
• Margin by category — which part of the menu actually earns. A section with too little of its takings costed shows its pounds and "no %".

Any tile whose ingredients are not fully costed says "cost not known" rather than showing a number: an ingredient with no price counts as free, so the margin would read better than it is.

The Menu family answers the per-dish questions:

• Margin per product — every dish and drink you sell, with what you keep on each one.
• Best margins / Worst margins — the five that keep you the most, and the five thinnest.
• Menu engineering — every dish on two questions: does it sell, and does it earn. "Well" means above this window's own average, not a fixed target.
• Margin movers — the dishes whose margin changed most against the period before. Both periods are priced at today's ingredient costs, because nothing records yesterday's — so a move here is what you sold and what you charged, never a supplier price change.
• Dishes to reprice — sells a lot, keeps less than your own average, with what a 5% rise would have been worth at the same volume. A size, not a forecast.
• Product margin boxes — the Boxes view shrunk to a tile.

The Prices family is about what you pay:

• Price changes — ingredients that cost more than they did, and by how much. A price that FELL is shown as a fall, never netted off against the rises.
• What price rises cost — increases only, priced at the volumes you actually got through.

Both say "across all sites" when you have a site selected, because supplier prices are not recorded per site — for "what price rises cost" the volumes are your site's but the prices are the whole account's, and the tile says exactly that rather than implying one or the other.

The Leaks family is about money going out:

• Where money leaked — wastage, stock check gaps, supplier price rises and untracked sales. Ordered by how sure we are, then by size: a measured figure always sits above an estimated one however large the estimate, and "sales with no recipe" is listed last and is not a loss — it is takings whose margin cannot be seen, and the main reason the others are incomplete.
• Wastage cost — money thrown away, at what it cost you. A write-off on an ingredient with no unit cost counts as £0, so the tile says when the real figure is higher.
• Untracked sales — the share of takings with no recipe behind them, split between keypad sales and menu items with no recipe, because those are different fixes.

What you actually made

The top block is worked back from your real sales, and the Usage page header reads the same figures.

This block used to cost some dishes wrongly, and that is fixed. It now matches the Dashboard tiles: a recipe in grams against an ingredient priced per kg (or ml against a price per litre) is converted, where before it read 1000 times too high; prepped ingredients count at their prep cost instead of nothing; and voided items are left out. If your recipes and prices use the same units and you have no prepped ingredients, your figures did not move.

The block names the period it covers — "the last 8 weeks", "the last 6 months" — and that label follows the Weekly / Monthly switch rather than being fixed, so what you read is always the window you are actually looking at.

• Tracked sales incl. VAT — money taken on items that have a recipe, after discounts. Refunded orders are left out.
• Ingredient cost — what those sales used, at today's ingredient costs.
• Margin incl. VAT — tracked sales minus that ingredient cost.
• Wastage cost — what you wrote off, priced at unit cost.

Under them is one line you should read every time: how much of your takings came from keypad amounts and items with no recipe. That money is not in the figures above, so if it is large your real margin is a smaller slice of the business than the block suggests.

Menu margin, per dish

This is a different number and the page labels it as one: what each dish would make at menu price — its base price, VAT included, minus today's recipe cost, for every dish on the menu, whether it sold or not. A menu with its own price and size prices are not used. It is what tells you the burger is priced wrong. It is not what the business made.

Search by dish name, or sort to put your worst margins first.

Menu engineering

Every recipe-costed dish that sold in the last 30 days, sorted into four groups against your own averages:

• Stars — sell well and make money. Keep them front of menu.
• Puzzles — good margin, few sales. Promote them or move them up.
• Plowhorses — sell well on a thin margin. Reprice or re-cost them.
• Dogs — few sales, thin margin. Candidates to drop.

Price changes

Each ingredient's latest purchase cost against the one before it, over the last 90 days. It needs two priced purchases for an ingredient before anything shows — from receiving an order or scanning a receipt.

Stock checks

What left your stock beyond what your sales should have used, over the last 30 days: declared waste plus shortfalls found at a count, costed. A big gap points at over-portioning, spoilage or shrinkage. It sits on this page because that gap is money leaving.

Wastage

Your write-offs grouped by reason — breakage, expiry, spoilage, comps — and the ingredients driving them, each costed at its unit cost. Log write-offs from Stock and they land here.

If you don't have the usage add-on

Margin still works without it. Menu margin, menu engineering, price changes, stock checks and wastage are all there. The one block you won't see is "what you actually made" — working your real margin back from sales is part of the usage add-on, and the page says so where that block would be rather than leaving a gap.

What's next

• Recipes — complete recipes give accurate margins.
• Ingredients — set unit costs so margins are right.
• Serving sizes — so a double is counted as a double.