Materials are the raw ingredients and consumables you buy — rice, paneer, oil, LPG. Every recipe is made of materials, so the Materials Table and its rates are the foundation of raw-material lists and costing. Optionally, Neviscater can also track how much of each material you have in stock.
The setup chain is: Material rates → Recipes → Average consumption → Item rates. Each feeds the next, so keep material rates current.
Material Types
Application Setup → Material Types Table — categories such as Grocery, Dairy, Vegetables, Fuel. Types are used to filter raw-material lists and to split purchasing between vendors (a vegetable vendor gets only the vegetables list).
Add a material
- Application Setup → Materials Table → Add Material (or Insert).
- Enter Material Name, Material Type, Unit (the unit you buy and stock it in — kg, l, pcs), Rate (price per unit), optional Description and Preferred Vendor. When the unit is a counted one — Bottle, Packet, Bunch — an optional 1 Bottle = field appears: enter what one holds, e.g. 750 Mililitre. See Pack sizes for what that enables.
- Save.
Faster alternatives:
- GenAI Materials → Generate creates a materials list from a description of your cuisine; Generate material rates fills in approximate local rates you then correct.
- Application Data → Import Database → Materials List imports from a simple file.
- Application Data → Import Regional Database loads a ready-made set.
A material shows Not used in any item recipe until a recipe references it — a quick way to spot unused entries.
Rates
The Rate on a material is what you pay per unit. It is used for:
- Procurement Cost on raw-material lists,
- Material Cost and Calculated Rate of every item whose recipe uses it.
When you change a rate, item calculated rates are updated automatically (or run Update items rates on the Items Table). Recording a purchase with a different price does not change the material's rate — update the rate yourself when prices move.
Print on the Materials Table (and on the Items Table) produces a printable list, optionally with Stock Quantity, for a physical stock count. The print dialog offers the same choices as the filter chips — All, In Stock, Low Stock, Expiring, Expired — with the filter you are currently viewing preselected, so Print means "print what I'm seeing". Pick In Stock for a count sheet of only the materials that actually have stock.
Pack sizes
Many materials are bought and stocked by the pack — a Bottle of oil, a Packet of paneer, a Bunch of coriander — while recipes want them by the millilitre or gram. Keep the material in its pack unit and tell Neviscater what one pack holds: on the material, 1 Bottle = 750 Mililitre. The material's details then show Pack Size. With a pack size:
- Recipes can measure the material either in Bottle or in Mililitre / Litre (or Gram / Kilogram); both convert. Without a pack size only Bottle converts, and a line in ml is flagged on the recipe.
- Raw-material lists show the requirement in packs, fractions included — 12.40 Bottle — and the printed list adds what that comes to underneath: ( 9.3 Litre ). On screen, hover over the quantity to see it.
- Purchase orders created from a raw-material list round the quantity up to whole packs: 12.4 Bottle is ordered as 13. A material without a pack size is ordered exactly as calculated.
- A purchase order line for the material can be written in Bottle or in Litre / Mililitre, priced from the rate per bottle, and receiving it adds the right number of bottles to stock. See Purchase Orders.
- The Rate and stock stay per Bottle; nothing else about the material changes.
Rules:
- A pack size is optional. A material without one is simply counted — fine for Piece of coconut.
- One pack size per material. If you buy the same thing in two sizes, create two materials and name them for it: Oil - Bottle ( 1 ltr ) and Oil - Bottle ( 15 ltr ).
- A material that is really an item used as an ingredient (a preparation such as Gravy Base) takes its pack size from the item's Weight per Plate / Piece; set it on the item.
- A materials list imported from a file, or a regional database, usually comes without pack sizes; add them to the materials you buy in packs.
Changing a material's unit
Recipes are never rewritten by a material's unit change — each recipe line carries its own unit (30 ml of oil stays 30 ml). What is per unit of the material is its rate, its stock and low-stock threshold, every purchase and consumption in its stock history, actuals, and the Quantity to Procure overrides on orders. So when you pick a different Unit and Save, Neviscater first works out what the change means and shows it in a notice under the unit:
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| Nothing recorded: no stock, no threshold, no history, not on any recipe, order or purchase | The unit simply changes |
| The material is used, and both units have a known size — Kilogram → Gram, or Bottle (750 Mililitre) → Litre | Everything per unit is converted |
| The material is used and the old or new unit is a counted one whose pack size is not stated | Refused: … is kept per Bottle and is in use in …, but how much one Bottle holds was never stated, so what is recorded per Bottle cannot be converted. Save the size of one Bottle first, then change the unit. |
| The material mirrors an item (a preparation) | Refused: … is made from the item Gravy Base, which sets its unit. Change the unit on the item instead. |
When a conversion is possible, the notice lists it, for example Oil from Bottle (750 Mililitre) to Litre:
- Rate: 180 / Bottle becomes 240 / Litre ( unless you typed a new rate )
- Stock: 24 Bottle becomes 18 Litre
- Low stock threshold: 6 Bottle becomes 4.5 Litre ( unless you typed a new one )
- Quantities in Purchases (3), …: 1 Bottle becomes 0.75 Litre — its stock history, actuals and quantity overrides on orders
- Recipes: 2 rows measured in Bottle restated in Litre — only lines that would stop converting are restated; lines already in ml stay as they are
Tick Convert and change the unit and click Save. Saving without the tick only reminds you: Tick the box to convert, then Save. A rate or threshold you retype in the same save is kept as typed.
Purchase order lines are not touched: each line keeps the unit it was written in.
Changing a pack size
Changing only the pack size — 1 Bottle = 750 Mililitre to 1 Bottle = 1 Litre — on a material that is in use raises one question: did the bottle really change, or was the number wrong? Two options appear under the field and Save applies whichever is selected:
- Only correcting the size - keep the rate, the stock and recipes written in Bottle as they are (selected by default) — only the stated size changes. Recipe lines in ml now draw a different fraction of a bottle, which is the point of the correction.
- The Bottle itself is bigger now - convert the rate, the stock, its history and recipes written in Bottle to the new size ( x 1.3333 ) — treated like a unit change: rate, stock, threshold, history and quantity overrides are converted, and recipe lines written in Bottle are restated so they still ask for the same amount of oil.
Removing a pack size is refused while recipe lines depend on it: 2 recipe rows use Oil by weight or volume, which converts only through the size of one Bottle. Keep the size, or measure those rows in Bottle first.
Inventory tracking
Stock tracking is optional and per material.
- Turn on the feature: Application Setup → Preferences → Track Inventory.
- On each material you want to track, open Details → Stock and tick Track Inventory. Set the Low Stock Threshold (alert level). Materials with tracking off still work in recipes and costing; they just have no stock figure.
The same applies to Items you keep in stock (ready-made products) — see the item's Stock tab — and to cutlery and operational resources.
Perishable materials and items can also carry a Shelf Life, so every purchase gets an expiry date and expiring/expired stock is flagged and can be written off in one click — see Stock Expiry and Shelf Life.
Record a purchase
Application Setup → Material Purchases (or the material's Add Stock button):
- Click Add New Material Stock.
- Choose the Material, enter Quantity, Rate paid, Date, Vendor, Invoice No. and a Description.
- Update Stock. The quantity is added to Current Stock and logged as a purchase transaction.
Use the All Months / All Dates / All Invoices filters to find past entries; Edit Material Stock corrects one.
Receiving a Purchase Order (Premium) also adds stock; see the Purchase Orders guide.
Adjust stock
On the material → Stock → Add / Subtract stock: enter a positive number to add or a negative number to remove (spoilage, stock count corrections). This is logged as an adjustment.
How orders consume stock
When an order is Executed with Update inventory ticked, the materials calculated for its menus are deducted from stock and logged as consumption against that order. Recording Material Actuals afterwards adjusts the stock to what was really used (consumption adjustment), and Undo execution puts the deducted stock back. See Creating and Managing Orders → Execute an order.
Stock history
Material → Details → Full Stock History (or Materials Inventory → the material) lists every In/Out transaction with date, quantity, Vendor / Order and description, so a current stock figure can always be traced. Actuals History shows Planned vs Actual per order with the variance.
Low-stock alerts
When Current Stock falls below the Low Stock Threshold, the material appears in the Alerts bell in the top bar and on the Dashboard low-stock counter. Set the threshold to roughly one order's worth. Clicking the alert or the dashboard counter opens the Materials Table already filtered to the low-stock rows.
Finding stock that needs attention (filter chips)
When inventory tracking is on, a row of count chips sits above the Materials Table (and the Items Table):
All (120) · In Stock (40) · Low Stock (8) · Expiring (3) · Expired (2)
The counts always cover the whole list, so one glance answers "is anything low or expiring?". Click a chip to show only those rows — Low Stock in red, Expiring in amber, Expired in red, matching the badges on the rows themselves — and click All to clear the filter. The table search box still works within the filtered rows, and Print picks up the active chip as its default scope.
Using stock in raw-material lists
On an order's Raw Materials screen, tick Include available stock so To Procure = required − current stock. See Raw Materials Consumption.
Deleting a material
A material cannot be deleted while any recipe, purchase or order uses it. Remove those references first — or simply leave it; unused materials do not affect any calculation.
Common questions
Stock went negative. An order was executed for more than you had recorded. Record the missing purchases, or use Add / Subtract stock to correct the count.
Stock did not change after executing an order. Either Update inventory was unticked at execution (click Update Inventory Now on the order's Execution tab), or the material's Track Inventory is off.
Where do I set the vendor for a material? On the material: Preferred Vendor. It is used to group raw-material lists by vendor and to create purchase orders.
My oil comes in 750 ml bottles. How do I use Bottle as the unit and still write recipes in ml? Keep the unit Bottle and set 1 Bottle = 750 Mililitre on the material. Recipes can then use ml, lists show fractions of a bottle with the litres underneath, and purchase orders round up to whole bottles. See Pack sizes.
Why does the purchase order say 13 Bottle when the raw-material list says 12.40? Purchase orders are rounded up to whole packs for any material with a pack size. The list shows the exact requirement; the PO shows what you can actually buy.
The form will not let me change the unit. The material is in use and one of the units is a counted one without a pack size, or the material is a preparation made from an item. State the pack size and try again, change the unit on the item, or create a new material for the new unit. See Changing a material's unit.