The Raw Materials screens turn an order's menus into a shopping list: how much of each ingredient you need, what it will cost, which vendor supplies it, and how much you actually have to buy after counting stock.
How the quantities are calculated
For every menu item that is made in-house:
material needed = menu item quantity × recipe quantity of that material (per unit of the item)
with unit conversion applied (e.g. a recipe in grams, a material stocked in kilograms). The results for all items and all selected events are summed per material.
That means three things must be right for the numbers to be right:
- Menu item quantities — see Events and Menus → Quantities.
- Recipes — each item's Recipe tab lists its materials and the amount per one unit of the item. Items with no recipe contribute nothing (the item shows a No recipe has been provided warning). See Items and Recipes.
- Units — the recipe unit and the material unit must be convertible: kg ↔ gm, lt ↔ ml, or a counted unit such as Bottle with a pack size on the material. A recipe line that does not convert counts as zero here, and the item's Recipe button carries a warning triangle naming it. See Units.
Items marked bought ready made or bought as a service are skipped here and listed under Procurement instead, since you buy them finished.
Quantities are rounded to practical purchase sizes (e.g. to the nearest 5 g below 100 g, nearest 50 g between 1 and 10 kg).
A material kept in packs — 1 Bottle = 750 Mililitre — is listed in packs, fractions included: 12.40 Bottle. The printed list adds what that comes to underneath, ( 9.3 Litre ), and on screen you can hover over the quantity to see it. Purchase orders created from the list round such materials up to whole packs.
Menu-based view (Raw Materials)
Order Actions → Raw Materials, or the order's Actions → Raw Materials, or an event's Actions → Raw Materials.
- Filter by Material Type and by event (the filter shows Not all events selected / Not all material types selected when a subset is active). Click Apply.
- Columns: Material Name, Quantity (required), Stock (current, if inventory tracking is on), To Procure, Rate, Procurement Cost, Vendor.
- Total Cost at the bottom is the procurement cost of what is listed.
Adjusting "Quantity to Procure"
The required quantity is calculated, but what you buy is your call — maybe you round up, or already have some. Click a row, enter Quantity to Procure, and click Update Quantity to Procure. The override is stored per order and per material and survives recalculation; the calculated quantity is still shown alongside.
Include available stock
Tick Include available stock to subtract current stock from the requirement, so To Procure = required − in stock. Untick to see the gross requirement. Requires inventory tracking (Application Setup → Preferences → Track Inventory); see Materials and Inventory.
Item-based view (Items Based Raw Materials)
Order Actions → Items Based Raw Materials shows the same materials grouped by the item that needs them — Item Name, Item Quantity, then its Item Specific Raw Materials and quantities. Use it when different cooks prepare different dishes, or to check which dish is driving a large material requirement.
Recipes can include other items as ingredients (a preparation item, e.g. a gravy base used by several dishes). The item-based view expands these so the base materials are counted once.
Kitchen Sheet layout
The item-wise printout comes in two layouts. Print on the item-based panel opens Printing Options with a Layout choice:
- Detailed Table — One row per material, with borders. Best for verification and costing. One bordered table per event with Item, Material Name and Qty columns (plus Status when tick boxes are printed); each event starts on a new page.
- Kitchen Sheet — Item headings with materials in two columns. Best for the kitchen. No gridlines: each dish is a bold heading with the quantity being prepared on the right, and its materials run underneath in two columns as quantity, unit, material. Quantities show two decimals, keeping a third when it matters (0.004 stays 0.004).
Whichever layout you print with becomes the remembered default. The starting default for the whole organisation is Application Setup → Preferences → Printing → Item-wise Raw Materials Layout. If a custom PDF template is active for this report the layout choice is replaced by This report prints with your custom template — see Printing and PDF Templates.
Planning several orders at once — a whole week's functions from one kitchen? Use the Kitchen Plan: the same dishes, materials and vendor lists combined across orders, with stock counted once.
Procurement scope and vendors
Open Procurement Scope Settings (on the Raw Materials screen) to choose which events are bought together — one scope for the whole order, or separate scopes per day/event when deliveries are staggered. Tick Scope based procurement to enable it and Save selections as defaults to reuse the choice.
The Vendor column uses each material's Preferred Vendor (set on the material). The vendor-wise view groups the list by supplier and can Download a per-vendor list.
Create purchase orders from the list
On the vendor-wise view click Create Purchase Orders. One draft purchase order is created per vendor per scope, pre-filled with the materials and quantities to procure — rounded up to whole packs for materials with a pack size (12.4 Bottle → 13). Materials with no assigned vendor are skipped. Review and send them under Application Setup → Purchase Orders. The full walk-through, from setup to receiving the goods, is Create Purchase Orders from an Order's Raw Material List.
Printing
Click Print for a PDF. Printing Options:
- Print checkboxes for easy tailoring — a tick box per line for the person doing the shopping.
- Print rates and costs of materials — include or hide money columns (hide for the kitchen copy).
Order Actions → Print Raw Materials and Print Items Based Raw Materials do the same from the sidebar. Email Reports can send the list to a vendor or cook.
What happens at execution
When the order is Executed with Update inventory ticked, the calculated material quantities (not your procurement overrides) are deducted from stock and saved as the planned quantities for reconciliation. See Creating and Managing Orders → Execute an order and the Wastage Report.
Common questions
A material is missing from the list. Either the item using it has no recipe, the material's type is filtered out, or the item is marked as bought ready made.
Quantities look too high/low. Check the recipe quantity is per one unit of the item (e.g. per kg or per plate, matching the item's unit), not per batch. For items sold per plate or piece, Neviscater flags recipes whose materials weigh far more or far less than the stated Weight per Plate — see Recipe warnings.
A material shows a quantity of zero. A recipe line for it is in a unit that does not convert to the material's unit (ml of a material kept per Bottle with no pack size). Fix the line's unit, or set the pack size on the material.
Stock column is empty. Inventory tracking is off, or the material's stock has never been recorded. See Materials and Inventory.