Report wastage and spoilage

Wastage is the cost that hides. It never appears on an invoice, nobody sends you a bill for it, and it comes straight out of profit. Recording it is how it stops being invisible.

It takes about ten seconds per event, and it is the difference between knowing your food cost and guessing it.

Record it

On the Inventory page, open the item and choose Report Waste. Enter the quantity and, where you can, why. The stock comes off, and the cost is totalled into your wastage figures at that item's unit cost.

Do it when it happens, not at the end of the week. Recollection at closing time is systematically optimistic — everyone remembers the big spill and nobody remembers four portions of rice.

What counts as wastage

Anything that left your stock without being sold:

• Spoilage — expired, went off, left out too long.
• Breakage — dropped, spilled, container failed.
• Cooking errors — burnt, over-portioned, wrong order made.
• Staff meals, if you do not sell them.
• Samples and giveaways.

Anything that was sold at a reduced price is a discount, not wastage. Anything on an order that was cancelled before being made is a void. The three are counted separately because they have different causes and different fixes.

The case that trips everyone up

An order rung up wrong, but the food was already cooked, is both: void the order so it leaves your revenue, and report the ingredients as wastage so your stock matches the shelf.

Voiding alone leaves your stock count claiming ingredients you no longer have. Within a month that gap is large enough to make your inventory untrustworthy, which is usually when people give up on it.

Where wastage shows up

• Inventory → Daily Item Activity — the Wasted column beside used and restocked, per item, per day.
• Manager's Daily Report — Wastage Cost for the day, next to voids, discounts and expenses.
• Reports — across a date range, where it is visible against gross profit.

Read the daily figure as a habit and the range figure monthly. One bad day is noise; the same item every Tuesday is a process problem.

Turning the number into a decision

Once you have a month of data, wastage answers questions instinct cannot:

• One ingredient dominating — the prep quantity is wrong, or it is ordered in a pack size larger than you can use before it turns.
• Waste clustering at closing — you are prepping too far into the evening. Move the cut-off.
• A dish with high waste and low sales — it is costing you twice. Either promote it properly or take it off.
• Waste on one person's shifts — nearly always training, not carelessness.

The gap between what recipes say you used and what a physical count finds is unrecorded wastage. Count monthly, compare, and record the difference rather than quietly adjusting the number — silently correcting it deletes the only signal you had.

Frequently asked questions

How is wastage different from a void?

A void cancels a sale that should not count as revenue. Wastage records stock that left your shelf without being sold. An order that was cooked and then rung up wrong is both — void it and report the ingredients as wastage.

Does reporting wastage reduce my profit figures?

It reduces them to the truth. The ingredients were already gone; recording it moves the cost from invisible to visible so your gross profit reflects what actually happened rather than what the recipes assumed.

What is a normal amount of wastage?

It varies far too much by menu for a single number to be useful — fresh, prepped food wastes more than packaged goods. What matters is your own trend: establish a baseline over a month and watch for the direction of travel.

Should staff meals be recorded as wastage?

If you give them away, yes — the stock left without generating revenue. If staff pay for them, ring them up as a sale with a staff discount instead, which keeps the food cost attached to actual revenue.

Can cashiers report wastage?

Only if you give them the Inventory page under staff permissions. Many shops do exactly that, because the person who drops the tray should be the one who records it — waiting for a manager is how it goes unrecorded.

Next: track expenses.