Commissary theoretical usage is only as accurate as your setup. Most problems people run into aren't math problems — they're setup problems: recipes that don't match what you actually buy, or counting the wrong thing. This article walks through the handful of steps that make your report trustworthy.
Note: This article has instructions for the commissary unit — the location that produces prepped recipes and sends them out to other locations.
If you haven't yet, read Getting Started with Commissary Theoretical Usage Reporting first.
1. Build your recipes with the ingredients you actually purchase
Theoretical usage is only as accurate as your recipes, so it's worth auditing them.
Ensure you are using the ingredients purchased in the commissary.
Make sure each commissary recipe is built with the products you actually purchase in the commissary. It's common for a recipe to accidentally reference a product that's purchased at another restaurant or location, or for the products you buy to have changed over time so the recipe now points at something you no longer stock. For example, in the commissary you might purchase Garlic, Peeled, while your restaurants order Garlic, Fresh — if your commissary pizza sauce recipe is built with Garlic, Fresh, [me] won't track the Garlic, Peeled you're actually using. When a recipe uses a product you don't purchase in the commissary, [me] can't track that usage correctly, and you'll see variances that look alarming but are really just a recipe gap.
Use the prep recipe as an ingredient, not the product generated from the commissary recipe.
When you mark a recipe as a commissary recipe so it can be sent out, [me] also generates a matching commissary product for it. So a prepped component you make can exist in two forms: the recipe and the auto-generated product. When you build a larger recipe that uses that component, add the recipe as the ingredient — not the generated product.
For example, say your commissary makes a tomato sauce that's used in several other items. Because the tomato sauce is a commissary recipe, [me] has generated a "tomato sauce" product alongside it. When you build a dish that uses it — say, a baked ziti recipe — add the tomato sauce recipe as the ingredient, not the tomato sauce product.
Why it matters: when the ingredient is the recipe, [me] can keep breaking it down — all the way to the raw products like canned tomatoes and olive oil — and give you ingredient-level usage. If it's pointed at the generated product instead, the breakdown stops there and you lose that detail. After you make this swap, your theoretical usage will recalculate and look much closer to what you actually should have used.
Combined restaurant/commissary locations: This matters even more if you run as a single combined unit. A restaurant that orders a prepped item from a commissary adds the commissary product to its menu-item recipe — that's correct for them. But a combined restaurant/commissary should build its own version of that recipe, using the prep recipe made in the commissary as the sub-ingredient rather than the generated commissary product.
2. Get your count sheets in good shape
What you put on your inventory count sheets matters just as much as your recipes.
Inventory your commissary recipes, not your commissary products.
When you add a commissary recipe to a count sheet and complete the count, [me] breaks that recipe down into its ingredient parts and tracks usage at the ingredient (product) level — so you can see exactly how much flour, butter, or cream you should have used. If you inventory the finished commissary product instead, you lose that ingredient-level visibility and your usage numbers won't make sense.
You can tell the two apart by the icon next to the line on your count sheet:
A product shows a fork-and-knife icon.
A recipe shows a list icon.
Here's a quick example of why it matters. Say you make pizza dough in the commissary, each batch uses 2 lbs of flour, and during the period you transfer 10 batches out to your restaurants:
If you inventory pizza dough as a product: [me] only sees "10 batches of dough left," and your flour usage looks too low — it doesn't account for the 20 lbs of flour that's part of the pizza dough.
If you inventory pizza dough as a recipe: [me] breaks the dough back down to its ingredients and correctly shows that 20 lbs of flour were used. That's the number you can actually act on.
So if you spot finished commissary items sitting on your count sheets as products, swap them for the matching recipe.
Note for the receiving restaurants: The recipe-vs-product rule flips on the other side of the transfer. A restaurant that orders a prepped item from the commissary should inventory the commissary product, since it received a finished good — that matches what it actually paid for. The exception is a combined restaurant/commissary, which should still inventory the recipe.
Inventory all the prepped recipes you send out.
Make sure every prepped recipe that gets ordered from your commissary is on a count sheet. You do not need to inventory transferred products that aren't prepped recipes — those are handled like internal transfer products and show up as negative purchases, so they don't depend on a count.