Getting Started with Commissary Theoretical Usage Reporting – MarginEdge

Tracking theoretical versus actual usage is one of the most powerful things you can do to protect your margins — and now you can do it for your commissary, not just your restaurants.

In [me], this is called "Theoretical Usage," and you'll sometimes hear the reports referred to simply as "Theoreticals." Some people also call this "variance reporting." This article assumes you're already comfortable with the basics. But if you're new to theoretical usage in general, start with Getting Started with Theoretical Usage Reporting and How do I see my Theoretical Usage?

Availability: In this first release, commissary theoretical usage is available for standalone commissaries only. Support for combined restaurant/commissary locations is rolling out in July 2026.

How is a commissary different?

The standard Theoretical Usage report figures out what you should have used based on what you sold through your POS (your PMIX data). Commissaries usually don't work that way — instead of ringing up sales, a commissary produces prepared items and transfers them out to other locations.

So for commissaries, [me] calculates theoretical usage using your commissary orders — the items other locations order from the commissary — rather than POS sales. On the report you'll see Sold Units and Sold Revenue populated from those orders, and [me] uses them to determine how much of each ingredient you theoretically should have used.

One important distinction: only prepped recipes you transfer out are treated as sales on this report. When you transfer a product — a raw or finished item that isn't part of a prepped recipe, like a case of to-go containers — it isn't counted as a sale. Instead it behaves like a product moved through an internal transfer: it shows up as a negative purchase, reducing your purchases rather than adding to Sold Units and Sold Revenue.

In plain terms: the report compares what you should have used to fulfill all the orders that left the commissary against what you actually used (based on your inventory and purchases).

Good news: You do not need PMIX mapping completed to get commissary theoretical usage. Unlike the standard report, the commissary calculation is driven by your orders and recipes, not your POS buttons.

Before you jump in

You'll need at least two inventories completed in [me], since the report always runs between a starting and an ending inventory.
Commissary theoretical usage is calculated from April 1, 2026 forward. Any inventory period before that date won't include commissary order data, so run your reports on periods starting on or after April 1, 2026.
Your setup needs to be solid for the numbers to mean anything. See Best Practices for Commissary Setup and Usage Tracking for the steps that make the difference between an actionable report and one that looks like noise.

How to read this report

To open it, go to Performance > Theoretical Usage and make sure you're on the Actual vs. Theoretical tab. Here's what each column means for a commissary:

Category / Product / Report By — Products are grouped by category; click a category to expand it and see individual products. Quantities are shown in each product's report-by unit.
Sold Units — The number of units of prepped recipes ordered from your commissary during the period. This is the theoretical side: what you should have used to fill those orders. (Transferred products that aren't prepped recipes aren't counted here — they're treated as negative purchases instead.)
Sold Revenue — The value of those prepped-recipe orders. Because commissary items transfer out at cost, this is a cost-based figure, not a marked-up sales figure.
Used Units — How much you actually used during the period, calculated from your inventory and purchases (see the formula below).
Used Value — The dollar value of that actual usage.
Difference Units / Difference Value — The gap between what you should have used (Sold) and what you actually used (Used). A figure in parentheses is negative, meaning you used more than your orders account for — that's where waste, yield loss, recipe errors, or mapping issues tend to show up. Sorting by Difference Value is the fastest way to find your biggest opportunities.
Target Cost % — For a standalone commissary this shows N/A, since transfers go out at cost with no markup, so there's no meaningful target to calculate. For a combined restaurant/commissary location that also has POS sales, [me] will calculate this.
Actual Cost % — Your Used Value divided by your Sold Revenue. For a standalone commissary this typically lands at or above 100%, because you're transferring at cost — so aim to get it as close to 100% as you can (the further above, the more waste). For a combined restaurant/commissary with marked-up POS sales, it is not guaranteed to be over 100%.
Wasted Units / Wasted Values / Waste % — Any waste logged for the product during the period, pulled from your waste log. This is supplementary and doesn't change the other columns.

A few helpful controls along the top: use the Category Type filter and Search to narrow the list, the Difference Value Threshold slider to hide small differences and focus on the big ones, and the Only sold products / Only inventoried products toggles to filter the view. You can also Export as to pull the data out.

Note: In a combined restaurant/commissary location, the first toggle reads Only mapped products instead of Only sold products.

How is actual usage calculated?

Your Used Units (actual usage) is calculated as:

Starting Inventory + Purchases − Internal Transfers − Ending Inventory

Note that commissary transfers of prepped recipes — the orders you send out to your other locations — are not subtracted here; only internal transfers are. Commissary transfers and internal transfers are treated differently for usage tracking.

This is also where transferred products land. Any product you transfer out that isn't part of a prepped recipe (a raw or finished item, such as to-go containers) is treated as a negative purchase — so it reduces the Purchases figure above rather than appearing as usage or as a sale.

Best practices

Getting accurate numbers comes down to a handful of setup steps — counting the right things, building your recipes correctly, and keeping recipes aligned with what you purchase. We've pulled those into their own article: Best Practices for Commissary Setup and Usage Tracking.