Price variation: which ingredients have gone up
All plans
Find out which ingredients have gone up or down over a period, check each one’s price history and get alerted to recipes that are becoming more expensive.
What it is for
The prices of butter, chocolate or eggs change every few weeks. If you don’t keep an eye on them, your margins shrink without you noticing. Recipok stores every price change of every ingredient and shows you at a glance what has gone up, by how much and since when.
It is used by whoever does the buying, to negotiate with suppliers using real figures, and by whoever sets selling prices, to know when it is time to review them. This article explains the variation report, each ingredient’s history and the alerts.
Before you start
- It is available on all plans. There is nothing to set up: recording starts as soon as you change a price.
- The more prices you update (by hand, through goods-in or by reading invoices), the more useful the report is.
The Price variation report
Go to Ingredients › Price variation. It only shows the ingredients whose price has changed in the chosen period, from the biggest rise to the biggest drop.
| Name | Supplier | Reference price | Current price | Variation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Butter | Lácteos Norte | €7.40/kg | €8.30/kg | 3+12.16 % |
| Dark couverture 70 % | Cacao Sur | €11.90/kg | €12.90/kg | +8.40 % |
| Egg | Granja El Prado | €0.23/unit | €0.22/unit | −4.35 % |
- 1Period: since yesterday, a week, a month, three months or a year.
- 2Summary with the biggest rises and drops, to get straight to the point.
- 3Variation as a percentage and, in another column, as an amount: rises in red, drops in green.
Choose the period and the movement
Period: Since yesterday, Since a week ago, a month, three months or a year. Movement: All, Rises or Drops. Tick Hide recipes to leave out the sub-recipes you use as ingredients.
Read the table
For each ingredient: name, supplier, brand, Reference price (the one that applied at the start of the period), Current price, Variation in amount and Variation as a percentage. Below the filters you will see the exact date it is compared with.
Take it to the meeting
Click Export to Excel to have the list in a spreadsheet and discuss it with your suppliers.
An ingredient’s history
Open an ingredient’s sheet and, in the Weight/price (Cost) tab, click View price history. You will see a table with the Date, Price and Variation of each change, and a chart showing how it has evolved. The same link appears when you review the lines of an invoice that has been read, so you can compare before confirming.
The arrows in the ingredient list
In Ingredients › My ingredients, next to each ingredient’s price there is an arrow with the percentage of its latest change:
| Colour | What it means |
|---|---|
| ↑ Red | It has risen by more than 2 %. |
| ↓ Green | It has fallen by 2 % or more. |
| Grey | Small change, between −2 % and +2 %. |
With the list’s Show price variation filter you can compare with the price yesterday, a week ago, a month ago, three months ago or a year ago.
The alert for recipes getting more expensive
On your dashboard, the Recipes with Cost Increase block lists the recipes that use an ingredient (directly or inside a sub-recipe) that is more than 5 % more expensive than 30 days ago. For each one it tells you how many ingredients have gone up and compares its current retail price with the one recommended by its margin. That way you know which selling prices to review without opening recipe after recipe. More in Selling price and margins.
Tips
Check the report once a month with the period “Since a month ago”. To update lots of prices at once from a supplier’s price list, use the price updater.