Inventory Management
Auto Consumption
Account for ingredients you can't practically track through recipes, without them showing as a negative variance at the end of every stock period.
In this article
Introduction
Tracking the consumption of every F&B ingredient isn't always possible, or worth the effort. For example:
Soft drinks with unlimited refills
You can't link each pour to a sale, so recipe-based consumption won't be accurate.
Small quantities used across many recipes
Adding ingredients such as salt to every recipe takes time and adds little accuracy.
This is where Auto Consumption helps.
You receive, transfer, waste and count the product as normal, but you don't need to add it to any recipes. At the end of the stock period, any shortfall between the expected and counted quantity is assumed to have been used through normal sales. Rather than appearing as a negative variance, that shortfall is recorded as sales consumption, and the variance shows as zero.
Using both methods
A product can also be used both ways. You can include it in some recipes, for example for recipe costing, and any remaining shortfall is still treated as Auto Consumption.
Configuration
1
Turn on the feature for your company
Go to Company Settings > Company > Inventory Management and switch on Enable Auto Consumption.
2
Set up the Auto Consumption product
When you turn the feature on, you'll be asked to set up an Auto Consumption product. This is what the Auto Consumption stock movements are recorded against when a period is approved.
3
Flag your products
For each Supplied type product you want to include, go to Product Management > Products > Product Details and switch on Enable Auto Consumption.
Period Results
In period reporting, products flagged for Auto Consumption no longer show a negative variance when the counted quantity is lower than expected. Instead, the difference is added to the product's Sales value.
The Period Variance report has a new Auto Consumption filter. Use it to show all products, only Auto Consumption products, or everything except Auto Consumption products. Select a value in the Sales column to see how much consumption came from standard sales and how much was assumed.
Auto Consumption reduces your theoretical margin in the same way as standard sales consumption. The Margin & Stock KPIs report shows Auto Consumption separately, so you can see how much of your consumption was recorded through sales and how much was assumed.
Positive variances
If a product flagged for Auto Consumption has a positive variance, you've counted more than the system expected. There's no shortfall to treat as consumption, so the positive variance shows as normal.