Aspect Software

 

Back-office software for Restaurateurs

 
 
 

Inventory Setup

 

(Revised 04-12-2000)


 

Before you begin using Aspect to calculate your inventory cost, you need to set up your inventory by entering inventory groups, vendors and inventory items. If you have been using another software package to manage your inventory, it may be useful to print a list of vendors and inventory items from that package to help you during the setup. Otherwise, you will need to have some recent invoices handy since you will need to enter a starting price for each inventory item.


 

Subject

Description

Inventory Groups


This option is used to enter names for the groups you will use to organize your inventory.

Inventory items are generally organized into groups such as meat, dairy, produce, dry goods, etc. You may also have groups that will contain liquor, beer and wine items.

Before you can begin entering the items in your inventory, you need to enter names for the groups you will use to organize your inventory. To do this, select Settings / Inventory Setup / Inventory Groups. You should see four groups - Food, Bar, Operating and Group 4. These are the default groups for a restaurant. (Group 4 is typically unused except for very large inventories). Each new group that you enter will be assigned to one of the 3 main groups.

To enter a group, select Edit / Insert Record or press the INS key. Enter a name for the group and press the tab key. Next, assign the group to Food, Bar or Operating. You do not need to enter a code for the group unless you will be exporting information to an accounting package. If so, enter the G/L account number for the group.

The last thing you need to do when entering a group is to enter one or more sales links. These sales links are used to calculate the cost percentage of each group in the cost of sales report. Food groups will all have one sales link named Actual Food. If you enter a Liquor group, it will also have one sales link named Actual Liquor. Enter sales links for the Beer and Wine groups in a similar fashion.

Make sure to edit each of the 3 main groups (Food, Bar and Operating) and enter sales links for these groups as well. The Food group will use one sales link named Actual Food. The Bar group will use three sales links - Actual Liquor, Actual Beer and Actual Wine. This is because the Bar cost percent will be calculated as a percent of total bar sales. You might also include groups named Non-Alcoholic Beverage and Bar Supplies under the main Bar group. If so, the sales links you choose for these groups will depend on how your point-of-sale system is set up. The Operating group generally uses one sales link named Net Sales since operating cost percentages are usually calculated as a percent of net sales.

If you wish to be very detailed in your inventory reports, it is possible to create additional groups to break down your inventory even further. For example, you might enter a group named Beer and assign it to the main Bar group. Then, you might enter two more groups named Domestic Beer and Import Beer. Each of these groups would be assigned to the Beer group that you entered. Your cost of sales report would then show totals for domestic and imported beers in addition to a total beer cost.

Vendors

Once you have set up your inventory groups, select Settings / Inventory Setup / Edit Vendors to enter vendors.

Select Edit / Insert Record or press the INS key to insert a vendor. The only information required is the vendor name. If you will be exporting invoices to an accounting package, you should also fill in the code for each vendor using the codes from your accounting package.

Inventory Items


Once you've set up your inventory groups and vendors, you are ready to begin entering inventory items.


If you already have an inventory list of some sort, you can enter the items from that list. Otherwise, you may need to refer to past invoices to build your list and to obtain current prices for each item.

Select Inventory / Edit Inventory Items to begin entering inventory items. You will need to supply six pieces of information for each item:

- The name of the item

- The inventory group that the item belongs to

- The size that you count the item by

- The vendor(s) that supply you with the item

- The size that you purchase the item by

- The price that you last paid for the item

Make sure to enter the price of the item in terms of the purchase size. For example, if you count a beer by the bottle and purchase it by the case, make sure to enter the case price as the purchase price - not the bottle price.

When you press Ok to save the item, you may be asked to enter a conversion if the count size and purchase size for the item are not the same. As in the previous example, you might purchase a beer by the case and count it by the bottle. After you select Ok, you will be asked to supply the number of bottles in a case. If you do not know the answer, you may press Cancel. However, Aspect will continue to ask for the missing conversion each time the inventory item is used in a calculation.

If you make a mistake entering the conversion, you can press the right mouse button on the item and select Conversions from the pop-up menu to make corrections. Each value in the conversions window must be equal to every other value. For example, 1 case might equal 24 bottles which might equal 288 (12oz x 24 bottles) fluid ounces.

Continue selecting Edit / Insert Record or pressing the INS key to enter all items in your inventory. Double-click an existing item or select Edit / Edit Record if you need to correct a mistake in an item that you have already entered.