FAQ’s: Frequently Asked Food Cost Questions

1. Click on the Countsheet Icon (clipboard), and click on the desired ountsheet type

2. Open your desired countsheet type from the listed options.

3. Within the open countsheet, check the box that says “show inactive items” on the top right hand corner of the countsheet. If the Inventory Item still does not populate, refer to the Inventory Item setup within the Food Cost Configuration to see if the Inventory Item is set to display on the selected countsheet type (shift, daily, weekly, monthly, etc.).

1. Click on the Food Cost Configuration icon (hamburger).

2. Select the Inventory Items tab.

3. Select/highlight the inventory item needing editing.

4. Click the Edit Inventory Item button at the bottom of the screen.

5. Within this window, you can edit the UOM, plus much more about the selected item.

The menu Item needs to be added to your POS system. Once we poll your POS data on our end, the new menu item will populate in the QSROnline Client.

1. Click on the Menu Icon.

2. Hover over Food Cost.

3. Click on Food Cost Comparision.  A Food Cost Comparison report will appear in a new window, displaying net sales by department, usage $, and usage % across all of your stores.

Negative actual food cost usage is a result of gaining inventory due to missing purchases, unmapped vendor items, or counting errors.

A negative variance cost is due to using less product that what your ideal food cost (menu item + recipe) called for. A negative variance cost can also indicate an incorrect inventory count or an issue with a recipe and/or product mix.

1. Click on the Food Cost Configuration icon (hamburger).

2. Select the Inventory Items tab.

3. Find the item you wish to delete, and highlight the row it is in.

4. Hit the delete key on your keyboard.

1. Click on the Menu Icon.

2. Hover over Food Cost.

3. Click on Recipe Editor.

4. Select the option to show Menu Items.

5. Find your Menu Item, and highlight the Inventory Item you wish to delete.

6. Hit the delete key on your keyboard.

*Please note that deleting an inventory item has the potential to affect historical inventory counts, food cost percentages, and recipes. For instance, if that deleted inventory item was previously counted on any countsheet or is mapped to recipes, those associated countsheets and recipes will be skewed because they will be lacking data (the deleted inventory item).

Menu items, such as LTO’s, old discounts, and specials that are no longer used or offered to customers can be removed from your menu items list. This is done through your POS system.

Find those old menu items within your POS system, and mark them as inactive. Do NOT delete them from your POS system. Deleting menu items within your POS system will only negatively affect your historical data within QSROnline.

Once the Vendor Items are mapped to the Inventory Items, the pricing in both the Recipe Editor and Countsheets will automatically update when a new invoice is received.

The tilde “~” symbol may sometimes be listed in front of a unit of measure on selected inventory items. For example, if you have salad dressing as an inventory item, and its smallest unit of measure is ounce, ounce may be written as “~ounce.” When a tilde symbol is written in front of a unit of measure, it means that the unit of measure will not be listed on your countsheets. Therefore, if you only wanted to count your salad dressings by bottle or each, you could take ounce off of your countsheet by listing it as “~ounce.”

By default, QSROnline only displays countsheets created in the last 14 days. If you are looking for a countsheet created prior to those 14 days, you can easily find it by altering your date ranges at the top right of the window.