Prep Items are sub-recipes that make up menu items, such as caesar salad dressing or pasta sauce. Prep items are not purchased (except possibly from another of your entities), but can be inventoried; however, because you make prep items rather than buy them, the Produce Prep Items screen must be used to update their quantity and cost.
The Produce Prep Items screen shows a list that includes all prep items that are marked as Produced and marked either Inventoried or Order Counts on the Inventory Information tab of its Prep Items screen. For prep items to appear in this list, they must also have a station defined and checked as Primary on the Stations tab of its Prep Items screen.
Typically, when prep items are created, the prep cook will fill out the Prep Item Production Worksheet indicating how much of each item has been produced. The worksheet appears very much like this Produce Prep Items screen in which the worksheet information subsequently needs to be entered and posted. Both are grouped by station starting with the shortest shelf life.
This screen appears similar to the following:
Description of fields:
Prep Item #/Description Displays prep items defined in your system.
Station/Shelf Displays the (primary) station and shelf-life of the item.
Prod Qty Enter the quantity of the prep item that was produced. This is the number of production units as defined on the item's Prep Items screen. For example, if you are entering the quantity of caesar dressing with a production unit of quarts, make sure that you are not entering an inventory unit of pints. This column, not the Inv Qty column, depletes inventory (after multiplying by recipe quantities).
Inv Qty When you Tab or click from the Prod Qty column to the Inv Qty column, the equivalent inventory unit quantity fills in automatically, based on the equivalency defined for the Prep Item.
You can change the inventory quantity to reflect loss in the production process. If you do, the Yield column will show the percentage of inventory from production, and the "Inventory Unit Cost" field of the Prep Items screen's Inventory Information tab will change to a higher number that reflects the increased cost of production.
Production/Inventory Unit Displays the production unit or inventory units. These units are defined on the Prep Items screen.
Yield The percent yield of your production after it has been distributed into Inventory Units.
Yield = (Inv Qty/Prod Qty) x 100%.
This percentage is assumed to be 100% unless you modify the Inv Qty to reflect loss in the production process (see the Inv Qty field above).
Note: You should use this screen for all prep items, so that the inventory quantities of the ingredients that make up the prep item are maintained. For example, if you have caesar dressing as a prep item, when you create it, you might use anchovies. In order for the theoretical quantity on-hand of anchovies to be correct, it must be reduced each time you create caesar dressing.
Posting the produced prep items does the following:
Increases the theoretical quantity on-hand of each of the prep items.
Decreases the theoretical quantity on-hand of each of the ingredients of the prep item, using the following formula for each ingredient item:
# of inventory units decreased = (produced prep item quantity) * (quantity of ingredient's base units used in the recipe) / (quantity of base units per ingredient's inventory unit (possibly converted into the same class as the recipe unit))
Increases the inventory unit cost of the prep item if the production yield is less than 100%.
Credits the purchase accounts of the ingredients used to produce the prep items.
Debits the purchase accounts of the produced prep items.
If "Create GL entries for non-commissary prep productions" is checked under Other Definitions, posting a prep production will cause the system to credit the purchase accounts of each of the ingredients used in the recipe and debit the Prep Item expense account for the sum total of the ingredients used in production. Otherwise, no journal entry will be made for non-commissary prep item productions.
After posting, you will be given a batch control number of the post transaction. You can filter the Prep Item Production Register by this batch control number in order to review the transaction.
Note: Prep items that are marked as Produced get their costs from posted prep item productions, except in the case when a prep item is actually produced, in which case the cost is derived by adding up the costs of the ingredients.
The Unpost button allows you to delete all the records of a posting in the current entity. It will also reverse any journal entries that were created in the posting process.