Even if you do not use the POS Polling features of Compeat to import menu sales mix information, you can still perform actual costing in Compeat. The theoretical costing that POS polling of sales mix data brings into the system simply enhances your ability to track inventory, and adjustments you make to your inventory to account for things like inter-store transfers and waste/donations enhances theoretical costing yet again. In this manner, Compeat inventory is as extensible as the detail with which you set it up.
Regardless of the scope of your inventory needs, set up Compeat inventory in the following order:
I. Enterprise-Wide Steps:
These company- or enterprise-wide steps all involve making master lists and settings that are then made available to each of your entities.
Standard Units of Measure The Standard Units of Measure screen contains all of the system's unit-of-measure definitions — both built-in, predefined UOMs, and any others you care to define.
Containers, Purchase Unit Options, Locations, and Stations are master lists of names available for use by all entities; Purchase Unit Options sets how descriptions of purchase units will be presented system-wide.
Inventory Item Levels and Menu Item Level definitions categorize item groups for reporting purposes. Inventory item level 1 & 2 definitions are tied to GL account numbers and thus affect actual costs; menu item level definitions are for sales mix reporting and theoretical costing only.
Master Inventory Items This is where you define general attributes of all of the items that may be inventoried by any of your entities. Creating a central list enables all of the restaurants in your organization to be working from the same base, establishing company-wide consistency of GL accounts and recipes.
II. Entity-Specific Steps:
Setting Original Beginning Inventory Values Inventory journal entries have beginning and ending values, so you should post a Valuation Count to generate the ending values of the first journal entry, then manually enter original beginning values in the Inventory JE screen, which allows you to enter this information the first time it is opened.
Though both Prep Items and Menu Items are defined on an enterprise-wide basis, their cost information is entity-specific, since the cost of making or buying menu ingredients varies from place to place. Menu item definition, and sometimes prep item definition as well, is often done at a central location, with restaurants granted read-only access.
Restaurant Inventory Items The final necessary step in getting inventory up and running is to specify item detail for each individual restaurant. Restaurant inventory items are a subset of the master item list, and deleting them only deletes the detail information, not the item from the master list.
III. Optional Steps:
Inventory Adjustments You have the option of improving the accounting accuracy of your inventory system by setting it up to reconcile reductions to inventory for events other than sales, such as waste, donations, and inter-store transfer of goods.
Portioning You have the option to portion bulk items into as many resulting items as you wish to define. Both the item to be portioned and the resulting portioned items need to be defined on both the master and restaurant levels in order for full accounting to be registered.