Welcome! This guide will walk you through everything you can do with Restaurant Costing.
We've written it so anyone can follow along — no technical experience needed.
Restaurant Costing (RC for short) is a tool that helps you:
Think of it as the brain behind your kitchen. Once your ingredients and recipes are in the system, RC does all the math for you.
When you first log in, you'll land on the Dashboard.
This is your home screen. It shows a quick snapshot of your data:
From here, you can click Manage under any section to jump straight there.
Tip: The version number (e.g. v1.2.0) is shown at the top of every page — useful if you ever need support.
Ingredients are the building blocks of everything. Every item you buy — from salt to steak — lives here.
Go to Restaurant Costing → Ingredients in the left menu.
You'll see a list of all your ingredients with:
| Field | What to put |
|---|---|
| Name | The ingredient name (e.g. "Chicken breast, raw") |
| Product Type | What category it belongs to. Click the + to add a new type |
| Supplier | Who you buy it from. Click the + to add a new supplier |
| Area | Where it's stored (e.g. "Walk-in Cooler"). Click + to add |
| Reference unit | Is it weighed in g (grams), ml (millilitres), or counted as ea (each)? |
| Product Size | The package size you buy (e.g. "1 kg" or "4 L") |
| Weight | How much one reference unit weighs in grams |
| Package size (qty) | How many units are in the package you buy |
| Package cost | What you pay for the whole package |
| Food cost | What one unit costs (click Calculate to auto-fill from package cost ÷ size × weight) |
| Min Level | The lowest stock level before you should reorder |
Tip: Don't know the food cost? Fill in the Package Cost and Package Size, then click Calculate — it does the math for you.
Click any ingredient name in the list to open it. Make your changes and click Save.
Open the ingredient, scroll to the bottom of the window, and click the red Delete button.
It will ask you to confirm — this prevents accidental deletions.
Click Copy to New at the bottom of the ingredient window. This creates a duplicate you can tweak — handy when ingredients are similar.
For each ingredient, you can enter nutrition details per 100g (or per reference amount):
These are used later when calculating recipe nutrition.
Use the Filters bar above the ingredient list to narrow things down:
Some ingredients aren't bought — they're made. For example, "Caesar Dressing" might be a recipe you make.
These are called Sub-Recipes. They show a checked box in the Sub Recipe column.
When you open a sub-recipe ingredient, most fields are locked — RC calculates the cost automatically from the original recipe.
Click Edit Source Recipe → to go to the recipe and make changes.
This is the heart of RC. Recipes calculate exactly what each dish costs to make.
Go to Restaurant Costing → Recipes.
You'll see a list with:
On the right side of the recipe editor, you'll see a summary:
Note: If an ingredient is missing nutrition data, you'll see a red warning. The nutrition numbers won't be accurate until you fill in the missing info on that ingredient.
If a recipe is also used as an ingredient in other recipes (like a sauce or dressing), check Add as Ingredient near the recipe name.
This makes the recipe available as an ingredient everywhere else, with its cost and weight calculated automatically.
To see what a recipe costs at different portion sizes:
Click Print next to any recipe in the list. This opens a clean printer-friendly view.
Open the recipe and click Set Inactive at the top. Inactive recipes are hidden from most lists (you can check "Show Inactive" to see them).
Inventory helps you track what you have in stock and what you need to order.
The Inventory list shows all your past counts with the date.
Click Edit to review or change a past inventory, Delete to remove it, or Print/Order to generate order sheets.
The Print/Order window groups items by supplier, so you can:
Suppliers marked "Email Orders" will show a Resend Order button instead of Print.
Tip: Check Do Not Print Empty Rows to skip suppliers with no items to order.
Click Edit Areas on the Inventory page to manage your storage locations. Areas help organize your inventory counts.
Go to Restaurant Costing → Settings to adjust how RC works.
Quick access to:
See the Backup & Restore section below.
Click these buttons to see information about the plugin, what changed in each version, the license agreement, or this manual.
Making regular backups is important. RC makes it easy.
.sql.gz file will download — this is a compressed copy of all your dataWarning: Restoring replaces ALL your current data. There's no undo.
.sql.gz backupIf you have ingredient data in a spreadsheet, you can import it:
On the Suppliers page, click Export CSV at the bottom to download your supplier list.
RC has three user levels:
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Manager | View ingredients, recipes, inventory. Run reports and print orders |
| User | Basic access — view recipes and ingredients |
| Admin | Full control — everything including settings, users, and deleting data |
Users are managed in Settings → Manage Users.
Only Admins can add, edit, or remove users.
Q: I added an ingredient but it doesn't show up in the recipe search.
A: Make sure the ingredient has a name and was saved. Try refreshing the page.
Q: The nutrition numbers look wrong.
A: Check that all ingredients in the recipe have their nutrition info filled in. If any are missing, you'll see a red warning message.
Q: I deleted something by accident.
A: If you have a backup, you can restore it. Otherwise, you'll need to re-enter the data.
Q: How do I change my restaurant name / logo / contact info?
A: Go to Settings → Management → My Restaurant Info.
Q: I added a Menu Type but it doesn't appear on the recipe page.
A: Refresh the page. Menu Types appear in the dropdown when adding/editing a recipe.
Q: My recipe says "Not accurate" in red.
A: This means one or more ingredients are missing nutrition data. Edit the ingredient and add its nutrition info.
Q: How do I hide nutrition if I don't need it?
A: Go to Settings → Display Settings and check Hide Nutrition.
Q: Can I use RC on my phone?
A: Yes — the inventory entry page is designed to work well on phones for counting stock on the go.