Inventory, purchasing & waste

What it is

Inventory in NexDine is the whole back-of-house loop: stock levels that move as you sell, prep sheets for the kitchen, a waste log with real reasons, a supplier directory, and purchase orders from draft to received. COGS reads all of it and tells you what your food actually cost — not what the spreadsheet hoped.

What problem it solves

Stock counted in a spreadsheet is wrong by Tuesday. Ordering happens from memory, waste goes in the bin unmeasured, and the true cost of goods is discovered at BAS time, if ever. When stock, purchasing and waste live where the sales happen, the numbers reconcile themselves.

How it works

1. The inventory workbench tracks every item with its stock level and cost, tabbed alongside suppliers, purchase orders, recipes and the movement ledger. Every change is a recorded movement with a reason — sold on an order, received on a PO, manual adjustment, or waste — and low-stock items surface on their own panel.

2. COGS compares theoretical cost (what recipes say you should have used) against actual cost (what stock movements say you did use) per period, and ranks items by variance — so the gap between the two is a to-do list, not a mystery.

3. Prep sheets tell the kitchen what to prepare before service. Each sheet moves from generated through review to complete, and each line is ticked off as pending, in progress, prepped, skipped or extra.

4. Purchasing runs on a proper lifecycle: draft the purchase order, send it to the supplier, receive it in full or in part, then close it. Individual lines can be cancelled with a reason, and a received PO can link to its bill. The ordering page goes one step further — it drafts supplier orders for you based on your stock position, and one click converts a draft into a purchase order.

5. Waste is logged in seconds with a reason (spoilage, over-prep, expiry, staff error, trim loss and more) and a category from raw ingredient to packaging. The dashboard shows cost today, entries, even estimated CO₂, with breakdowns by reason, branch and item — and every entry feeds true COGS.

Everything inside the system

• Live stock levels with a full movement ledger and reasons on every adjustment.
• Low-stock visibility and AI-assisted supplier order drafts that convert straight into purchase orders.
• COGS with theoretical vs actual vs variance, by period.
• Prep sheets with per-sheet and per-item status tracking.
• Waste log with reasons, categories, cost and CO₂ estimates, and reporting by reason, branch and item.
• Supplier directory and purchase orders with a full lifecycle: draft, sent, partially received, received, closed, cancelled.

This is built into NexDine — there is no separate inventory or purchasing tool to buy. Stock moves with the same orders your venue takes, and COGS reads the same waste and purchasing your team records.