Your first recipe with Iris
Iris can walk you from "I make this" to "here's what it costs" to a first real batch, all in one place. It takes about fifteen minutes the first time, and you can stop whenever you like.
You'll find it on Production → Recipes: choose Set it up with Iris (next to New Recipe, and in the empty list when you have no recipes yet). If you'd rather use the usual recipe screen, choose Set it up by hand. The Recipe step of the setup checklist on your dashboard opens it too.
You need the production module turned on, and to be an owner or admin (or have a role that can manage recipes).
You can stop at any step with Save and finish later. Your setup waits under Production → Recipes → Set it up with Iris, and everything you've saved so far is already on the usual screens.
1. What you make
- The product. Search for the thing you sell, or choose Add a new product and give it a name, a code (SKU), a unit and a price. Iris suggests a code; change it if you like. If that product already has a recipe, Iris opens it instead, because a product can have only one.
- The batch. Say how much one batch makes: "this recipe makes 24 jars". The unit is the product's own unit.
- Import a recipe. If you have the recipe in a file, choose Import a recipe. Iris reads it and fills in the name, the batch size and the ingredients she can match to your products. Nothing is saved until you choose Next, and any ingredient she couldn't match is left for the next step.
2. What goes in
- Ingredients. Add one row for each ingredient. Search your products and supplies, or choose Add a new ingredient (a name, a code and the unit you count it in, like grams or pieces).
- How much. Each row says how much goes in and how it scales:
- Per batch: the amount for one whole batch, and it grows when you make more batches.
- Per run: a fixed amount every time you make a run, however big (a pan you grease, a tray you line).
- Per operator per hour: an amount that depends on how many people work and for how long.
- Made in-house. If an ingredient is something you make yourself, like a sauce or a dough, tick I make this one myself. Then choose Set up this one too and Iris takes you through its recipe, then back to where you were.
The rounding check
Iraca counts stock to four decimal places, and a sale takes exactly what your recipe says. That works well until a recipe asks for a very small amount of an ingredient you count in a big unit.
Here's the problem in plain words. Say you count saffron in kilograms and your recipe uses 1 gram for 24 jars. One whole batch takes 0.001 kg, which is fine. But if you sell a single jar from ingredients, it should take about 0.00004 kg, and stock can't hold an amount that small. So that sale takes nothing from the saffron, and your stock slowly drifts away from what's really on the shelf.
For every line, Iris shows what it takes out of stock for one batch and for selling one, and tells you when it's off:
- Fine: it comes out right.
- Rounds to nothing: it takes zero. Fix this one.
- Rounds off: it takes more than 10% more or less than the recipe says.
The fix is to count that ingredient in a smaller unit, such as grams instead of kilograms. Choose Change this ingredient's stock unit. You can do that only while the ingredient has no stock and has never moved in or out, because changing the unit of stock you already hold would mean converting your history. If it already has stock, Iris says so, and you can leave the line as it is, knowing small sales of it won't be tracked exactly.
It's a warning, not a block: you can carry on.
3. What it costs
- Ingredient costs. Type each ingredient's cost per unit, or enter what you pay for a pack ("$18.99 for a box of 500") and Iris works out the cost of one piece. Costs are stored to four decimal places, so a very small amount is shown exactly but saved rounded.
- Ingredients with no cost are flagged. A blank counts as free, so the cost of your product would look lower than it really is. You can carry on, but Iris won't show a cost per unit until every ingredient has one.
- Labour and overhead. Optional: what each finished unit costs in work and in running costs.
- Cost per unit and margin. Iris adds it up with the same calculation the recipe screen uses, and sets it beside your price.
- Preferred suppliers. Optional: pick who you buy each ingredient from, so your reorder suggestions group them by supplier.
Nothing in this part touches your stock or your books.
4. Make a batch
This part is optional. You can finish after the costs and make your first batch later, from Production.
- Do you have the ingredients? Iris compares what one run needs with what's in your warehouse. For anything short, choose Receive some now to add stock (a lot number is required for lot-tracked ingredients), or Create purchase order to order it.
- Make it. Choose how many batches and where you make them, then Start the run. When it's done, enter what you actually made and choose Finish the run.
Starting a run takes the ingredients out of stock, and finishing it adds the finished product and posts the cost to your books. These are the ordinary production run steps, so the run shows up on the usual Production screens like any other. Nothing moves until you tap.
Finishing
When you choose Finish setup, Iris shows what was made and suggests next steps: a nutrition profile and label, a production plan, and the Ingredients Sold report. Iris never fills in allergens for you.
Starting over
Start over removes only what this setup created and nothing has used yet:
- A recipe goes only if no production run has ever used it.
- A product or ingredient the setup created goes only if it has no stock, no stock movements, no orders and isn't in another recipe.
- A batch you started is never touched, and neither is anything it used or made.
Anything you already had before starting stays exactly as it was.