The CoGS Dashboard

Analyze and compare theoretical costs with actual inventory expenditures to pinpoint loss sources and optimize your stock management efficiency.

The CoGS Dashboard offers a vital tool for the business manager or decision-maker, to oversee and analyze the financial aspects of inventory management. It brings together key financial data, helping you analyze your business's profitability. The main focus of the dashboard is the comparison between theoretical and actual Costs of Goods Sold (CoGS). It presents the value of incoming inventory to compare with the outgoing CoGS, assessing inventory management efficiency. Let’s quickly recap our definition of these concepts:

• Theoretical CoGS: the cost of the recipes you sold in an ideal situation. That means, this assumes a situation where staff followed the recipe quantities and indications robotically, no waste was generated and there were no uncontrolled losses of stock. In a nutshell, these are the costs of the ingredients just as written in your recipes in Apicbase.
• Actual CoGS: a more realistic picture of the costs, where we aggregate the Theoretical costs (from standard recipes) with the costs related to Waste and Count Variance (uncontrolled stock).
  • Count Variance (Uncontrolled Stock): it’s worth mentioning that the count variance stands for the difference between the theoretical stock (what was expected by Apicbase at the moment of a count) and the actual stock (what is counted and therefore, the reality). This difference stands for the so-called “uncontrolled” stock, that is the part of the stock that is missing (or exceeding) and over which we don’t have control or information about its origin.
• Incoming Inventory: normally simply defined as any positive movement, or addition, of the stock of an item. In this dashboard, mainly Received Orders and Incoming Transfers are displayed.

By bringing together these indicators, the dashboard allows you to closely monitor and analyze the gap between theoretical and actual CoGS in your food and beverages. Understanding this gap is vital, as it directly impacts profitability. The dashboard specifically helps you investigate which products contribute most to any discrepancies, allowing you to identify and address inefficiencies in specific areas. By focusing on minimizing these gaps, you can refine your cost management practices and enhance your operation's overall financial health.

Let’s go over the different sections of the Dashboard to clarify what can be found in each of them.

1. Revenue

The short top section displays the total monetary income (tax excluded) (including PoS and Manual Sales) over the selected period, both in a unique figure and split by month, providing a clear snapshot of your business's performance before expenses are subtracted. Monitoring this helps you understand the overall financial health of your operation and lays the groundwork for deeper cost analysis.

Next to this section, you will find the Filters for Period and Outlets, that will affect the data displayed in the whole dashboard. Make sure you correctly use these filters before starting your data analysis.

2. Theoretical CoGS

In this section, you'll find estimated costs that are associated with producing the goods you've sold, calculated under ideal conditions with no losses. This estimation helps you set a benchmark for what your costs should ideally be, allowing you to identify where unexpected expenses may be occurring when compared with actual costs.

This Theoretical CoGS are displayed as a unique main figure, per month, per outlet, and per single sales item (PLU) clustered by PoS category. It also includes a chart regarding your overall PoS linking coverage (percentage of your PoS items linked to recipes), as an indication of the completeness of the calculated CoGS (e.g. if only 50% of your PoS items are linked, Apicbase would only calculate the cost for that part of your sales). Manual sales are also included in the calculations but appear in the last chart as PoS category N/A.

3. Actual CoGS

This is the key section of the dashboard, where Apicbase shows the true costs you've incurred, including the factors of Waste and Count Variance. This part is crucial for understanding the real expenditures of your business, providing a direct comparison to the theoretical costs displayed above. Observing discrepancies here can highlight inefficiencies and guide you toward specific areas where you can implement cost-saving measures.

The Actual CoGS are displayed similarly to the Theoretical ones above: a main figure, followed by the charts per month and per outlet, all of these including the distribution of the costs between Sales (both PoS or Manual, that is the theoretical cost), Waste and Count Variance. This is followed by a distribution of the Inventory Value among the different ingredients, at the end of the selected period, clustered by accounting category.

Next to this section, you will find filters for Ingredient Name and Accounting Category (bound to ingredients). It’s important to notice that this section takes data per ingredient and not per PoS item. Since here we are also including Waste and Count Variance, these terms are not related to recipes sold, but to ingredients being counted/moved out of stock. For this reason, the filters here will only affect this and the following section, but not the previous Theoretical CoGS.

4. Incoming Inventory Value (Delivery and Transfer)

Lastly, this segment tracks the value of inventory coming into your business, both from supplier deliveries and transfers between outlets. This information is key to comparing with the outgoing CoGS and assessing inventory management efficiency. Assuming a closed balance between incoming and outgoing stock, we should expect similar figures for this and the previous section.

Data in this section is displayed exactly as in the previous, with a main figure, with its distribution among orders received and Transfers, then per month, per outlet, and per individual ingredient.