Catering inventory that updates itself
Stock goes up when you upload a vendor invoice and comes down when an event is confirmed. You are not keeping a second set of books — the numbers move because the work moved.
Why most kitchen inventory goes stale in a fortnight
Inventory systems fail for one reason: they ask somebody to type in what came in and what went out, every day, forever. In a kitchen that person does not exist. Two weeks later the numbers are wrong, and wrong numbers are worse than none, because you stop trusting them and keep ordering by eye anyway.
So the only inventory worth having is one that updates as a side effect of work you were already doing.
What moves the numbers
In — upload a vendor invoice. The lines are read, stock goes up, and your cost per unit updates. A supplier price that has crept up gets flagged, which is the increase most kitchens only notice at the end of the quarter.
Out — confirm an event. The menu's recipes are scaled to the headcount, consolidated across every event that day, and taken off the shelf.
Held — a quote reserves the food without taking it. Twenty kilos of lamb with eighteen promised to open quotes is two kilos as far as the next job is concerned, and low stock counts it that way. Cancel the event and both the hold and the deduction come back.
What it tells you
Total items, what is below its reorder point, what is expiring, and what the stock on hand is worth. The low-stock figure is the one that matters, because it is the one that decides whether Saturday is a problem.
Questions people ask
Do I have to count stock every week?
No. Stock moves when you upload a vendor invoice and when you confirm an event. A count is something you do to correct drift, not to run the system.
What happens if an event is cancelled?
The food goes back. A cancelled event restores both the deduction and any hold a quote was carrying, so the shelf reads the same as it did before.
Does a quote take stock off the shelf?
No — a quote holds it. The food is reserved so the next job does not double-book it, but it is only deducted when the event is confirmed.
Ten minutes gets a real event in — your menu, your prices, a quote you could send. The 14-day trial takes no credit card.