Variance report

The Variance tab compares two numbers for each product over a period:

• Theoretical usage is what you should have used. Rinvy takes your sales and multiplies them by your recipes.
• Actual usage is what left your stock. Rinvy takes the stock at the start, adds what you received, and takes away the stock at the end.

The difference is the variance. The direct link is /reports?type=variance.

What you need

• Sales data for the period. Sync it from Toast or upload a sales file. See upload sales data. With no sales in the period, the report says No sales data for this period.
• A recipe for each menu item you sell. A menu item with no recipe has no theoretical usage.
• Counts at the start and the end of the period. Without them, actual usage has no reliable start or end.

Pick a period that starts and ends on a count day. Dates use your restaurant's timezone.

How it is calculated

theoretical usage = units sold × recipe amount per sale
actual usage      = stock at start + received − stock at end
variance          = actual usage − theoretical usage

Stock at the start is the last stock balance before the period. If there is none, Rinvy uses the first balance inside the period. If the product has no balance at all, stock at the start is 0. Stock at the end is the last balance at or before the end of the period. Waste is not subtracted. Waste is part of actual usage, and it shows as variance.

Rinvy converts each dollar amount at the product's cost for the period. Products are sorted by the size of the dollar gap, whichever way it goes. A large shortfall and a large overage rank next to each other.

The recipe as of each day

If you edit a recipe, the report uses the old recipe for the days before the edit and the new recipe from the day of the edit. A fix to a wrong recipe therefore does not change earlier days. Gaps before the fix stay in the report, so fix a wrong recipe as early as you can.

Combos

Rinvy splits a combo sale into its parts before it applies recipes. Each part counts once per combo sale for each unit of it in the combo. One "2 tacos + drink" sale counts as two taco sales and one drink sale.

House-made products

When you prep a recipe, the batch uses its ingredients and makes a house-made product. Rinvy adds the prep to both sides:

• The ingredients get the amount the batches should use.
• The house-made product gets back what the prep made. If the prep log has an actual yield, Rinvy uses it. If not, it uses batches times the recipe yield.

Linked products

A linked product is a prep step that turns one product into another, for example frozen bacon into thawed bacon. Rinvy folds the usage of the linked product back into the source product, at the rate of the prep recipe. You see one row for bacon, not two.

Some products are not in this report:

• Auto-tracked products. Their stock comes from sales, so their variance is always zero.
• Status-tracked products (OK, Low, Out). They have no quantity to compare.
• Products you mark as not inventoried.

What the report shows

• Theoretical Cost and Actual Cost are the dollar totals of the two usages.
• Total Variance is red when you used more than expected and green when you used less.
• Variance % is total variance divided by theoretical cost.
• Top Variance Products lists the 20 products with the largest dollar gap. Select one to open its Product report.
• Warnings lists menu items with no recipe and unit conversions that failed.

On Standard and Pro, Export CSV saves every product, not only the top 20.

Reading the gap

A positive variance means more stock left than your sales explain. The usual causes are waste that nobody logged, larger portions than the recipe, a recipe that is wrong, a missed receipt at the end, or theft. A negative variance usually means a missing receipt, a recipe amount that is too high, or a count error.