Learn how to track your Stock by linking Ingredients to your Items and Modifiers
Linking Ingredients to Items
Welcome to our guide on Linking Ingredients! 👋
Linking Ingredients to Items on the Dines Stock system is the final step in making sure your Stock is tracked accurately. It involves specifying exact amounts on each Ingredient used per Item, and is crucial for running a well-organised stock system.
But fear not - we will walk you through everything you need to know below.
Please Note: Currently, Stock is in its “Early Access” phase, and can only be enabled/disabled at account level by Dines. With this in mind, please contact us at care@dines.co.uk if you would like to use Stock, and we’ll be delighted to activate it for you.
Now, let’s get started on linking Ingredients to your menu Items!
Before you proceed, it is recommended that you first add all of your Ingredients using the instructions in our “Creating Ingredients” article. This will save time and ensure that you have everything you need, as we’ll be moving away from the “Stock” section of the Dines dashboard for now.
Added your Ingredients? Great! Let’s head to your “Menu” by clicking the icon on the left, which is positioned above Stock.
Now, navigate to the “Items” tab at the top of the page, where you will see a full list of all the Items at your venue. The goal here is to link Ingredients to all of these Items. This way, when an Item is ordered, our Stock system will automatically deduct the correct amount from your inventory.
If you want to search for a specific Item, you can do so at the top of the page. See below where I am searching for my Fiery Inferno Burger, which I will be linking Ingredients to now.
To begin linking, we’re going to click on the Item, and then navigate to the “Ingredients” tab up top.
Now, we can see that there are currently “No Recipe Ingredients,” so we’ve got a fresh slate to work from. When you click on “Add Ingredients,” you will get a mini-window popping up, which features all of your Ingredients in alphabetical order. If you’ve got lots of Ingredients, you can use the Search bar at the top of the window.
Simply click on whatever Ingredients you wish to add to this Item. This will “tick” the box at the left of each one, indicating that it has been selected. Then, choose “Link Ingredients” at the bottom to finalise your choices.
The window will close automatically, and you will see your Ingredients listed below, with all of the information you have provided previously.
While mostly everything will be filled in, there is one column that requires our attention, to ensure our Stock is tracked accurately. This is the “Recipe QTY” column, where we are going to add the exact quantities needed for each Ingredient.
For example, on the Fiero Inferno, I have two beef patties, meaning that I will put the number “2” in the Recipe QTY, as my base unit is set to “Each.” Similarly, I will add 30g of Spicy Pepper Jack Cheese by entering “30” in the Recipe QTY column, since I specified earlier that this Item would be measured in grams (for more information, see the Units & Conversions” section in our “Creating Ingredients” article).
Follow the list all the way down to the bottom, and you’ll have something that resembles the below.
And that’s it! Please do remember to click “Save” at the bottom to ensure that your changes aren’t lost. You will need to do this for every Item you sell, but the good news is that you’ll only have to do it once, unless the Items for an Ingredient change in future.
NOTE: It is also possible to link ingredients to Modifiers! This can be achieved the exact same way as above, but with an extra step of navigating to “Modifier Sets” within each item, and then choosing the Modifier Set and Modifier you wish to link ingredients to.
This can be especially useful for situations where a modifier may add or remove ingredients from the original item. For example, if you have a modifier for “Remove Chipotle Mayo”, you can add Chipotle Mayo as an ingredient, and then change the Action to “Remove,” as seen below.
You can even choose how much of the ingredient to remove by editing the Stock Level on the same line. Here, you can choose to remove any percentage of the ingredient, allowing you to fully customise any item and ingredient to your liking.
Thank you for reading through our guide on Linking Ingredients. If you have any questions or feedback at all, or if there is a particular Knowledge Base article you’d like to see, please get in touch. You can reach us via email at care@dines.co.uk, or use our Live Chat and WhatsApp support services by clicking here.