Adding and Managing Ingredients
Add ingredients with cost, unit, supplier, and stock levels to track your bakery inventory.
What You'll Learn
- How to add ingredients with accurate costs
- Why cost precision matters
- Common mistakes that break recipe costing
Why Ingredients Are the Foundation
Ingredients are the foundation of everything in BakeOnyx — recipe costs, inventory tracking, purchase orders, and profit calculations all start here. If your ingredients are wrong, everything downstream is wrong too.
Adding an Ingredient
- Go to Ingredients → Add New
- Name: e.g., "Unsalted Butter"
- Unit: The base unit you track stock in (g, kg, ml, L, oz, lb, or pcs)
- Cost per unit: What you pay per base unit (e.g., $0.005 per gram)
- Category: Dairy, Flour, Sugar, Chocolate, etc.
- Reorder point: Stock level that triggers a low-stock alert
Cost Precision Matters
If you buy 2.5kg of butter for $12.50, that's $0.005 per gram. This precision matters when costs add up across 20 ingredients in a recipe. A $0.001 rounding error per gram becomes $0.50 per kg — significant at scale.
Common Mistakes
- Not setting cost per unit — recipes will show $0 cost
- Wrong unit — if your recipe uses grams but your ingredient is in kilograms, ensure unit conversion is set up
- Forgetting reorder points — you won't get low-stock alerts without them
Linking to Suppliers
Optionally link each ingredient to a supplier. This powers purchase orders — when stock is low, BakeOnyx knows which supplier to order from and can auto-suggest draft POs.
Next Steps
- Master Ingredient Library — import 80+ common ingredients in seconds
- Stock Tracking and Alerts — monitor levels and get notifications
- Understanding Recipe Costing — how ingredient costs flow to recipes
Cost Changes Now Cascade to Products (Spec 039)
As of Spec 039 Phase 4, editing an ingredient's cost per unit automatically cascades:
- All recipes using this ingredient recompute
Recipe.cost - All products linked to those recipes recompute
Product.cost - A margin check runs — if any product is now below your target margin (default 60%), you get an email (Growth+ tier, max one per bakery per day) and a dashboard banner appears
This means: update an ingredient cost once, and you'll immediately see accurate pricing across your catalogue — plus an alert if anything dropped below profitability.
The summary, FAQ, and statistics in this section were compiled from public sources and reviewed by the BakeOnyx editorial team. AI-assisted research.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I add a new ingredient in BakeOnyx?▾
To add a new ingredient in BakeOnyx, navigate to 'Ingredients' and select 'Add New'. You'll need to provide the ingredient's name, its base unit of measure (like grams, kilograms, or pieces), the cost per unit, a category (e.g., Dairy, Flour), and optionally, a reorder point for low-stock alerts. Using the Master Ingredient Library can pre-fill many common ingredients.
Why is precise cost per unit important for ingredients?▾
Precise cost per unit is vital because even small rounding errors can significantly impact your overall recipe and product costs, especially when dealing with multiple ingredients. For example, a $0.001 per gram error on butter can amount to $0.50 per kilogram, which becomes substantial at scale. Accurate ingredient costing ensures your pricing reflects true expenses.
What happens if I don't set the cost per unit for an ingredient?▾
If you don't set the cost per unit for an ingredient in BakeOnyx, any recipes that use it will display a $0 cost. This will lead to inaccurate recipe costing and, consequently, incorrect profit calculations for all products derived from those recipes. It's essential for accurate financial reporting and pricing strategies.
How does BakeOnyx handle unit conversions for ingredients?▾
BakeOnyx allows you to set a base unit for tracking inventory (e.g., grams) and a different unit for purchasing or recipes (e.g., kilograms). You must ensure that unit conversions are correctly configured within the system. This prevents errors when calculating recipe costs if the ingredient's tracked unit differs from its usage unit.
What is the Master Ingredient Library in BakeOnyx?▾
The Master Ingredient Library is a feature within BakeOnyx that provides over 80 common baking ingredients with pre-set units and categories. This significantly speeds up the process of adding new ingredients, as you only need to input your specific local cost per unit and any desired reorder points, rather than setting up everything from scratch.
How does editing an ingredient cost affect my products in BakeOnyx?▾
According to Spec 039, editing an ingredient's cost per unit in BakeOnyx automatically recalculates the cost for all associated recipes and linked products. It also triggers a margin check. If a product's profit margin falls below your target (default 60%), you'll receive an email alert and see a notification on your dashboard.