What is a commissary / production kitchen account?
If you run a production kitchen, CPU, warehouse, wholesale business, etc. a commissary account in MarketMan, will help you with everything you need to manage and track inventory.
MarketMan Commissary allows you to easily manage your own production, ordering, and inventory, while simultaneously managing your customers' orders and requests.
Each step below is hyperlinked with corresponding articles to help you along the way. If you need anything at all please reach out to us at support@marketman.com
1. Inventory items
- Firstly gather all your inventory items from your suppliers- you'll need the name of the item, product code, price, UOM, Unit Qty, Num of items in a pack, and the category
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Once you are ready to add this information into MarketMan, there are two methods:
In bulk, via Excel upload (= we help you with that when you start your account!)
Or one by one (= best for last-minute and ongoing additions!)
You'll be able to add the sale information at the same time! This is especially great for any retail items, or items that you buy at the commissary, and just turn around and sell. - After items are in, you may want to edit them!
If you buy an item in multiple sizes, or from multiple suppliers, you should merge them together.
If the UOM you want for your recipes is different than the UOM you buy it, you can change that for later use too!
No matter the case, you can edit your items as needed. You can also edit in bulk!
2. Sale items
- Sale items are anything that the commissary sells/gives to your customers/locations.
These can be either inventory items you buy and then sell, or recipes you are making in house! If it's recipes, you'll want to create preparations and then mark them for sale. - This is where you can choose if you want to mark up your items (to do this set up price levels) or keep them at cost
- Most importantly- make sure to mark the items in stock! This allows your customers/locations to order them from you.
3. Suppliers
If you uploaded inventory items in bulk, your suppliers are already in the system.
Now it's just time to edit them! Most importantly, you want to add in the contact details for your rep (email or cell phone number), add any cc emails for colleagues that need to be cc'd on orders, and the delivery dates/cutoff times!
You'll also be required to add a default category for this supplier. Pick the one that applies to the majority of the items you buy from this supplier.
This is a crucial step before you start placing orders!
4. Categories and storage areas
- Categories will be used organizationally, and are huge for reporting. These are essential to have for every single inventory item! You can either set them all up first, and then assign them or you can create categories and assign as you go.
- Storage areas setup will make inventory counts and even ordering so much easier!
First you will create the areas, and then you will assign them to your items.
5. Ordering
- Before you start with ordering, refer back to step 3 to make sure your suppliers are all set up!
- Placing orders can be done on a phone, computer, or tablet. Just add the items to your cart, choose when you want the order to be delivered, add in any comments, and press send!
You can also fill to par as well which makes the process super easy. MarketMan takes at how much you have on hand, compares that to your par level, and drafts up an order for you. - Order history is where you'll view all the orders you've placed. This is also where you can check out the status tab to see if your supplier viewed the order yet!
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There are many ways to receive orders in MarketMan. We have a team ready to receive orders for you if you want to just take a picture of the invoice and forget it: How do I use Invoice scanning?
Or if you want to receive the order yourself, you can do this on the app, or on the web, whether you placed the order on MarketMan, or not. - Once you've received an order, you can find it in Accounting, Invoices.
You can export invoices to your accounting software from here, in 1 click! - If you're using invoice scanning - don't forget to check out the new items that were potentially added while receiving your orders! Also, make sure to update your irregular prices.
6. Inventory counts
- Before you even start taking counts, we suggest making sure your items have categories and storage areas (see step 4).
- Once you have that, re-organize your storage areas shelf to sheet! This will drastically improve the ease and time it takes to do counts.
- As you are counting just go down the list and type in how much you have of your items!
If you are out of an item, make sure to type in 0. You'll see a 0 on-hand preview, indicating MarketMan registered that you're out of this item.
If you wish to skip an item just leave it blank, but keep in mind a blank on-hand preview means you'll not have reports for this item, when referring to this count. - Keep in mind to make sure you have good service (either data or wifi) before you save your count! If you are in an area with limited service, just return to wifi/data before saving.
7. Incoming orders
- When your locations/customers place orders to you at the commissary, it's important to create delivery notes to fulfill their orders and let them know what they are getting! If you need to short them, you can easily edit the quantities on the delivery note.
This is also how MarketMan will know deplete your inventory. - Check out the "Delivered items by customer" report. This will show you each item that was ordered, how much was ordered per location, and total overall!
8. Production events
When you create your batch recipes in MarketMan, make sure to log production events for how much you make.
This will add the qty to the on-hand calculation for your prepped items (and deplete the raw ingredients) and help you keep track of how much you have of everything.
9. Waste
Logging waste can be done on the phone, computer or tablet. This is essential for reports to be accurate! Make sure to choose a description of why you are wasting these items, so you can analyze the waste events report to see the trends in your waste.
