Your POS knows what it sold. Your recipes know what those dishes cost. This page connects the two.
Without it, sales and costs are two separate stories. With it, they are one number: food cost.
The idea
A POS item is a thing you sell. A recipe is a thing you make. They are usually the same dish under two different names — the till has one, the kitchen has another.
Link them once. From then on, every time that item sells, NexReps knows what it cost.
The link is yours to make. NexReps does not guess, because only you know that the till's name and the kitchen's name are the same dish.
Building it
Add Section — Mains, Starters, Desserts. However your menu is organised.
Add item inside a section. Then two links:
POS item — what your till calls it. Search, pick.
Recipe — what your kitchen makes. Search, pick.
Tags — optional, for your own grouping.
The cost appears in green once both are linked. That is NexReps telling you it now knows what this dish costs to make.
Reading the counts
Each section says 1 items · 1 linked.
Those two numbers should match. An item that is not linked is a hole in your food cost — it sold, it earned money, and NexReps has no idea what it cost.
Seven linked out of twelve means five dishes are invisible to Food Cost.
What "linked" requires
Both sides. A POS item with no recipe costs nothing as far as NexReps knows. A recipe with no POS item never sells.
You will find items that genuinely have no recipe — a bottled beer, a can of soda. Those do not need a recipe; they need a purchase price. Leave them unlinked and know why.
Menu and the Menu reports
Two different pages, same word.
Menu under Reports is what sold — Item Sales and Item Analysis. Money coming in.
Menu under Inventory is this page: the wiring between what sold and what it cost.
Why bother
Because "our food cost is 28%" is a number you cannot act on.
"This dish is at 41% and that one is at 19%" is a number you can act on. That requires knowing what each dish costs, which requires this page.
Every unlinked item makes your food cost less true.
Next
Food Cost — what the link produces.