Costing Dashboard
The CostingBrik dashboard is your command centre for food costs. It gives you a single-screen overview of the key numbers that matter, highlights items that need attention, and provides quick access to common actions.
Key metrics
At the top of the dashboard, you will see your headline figures:
Total ingredients
The number of ingredients in your library. This tells you the breadth of your cost data - a well-populated ingredient library means more accurate recipe costings.
Total recipes
The number of recipes you have costed. As this number grows, your visibility into your food costs improves across a wider range of your menu.
Average GP%
Your average Gross Profit percentage across all costed recipes. This is calculated as a simple average (not weighted by sales volume - see Margin Analysis for weighted calculations).
- Green - your average GP% is at or above your global target.
- Amber - your average GP% is within 3 percentage points of your target.
- Red - your average GP% is more than 3 percentage points below target.
Recipes below target
A count of how many recipes are currently below their target GP%. Click this metric to jump directly to the list of affected recipes.
Recent activity
The dashboard displays a feed of recent changes so you can see what has happened since your last visit:
- Invoices processed - the supplier, date, and number of line items updated.
- Price changes - ingredients where the price has moved, with the direction and percentage.
- New ingredients - ingredients added (manually or from invoice processing).
- New recipes - recipes created or updated.
This feed is sorted by most recent first and typically shows the last 7 days of activity.
If you see very little recent activity, it may mean invoices are not being processed regularly. The more invoices you process, the more current your price data is. Aim to process invoices at least weekly for the most accurate costings.
Quick actions
The dashboard provides shortcuts to the most common tasks:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Add Ingredient | Opens the new ingredient form |
| Add Recipe | Opens the new recipe form |
| Add Supplier | Opens the new supplier form |
| Process Invoice | Opens the invoice upload/capture flow |
| View Price Changes | Jumps to the price history view, filtered to recent changes |
| View Low-margin Recipes | Shows all recipes below their target GP% |
Dashboard sections
Below-target recipes
A table listing every recipe where the current GP% is below the target. For each recipe, you can see:
- Recipe name and category.
- Current food cost per portion.
- Current selling price.
- Current GP% and the target GP%.
- The gap (how many percentage points below target).
This section helps you prioritise which recipes to review. A recipe that is 1% below target is less urgent than one that is 8% below.
Sort the below-target list by gap (largest first) and work through the top items. These are the recipes bleeding the most margin.
Recent price increases
A list of ingredients where the price has increased recently, sorted by the size of the increase. Each row shows:
- Ingredient name.
- Previous price (per base unit).
- New price (per base unit).
- Percentage increase.
- Number of recipes affected.
Ingredients with the most recipe impact are highlighted, because a small increase on a widely-used ingredient can have a bigger total effect than a large increase on a rarely-used one.
Cost summary by category
A breakdown of your total ingredient spend by category (based on processed invoices), shown as both a chart and a table. This gives you a high-level view of where your purchasing budget goes:
- Meat & Fish - often the largest category by spend.
- Dairy - typically the second largest for cafes and bakeries.
- Produce - can be highly variable with seasonal pricing.
- Dry Goods - usually stable and predictable.
Understanding your spend by category helps you focus your cost management efforts where they will have the greatest impact.
Customising the dashboard
You can rearrange the dashboard sections to suit your workflow. Drag sections to reorder them, or collapse sections you check less frequently. Your layout preferences are saved to your account.