Free Ingredients
Some ingredients have a real presence in a recipe but cost you nothing. Tap water in a homemade syrup, foraged nettles in a spring soup, hedgerow berries picked for a seasonal compote: they take up weight and volume, but there is no supplier and no invoice behind them.
A free ingredient lets you record exactly that. It carries no supplier and no cost, shows as Free wherever a price would normally appear, and still counts towards a recipe's total weight so your per-gram and per-portion costs stay accurate.
A free ingredient is for something that is always free, like tap water. It is not the right tool for a one-off free delivery of something you normally pay for (for example a complimentary case of oat milk). That is a different situation, because the next time you buy it the ingredient is costed again.
Why weight still matters
Even though a free ingredient costs nothing, it changes the maths of any recipe it sits in.
Take a sugar syrup made from 500 ml of tap water and 100 g of sugar. The water is free, so the syrup's cost is the sugar alone. But the finished syrup weighs around 600 g, not 100 g. When you later use that syrup in a drink, Brikly needs the full weight to work out how much of it you are using and what that portion costs. If the water were missing, every recipe built on the syrup would be costed wrongly.
This is why a free ingredient still needs its unit and density set, even with no price.
Creating a free ingredient
- Go to CostingBrik > Ingredients and start adding an ingredient as usual (see Adding Ingredients).
- Turn on the Free ingredient toggle near the top of the form.
- The supplier and cost fields disappear, because a free ingredient has neither.
- Fill in the remaining details as normal:
- Name, for example "Tap water".
- Unit and usage type, for example volume in millilitres.
- Density where it applies. Water is 1.0 kg per litre, so 500 ml weighs 500 g. Setting this lets Brikly convert volume to weight correctly.
- Save. The ingredient is created with no supplier and a cost of Free.
- Declare its allergens on the ingredient page (see below).
Set the density for any free ingredient measured by volume but used by weight (or the other way round). It is what lets Brikly count the ingredient's weight in a recipe even though it costs nothing.
Allergens and labels for free ingredients
Allergens are normally declared on an ingredient's supplier. A free ingredient has no supplier, so you declare its allergens on the ingredient itself:
- Open the ingredient. Its Allergens card is titled Allergens in this ingredient.
- Tick each allergen it contains, or click Confirm: contains none of the regulated allergens. Tap water and ice contain none.
- Click Save allergens.
Until you do, the ingredient reads Not yet declared. Every recipe that uses it shows its allergens as not fully known on the recipe, the allergen matrix and the kiosk, and its PPDS labels can't print. See declaring allergens.
Weight of one for counted free ingredients
PPDS labels list ingredients in order of weight, so Brikly needs to know what every line weighs. If a free ingredient is counted rather than weighed, such as bay leaves or a garnish sprig, set its Weight of one in the ingredient editor ("One weighs _ g"). Without it, a PPDS label for a recipe that uses the ingredient can't print, and the label's Before you print page links you to the field with Set the weight of one.
Once set, the weight of one also shows on the ingredient's details card.
How free ingredients appear
Once saved, a free ingredient is clearly marked everywhere a cost would usually show:
- Ingredient list - the cost columns show Free instead of a price.
- Ingredient detail page - cost per unit and cost per measurement show Free, and the suppliers section explains there is no supplier because the ingredient is free.
- Recipe cost breakdown - the ingredient's line shows Free for its cost, while its quantity and weight are shown as normal and still count towards the recipe total.
A free ingredient is never flagged as needing a price or as incomplete. Brikly understands it is free on purpose.
Editing an ingredient into or out of free
You can change your mind at any time from the ingredient's edit screen.
Making an existing ingredient free
If you turn the Free ingredient toggle on for an ingredient that already has suppliers, Brikly asks you to confirm first, because it needs to archive those supplier offerings. For example:
This will archive its 2 supplier offerings. Cost will become Free.
The supplier records are not deleted, they are archived, so your price history is preserved. After you confirm, the ingredient's cost becomes Free.
Making a free ingredient costed again
If you turn the toggle off, the ingredient can no longer be free, so it needs a supplier and a cost. Add a supplier with its cost in the same edit, or make sure an active supplier already exists. If you try to save a not-free ingredient with no supplier and no cost, Brikly will ask you to add a supplier and cost, or keep the ingredient free.
Marking an ingredient free archives all of its supplier offerings. If you only want to stop using one supplier, archive that single offering instead and leave the ingredient costed.
Where free ingredients fit
Free ingredients are most useful as part of a larger recipe rather than on their own. A recipe made up entirely of free ingredients will cost nothing and show a 100% margin, which is correct but rarely meaningful. The real value is letting a costed recipe account honestly for the free components inside it, like the tap water in a syrup base, so every recipe built on top stays accurate.