Item Mapper
The Item Mapper connects your POS menu items to their recipes in CostingBrik. Once linked, each recipe gets the till's real selling price and its sales, so its margin uses what you actually charge and its yearly figures use what actually sells.
How it works
When you connect a POS integration (e.g. Square), Brikly pulls in your full catalog of items and variations. The one exception is a Square variation marked as not sellable, such as a keg or a bottle of wine that your pint and glass variations draw down from: it is a stock unit rather than something you sell, so it is left out. The Item Mapper lets you:
- Browse your POS catalog - see every item and variation from your POS, organised by category.
- Build a recipe - create a new recipe directly from a POS item, pre-filled with the item name, price, and category.
- Link to an existing recipe - connect a POS item to a recipe you have already built.
- Track coverage - see at a glance how many of your POS items have linked recipes and your overall coverage percentage.
Getting to the Item Mapper
Navigate to Item Mapper from the sidebar. You will see:
- Coverage stats at the top - total POS items, linked items, and your coverage percentage with a progress bar.
- Items and Needs review tabs - the second one holds any linked items that have been renamed in your POS, with a count of how many are waiting.
- Category pills - filter by POS category to focus on one section at a time.
- Search bar - find specific items by name.
- Item table - your POS items with actions to build, link, or view recipes.
Syncing your catalog
If you have added new items to your POS, click Sync Catalog to pull in the latest changes. Syncing only adds and updates items - it never removes existing links or hidden items.
If the connection to your till has expired, the sync stops and says so, and the Item Mapper shows a note with a link to Settings > Integrations, where you reconnect it. Sync Catalog comes back once the till is reconnected. See When a connection expires.
Coverage percentage
Coverage shows what proportion of your POS items have a linked recipe. A higher percentage means more of your menu is being costed accurately.
Not every POS item needs a recipe. Gift cards, merchandise, and service charges can be hidden from the Item Mapper so they do not drag down your coverage percentage.
Linking methods
| Action | When to use |
|---|---|
| Build | You have not created a recipe yet. Opens the recipe builder pre-filled with the POS item details. |
| Link | You already have a recipe built. Opens a search modal to find and connect it. |
| View | The item is already linked. Opens the recipe for review. |
| Change recipe | The item is linked to the wrong recipe, or the date its costing starts from needs moving. Opens the same date field described below, with the current recipe offered so you can change only the date. |
| Unlink | You need to stop costing an item against its recipe. Costing stops from tomorrow, and the history up to today keeps its recipe - the weeks and months already attributed are not restated. |
Cost history from
When you link a recipe to a POS item for the first time, the modal asks for a Cost history from date. This is the day Brikly starts attributing that item's sales to the recipe.
The default is usually the item's first sale, so your whole history for that item is costed at once.
There is one exception. If the item's name has changed several times in the last 90 days, it is probably a rotating slot - a soup of the day, a weekly special - and restating all of that history at one recipe would be wrong. In that case Brikly defaults to the first sale under its current name and tells you why:
This item has had 7 names in the last 90 days. History before 31 Aug was a different item.
You can change the date within the range Brikly allows - no earlier than the item's first sale, and no later than today.
The week and month containing the date you choose are attributed whole to the recipe. Earlier weeks and months are left uncosted rather than restated.
If a linked item is renamed in your POS later on, Brikly flags it for review rather than quietly carrying on - see Renamed POS Items.
Multi-location support
If you operate across multiple locations, the Item Mapper shows location availability for each item. Use the location filter to see which items are available at specific sites.