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Emergency Suppliers

Not every purchase comes from your regular supplier. Sometimes you need to grab something from a supermarket, a backup wholesaler, or a local shop at short notice. Brikly calls these emergency purchases and gives you tools to handle them without polluting your regular costing data.

What is an emergency supplier?​

An emergency supplier is a supplier that you buy a specific ingredient from occasionally - but not as your regular source. Common examples:

  • Buying milk from Tesco when your dairy wholesaler's delivery is late.
  • Picking up flour from a local shop because you ran out mid-shift.
  • Ordering from a backup wholesaler who carries the same product at a different price.

Even if the emergency supplier is cheaper, you might not want their price affecting your recipe costs - perhaps the quantity is impractical for regular use, or the product quality or provenance does not match your standard.

Marking a supplier as emergency​

There are two places where you can mark a supplier as an emergency supplier:

During new supplier verification​

When Brikly detects a new supplier for an existing ingredient (e.g. the first time a Tesco receipt includes an ingredient you normally buy from your wholesaler), the New Supplier Data modal appears. At the bottom of this modal, you will see a checkbox:

Emergency / one-off supplier - Future invoices from this supplier for this ingredient won't trigger price change reviews. Use this for supermarket runs, backup suppliers, or any purchase you don't want affecting your regular costing.

Check this box before saving to create the emergency pattern immediately. The supplier data is still saved normally - Brikly just knows not to flag future price changes from that supplier for that ingredient.

During price change review​

When reviewing a price change that involves a different supplier (and the price has increased by more than 5%), the review modal offers a choice between Regular Purchase and Emergency Purchase.

If you choose Emergency Purchase, you can optionally tell Brikly to learn from this decision:

  • Yes, Skip Future - automatically skip price change alerts from that supplier for this ingredient going forward.
  • No, Review Each Time - keep reviewing manually each time.

For more detail on the price change review flow, see Reviewing Line Items - Emergency Purchases.

What emergency patterns do​

When a supplier is marked as emergency for a specific ingredient, Brikly:

  1. Records the price in the price history as normal - you still have a complete record of what you paid.
  2. Skips the price change review - no amber alert appears on the invoice line item, and the change does not block submission.
  3. Does not update recipe costs - your recipes continue to use the preferred supplier's price.
  4. Tracks the extra cost - the CostingBrik dashboard and supplier optimisation pages show how much extra you are spending on emergency purchases, so you can see the true cost of last-minute buying.
Emergency patterns are per-ingredient

Marking Tesco as an emergency supplier for milk does not affect any other ingredients. If you also buy butter from Tesco, that is a separate relationship and will still trigger price reviews unless you mark it as emergency too.

Viewing emergency suppliers​

On the ingredient detail page, each supplier card shows its status badges. A supplier marked as emergency displays an amber Emergency badge next to the supplier name, alongside the existing Preferred and Archived badges.

Removing emergency status​

If your buying pattern changes - for example, a backup supplier becomes your regular source - you can remove the emergency status directly from the ingredient detail page:

  1. Open the ingredient.
  2. Find the supplier card with the Emergency badge.
  3. Click the X button on the badge.
  4. The badge disappears and future invoices from that supplier will trigger normal price change reviews.
tip

You do not need to remove emergency status before setting a supplier as preferred. If you set an emergency supplier as preferred, the emergency pattern remains but has no practical effect - preferred supplier price changes are always reviewed.

Emergency costs on the dashboard​

The CostingBrik dashboard includes an Emergency stat card showing:

  • The number of ingredients with emergency purchases in the analysis period.
  • The total extra cost paid compared to what you would have paid at the cheapest supplier's price.

The supplier optimisation pages also flag ingredients with emergency purchases, showing which suppliers are emergency and how much extra volume and cost they account for. This helps you spot patterns - if you are regularly making emergency purchases for the same ingredient, it might be time to add a second regular supplier or adjust your ordering schedule.