What If?
What If? is CostingBrik's scenario planning tool. It lets you model changes to prices, ingredients, recipes, and VAT rates before applying them - so you can see the profit impact across your business without touching any live data.
Think of it as a safe sandbox: test a 5% price rise, see what happens if your flour supplier puts their prices up, explore swapping an expensive ingredient for a cheaper alternative, or model what a VAT reduction would mean for your margins. You see what it does to your costs and margins before you commit to anything, and, for recipes with weekly sales, a yearly profit figure too.
When to use What If?
What If? is useful whenever you are considering a change that affects recipe costs or selling prices:
- Planning a price review - model flat or percentage price increases across a category and see the annual impact before updating your menu.
- Supplier price increase - a supplier has notified you of a price rise. See which recipes are affected and how much margin you lose.
- Ingredient swap - considering replacing an ingredient with a cheaper or more available alternative? Compare the cost impact side by side.
- Quantity adjustment - adjust how much of an ingredient is used across your recipes and see the cost difference.
- Recipe adjustment - edit a recipe's ingredients directly and see how the new cost flows through to every recipe that uses it.
- VAT rate change - model what a change in VAT rate would mean for your margins across the whole menu.
How it works
Every What If? scenario follows a four-step wizard:
| Step | Name | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | What's Changing? | Choose a trigger type and select which recipes are affected |
| 2 | Review & Adjust | Fine-tune your changes with additional adjustments like price increases or batch changes |
| 3 | Results | Run the simulation and see the estimated annual profit impact per recipe |
| 4 | Save | Name and save the scenario |
You can move backwards through the steps at any time to refine your scenario. Changes are only applied to live data when you push a saved scenario from the scenario list.
Accessing What If?
Navigate to CostingBrik > What If? in the sidebar. This opens the scenario list page where you can:
- View all your saved scenarios
- Create a new scenario
- Open an existing scenario to review, edit, or push
Each scenario card shows the scenario name, creation date, status, total annual impact, and the types of adjustments applied.
Scenario statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Simulated | The scenario is saved but has not been pushed live. You can still edit, re-run, or delete it. |
| Pushed | Changes have been applied to your recipes, and to your till where Brikly can update it (Square). The scenario becomes read-only. |
Once a scenario is pushed live, it serves as a record of the changes you made. You cannot delete or modify a pushed scenario.
Permissions
| Action | Who can do it |
|---|---|
| View scenarios | All CostingBrik users |
| Create scenarios | Owners, admins, and members |
| Delete scenarios | Owners and admins only |
| Push scenarios live | Owners and admins only |
Next steps
- Scenario triggers - learn about the six types of changes you can model
- Reviewing and adjusting - fine-tune your scenario with additional adjustments
- Simulation results - understand the profit impact figures
- Saving and pushing - save your scenario and push changes live