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Stock Items and Variants

Written by Sophie Rattray

  1. Before Setting Up Your Stock

  2. Delivery Details and Supplier Set Up

  3. How Units Work in Loaded

  4. Stock Items and Variants

    1. Stock Item Details

    2. Add a Stock Item

    3. Stock Item Variants

    4. Selecting a Default Stock Item Variant

    5. Tips and Tricks

  5. Build Your Recipes

  6. Link Items and Recipes to your POS

  7. Create and Cost Menus

Let’s jump into stock items - what you actually order and receive from your suppliers. Keeping stock items clean and organised makes it easy for you and your team to count, order and build recipes from the items you order. Read How Stock Item Variants Work to really understand how to successfully setup your stock in Loaded.

🔐 What You’ll Need

🔑 Stock Permissions

If you’re unable to view or edit any of the following areas, ask someone with Manager permissions to update your access.

Stock Item Details

To view or edit all of the details of a stock item, go to Stock → Manage → Items. Click on the item name to display the popup editor.

  • Ordering Unit: The pack size you order the item in (e.g. 5 KG, 2 L, 24 Pack).

    • Don’t see the right option? You can create a custom unit to match how you purchase it

    • Avoid using arbitrary units like box, carton, pack, bunch, tray

  • Counting Unit: How you count the item during stocktakes.

    • Make sure you use a unit type consistent with your ordering unit

  • Forecast Price: An editable, estimated price (per ordering unit) for the item.

    • Where possible, enter the price you are currently paying so your reporting is accurate from day one

  • Live Price: The most recent price you purchased a stock item at.

    • This will be blank initially. Once you start processing invoices, it will automatically update with your most recent price

  • Minimum Stock on Hand: The minimum amount you want to have on site at all times.

    • Set ‘Quantity’ as a number

    • Set ‘Select Unit’ as the same unit type (weight, volume or count) as your Ordering Unit

    • Setting this is helpful when using Predictive Ordering. You can leave this field blank and fill in this data while you use Predictive Ordering for the first time

  • Default Supplier: The supplier you prefer to order this item from.

    • This will be the default Supplier assigned on a purchase order in Loaded

  • Default Brand: Your preferred brand (e.g. Wattie’s instead of Heinz).

    • Helps ensure consistency when ordering

  • Group: Used for stocktaking and COGS reporting.

    • These are preset options so pick one that feels like it makes the most sense to you.

  • Sales Tax: Defaults from your company settings.

    • You can adjust the tax rate for this specific item if needed

  • Default For Supplier checkbox:

    • The Default for Supplier checkbox sets which variant will be used automatically when you add a Stock Item to a Purchase Order for that supplier

    • Each Stock Item must have one default variant per supplier. If you work with multiple suppliers, you can set a different default variant for each supplier you work with, but only one per supplier

    • These default variants power your ordering flow, helping you build Purchase Orders faster and more accurately. You can set or update them in the Manage Stock Item screen, or on the fly when receiving goods through AI Invoice Processing

Add a Stock Item

Add a New Stock Item:

  1. Go to Stock → Manage → Items

    1. If you’ve sent us 6-8 weeks of invoices during onboarding, you will see stock items from those invoices already listed here

  2. Click Add New Item

  3. Select Add Custom Item from the bottom left-hand corner

    1. Type in the name of the item

    2. Enter all necessary details

  4. Click Add Item

Add a New Stock Item from an Invoice:

  1. Go to Stock → Invoices → Incoming Invoices

    1. Invoices need to either be emailed from a supplier or uploaded manually

  2. Click Receive on the desired invoice

  3. You’ll see a ‘NEW’ icon next to stock items that haven’t been automatically matched to an existing stock item in Loaded

  4. Click the line item and search for the stock item

    1. If the stock item does exist in Loaded, click the correct name

      1. This will create a variant for the existing stock item

      2. Example in GIF: Edamame

    2. If the stock item does not exist in Loaded, click More

      1. Fill in the required information - see below for detail descriptions

      2. Use a generic name to keep one stock item with multiple variants

      3. Click Create

      4. Example in GIF: Dijon Mustard

    3. The line item will turn from blue to white when it has been matched with a Loaded stock item

  5. Once all ‘NEW’ stock items have been matched, click Save on the invoice

Going forward, any time you receive a variant of this stock item with this specific code, it will be automatically mapped to the correct stock item you’ve selected or created.

Stock Item Variants

Put simply, a Stock Item is what you track. A Variant is how you buy it. You can have multiple Stock Item Variants for a single Stock Item. Stock Item Variants are used for ordering and receiving goods via AI Invoice Processing.

Sound familiar? You probably read about Stock Item Variants in Before Setting Up Your Stock so skip to Selecting a Default Stock Item Variant if you’re all over it. If not, here’s a quick refresh.

Each Stock Item Variant must have a Supplier and Unit assigned to it, and can also have a Stock Code and Brand.

Let’s take a look at an example using flour. So you set up flour as a Stock Item. But you might buy:

  • 5kg Smart Choice from Bidfood

  • 25kg Pams from Bidfood

  • 10kg Chelsea from Service Foods

Different sizes. Different brands. Different suppliers. But it’s still just flour. Instead of creating three separate flour items (which would fragment your reporting), you create:

  • 1 Stock Item → Flour

  • 3 Variants → 5kg, 25kg, 10kg

Selecting a Default Stock Item Variant

You can set the default variant for a supplier two ways:

  1. When you receive an invoice with a Stock Item Variant that is not the default variant for the supplier, a pop-up will prompt you to update the default variant to the variant you are currently receiving. Select the variant you’re receiving to make it the new default for that supplier—saving you time on future orders.

image (16).png

2. To manually change the Default Variant, go to Stock → Manage → Items, click the Stock Item, and check the Default for Supplier box in the Stock Item Variant row.

Tips and Tricks

  • Avoid using arbitrary units like box, carton, tray, bunch

  • Keep units consistent across Order By, Count By, and Stock Item Variants

  • Set default Brands and Suppliers to get the variant you want when ordering

  • Make sure to match new variants with existing stock items instead of clogging up your stock item list with duplicates

  • Update default variants as desired so your inwards goods show up as you’d like

What’s Next?

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