Managing Your Supplies Catalog
Supplies are the physical materials you use in your operations — packaging, ingredients, raw materials, cleaning products, tape, labels, and so on. The Supplies catalog lives under Purchasing → Supplies and gives you a searchable, filterable list of everything you stock.
Adding a supply
- Go to Purchasing → Supplies
- Click New Supply
- Fill in the details:
- SKU — a unique code for this item (auto-suggested based on your existing SKU sequence; UPCs are ignored for the suggestion — enter those in the Barcode field)
- Name — what the supply is called
- Description — optional free-text notes
- Type — assign a Supply Type to group and filter this item (see below)
- Unit of measure — how the item is counted:
box,roll,unit, etc. - Unit cost — cost per unit for reporting
- Barcode — UPC or other barcode
- Preferred supplier — the contact you usually buy this from. Optional, and editable later from the supply's detail page. It's what groups the reorder suggestions on the Purchasing page — see Reorder Suggestions
- Low stock alerts — leave on for this item to appear in low stock warnings and reorder suggestions once it drops to its reorder point
- Production packaging — check this if the supply is a box, bag, or outer carton used to ship units of a finished product. Checked supplies appear in the Production Packaging selector on recipe pages.
- Bought in packs — see Supplies bought by the box below
- Click Save
Supplies bought by the box
Most supplies are used one at a time but bought in bulk. You pull one bag off the shelf for a recipe, but you buy bags 500 to a box.
Iraca handles this with a single rule: a supply is always stocked, counted, and consumed in its smallest unit — the bag. The box exists only when you're buying.
Why the smallest unit
Everything downstream of your catalog counts in that unit:
- A recipe that calls for 1 bag
- The reorder point that tells you when to buy more
- The stock deducted when you produce or sell
- The unit cost behind your COGS
If you stocked boxes instead, a recipe needing one bag would have to ask for 0.002 of a box, and stock is counted in whole numbers. So: set Unit of measure to bag, not box.
Telling Iraca about the box
On the supply form, fill in the Bought in packs section:
| Field | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Units per pack | 500 | How many bags come in one box |
| Pack is called | box | What you and your supplier call it |
Leave both blank for supplies you buy loose — nothing changes for those.
This does not create a second product, and it does not change your stock. It only changes how a purchase order is entered and priced.
What changes once a pack size is set
Ordering. On a purchase order, a line for this supply gets an Order by the box checkbox, ticked by default. Enter 2 boxes at $18.99 each; Iraca shows you = 1000 bags and records the order as 1000 bags at a line total of $37.98.
Receiving. The receiving screen gets a Count by the box checkbox, so whoever is at the dock counts the 2 sealed boxes they actually see instead of typing 1000.
Costing. This is the part that matters most, and it is not just convenience.
A bag from a $18.99 box of 500 costs $0.03798. A purchase order line can only hold a price to the cent, so without a pack size, that bag has to be entered as $0.04 — and 1000 of them come to $40.00 against a supplier bill of $37.98. That $2.02 gap shows up in your books as a purchase price variance on a delivery where nothing actually went wrong.
Cheaper supplies fail harder. Twist ties at 5000 per box for $12 work out to $0.0024 each, which rounds to $0.00 — the stock arrives, but the purchase never reaches your ledger at all.
With a pack size set, Iraca prices the receipt from the box price. The accrual is $37.98, the supplier's bill is $37.98, and there is no variance to explain.
What does not change
- Stock is still counted in bags
- Recipes still call for bags
- Reorder points are still set in bags, and low-stock alerts still fire in bags
- Production and sales still deduct bags
Only the ordering and receiving screens ever mention boxes.
Choosing the right base unit
Pick the smallest unit you would ever count on its own. If you ever use half a bag, the base unit should be something smaller than a bag — stock is tracked in whole numbers, so a half is not representable.
Supply Details page
Click any supply row to open its detail page. From here you can:
- See and adjust stock levels per warehouse
- Set a bin location for each warehouse — click the bin location text (or the pencil icon that appears on hover) below the stock quantities to edit it inline. Bin locations help warehouse staff find the item quickly.
- View recent stock movements
- Edit all supply fields via the pencil icon in the header
Supply Types
Supply Types let you group your supplies into categories.
Why use types?
- Organization — filter supplies by category (Boxes, Bags, Tape, Labels…)
- Visual tags — each type has a color that appears as a badge on supply rows
Setting up types
Go to Purchasing → Supply Types to create and manage your types. For each type you can define a Name, Description, and Color.
Filtering supplies
On the Supplies page:
- Use the Type dropdown to show only supplies of one category
- Use the search box to find by SKU or name
- Click Filter by dimensions to filter on physical measurements — pick Weight, Length, Width, or Height, an operator (
=,≥,≤), and a value
Example: filter Length ≥ 30 cm to find all supplies at least 30 cm long.
Filters stack — you can combine a type filter with dimension filters at once.
Duplicating a supply or supply type
Click the Duplicate icon (two overlapping squares) on any supply or supply type row to create a copy. The duplicate gets all the same fields with " (Copy)" added to the name — edit it right away to rename it.
Importing and exporting supplies
See Importing supplies from CSV for full instructions on bulk-importing supplies via CSV.
To export your current supply list, click Export CSV on the Supplies page.
Importing and exporting Supply Types
You can bulk-create or update Supply Types using a CSV file.
Exporting types
Click Export CSV on Purchasing → Supply Types to download all your current types.
Importing types
- Go to Purchasing → Supply Types
- Click Import CSV
- Download the Template to get a pre-filled example CSV
- Edit the file — one row per type:
| Column | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
name | Yes | Matched to existing types by name; creates new if not found |
description | No | Optional notes |
color | No | Hex color code, e.g. #3b82f6. Defaults to gray |
- Drag the file into the upload area or click to browse, then click Import
Existing types matched by name are updated; unmatched names create new types.
Only owners and admins can import supply types.