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POS Item Cost Alerts
POS Item Cost Alerts

How to set alerts and receive notifications when a POS Item cost percentage goes above a set level

Nick Neale avatar
Written by Nick Neale
Updated over a week ago

Article Contents

Introduction

To monitor costs, you can set alerts for when POS Items go above a set cost percentage.

After setting your cost alert levels, you’ll receive email notifications any time those POS Items exceed the alert threshold.

This could be due to:

  1. A change in the menu price in the POS

  2. Changing the ingredients in a POS Item

  3. An invoice where the cost of an ingredient has increased

Make sure you've set users to receive the POS Item Cost Alert email under Email Report Permissions.

Note: You can also set cost alerts for individual items. To learn more, see:

Adding a POS Item Cost Alert

Individual POS Item

To set a cost alert for a POS Item:

  1. From the POS Items page, place your cursor over a POS Item and click the edit button

    An arrow points to the edit button beside the "Cheeseburger" POS Item.

  2. Click into the “Cost Alert” field and enter the cost percentage you want the alert to trigger at (enter as a number without the % sign)

    The "Cost Alert" field is highlighted for emphasis.

  3. The Cost Alert for the POS Item has now been set. When the cost percentage meets or exceeds the alert level, designated users in the venue receive an email notification

    The Cost Alert has been entered and displays as 26%.

Multiple POS Items

To add cost alerts to multiple POS Items at a time:

  1. Click the checkbox beside each POS Item

    An arrow points to the checkbox beside each POS Item

  2. On the menu that appears, there are two options

    1. Cost Alert - Use this to add a set cost percentage for each selected item. For example, if you put in "25", each item would have a cost alert of 25%

    2. Relative Cost Alert - Use this to add a percentage on top of each POS Item's current cost percentage. For example, entering "5" would set a cost alert for each item that is 5% higher than its current cost percentage

    The "Cost Alert" and "Relative Cost Alert" menu options display on the right

  3. Enter a value based on your chosen cost alert method then click outside the field

    5 has been entered in the "Relative Cost Alert" field

  4. Click "OK" on the confirmation window

    An arrow points to the "OK" button

  5. The cost alerts apply to the selected items. In this example we used the Relative Cost Alert and entered a value of 5. The cost alert for each selected item is set to 5% above the current cost percentage

    The Cost alert for the selected items has been set to 5% above the current cost percentage

POS Item Cost Alert Notifications

In the email notification you’ll see all affected POS Items along with the:

  • Alert level %

  • The cost percentage before the change

  • The cost percentage after the change

  • The current menu price and updated cost

The cost alert email that shows the previous cost and the new one.

Note: As a reminder, this email only goes to designated recipients. You can manage which users receive the notification under Email Report Permissions.

By going to the POS Items page we can learn more about what caused the increase.

We see that the cost percentage has increased for the Cheeseburger POS Item, and by clicking on the edit button we can see more details.

The cost percentage of the item has increased due to the cost of ingredients increasing.

In this example, we added an invoice with Ground Beef at $7.99/lb, which increased the cost of the Cheeseburger POS Item by 2.5%. When viewing the POS Item, you can also set a new cost alert level.

The increase in the cost of the ground beef increased the cost of the POS Item

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