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Variance Groups

An explanation of variance groups, how to create them, and how to view them.

Nick Neale avatar
Written by Nick Neale
Updated yesterday

Note About Variance Groups

Variance Groups existed before item variations were introduced in WISK. This was the old way of seeing a combined variance if you had items that came in multiple sizes / formats. For example, if you had an item that came in a 750ml and 1L format, you could group them together on the Variance page.

Now you can just make them item variations if they are used interchangeably in the same menu items.

To learn more, see:

However, there are still some cases where a Variance Group may be a better option, for example if you have an item in a 750ml and 1L format, but they are used in different menu items most of the time. Having them in a Variance Group can account for situations where their usage is mixed (If you run out of the 1L format, and use some from the 750ml).

You can also use Variance Groups to quickly group and isolate specific items that you want to compare. For example, you could create a Variance Group for "Bar Rail" to quickly pull up those items.

Article Contents

Introduction

Variance Groups allow you to create sub-groups of your items when looking at variances. The main uses of this feature are:

  1. If you have multiple SKUs of an item that are different sizes (for example Grey Goose 750ml, and 1L) and are used interchangeably with your POS Items

  2. If you want to quickly view the variances on a group of items (example, all of your bar rail items)

For example, say you carry a 1L Grey Goose for all of your mixed drinks, but then also carry 750ml Grey Goose exclusively for bottle service. Your supplier doesn't have any 1L at this time and you've run out of stock. Because of this, you need to use the 750ml bottle in your mixed drinks until you get more of the 1L.

Since all of your POS Items and recipe mapping for mixed drinks is tied to the 1L bottle, you’re going to see sales for the 1L bottle, but consumption for the 750ml bottle.

Creating a Variance Group allows you to get around this issue without having to change any of your recipe mapping.

With the Variance Group, you’ll be able to see the sales, consumption, and variance for the whole group.

Note: You can also manually reconcile these values. The Variance Group just brings them together in a way that's easy to see.

Creating a Variance Group

  1. Click on Reports / Analytics > Variance on the left-hand menu bar

    The "Variance" button on the side menu bar is highlighted

  2. Click Actions > Manage Variance Groups

    The "Actions" button is highlighted and an arrow points to "Manage Variance Groups"

  3. Click “New Variance Group”

    An arrow points to the "New Variance Group" button

  4. Give the Variance Group a title, then click “Save”

    An arrow points to the "Save" button

  5. Click into the “Add WISK Item” field and type the name of an item to add it to the Variance Group. Select it from the drop-down list

    The "Add WISK Item" area is highlighted for emphasis.

  6. Click the checkmark to add the item to the Variance Group

    An arrow points to the checkmark button to add the item

  7. The item is added to the Variance Group. Continue to add other items as needed. In this example, we’ve added both sizes of Grey Goose that we have in our venue

    The Variance group as all the different sizes of Grey Goose added to it

  8. Click the “X” button to close the window. You’ll see the group in your list of Variance Groups. Create other groups as needed

    The Variance group with all the items added to it displays

Viewing a Variance Group

Now that we have added our Variance Group for Grey Goose, we can get a better idea of our variance across both sizes of the item (750ml, 1L).

When viewed separately we can see there is a variance for both, but it's difficult to tell by how much overall.

We can see we sold 5.11 units of the 1L bottle, but only consumed 2. This reflects that we ran out of stock and had to start using our 750ml bottles for mixed drinks. Normally the 750ml bottles are reserved for bottle service.

The two entries for Grey Goose are highlighted

To view Variance Groups, we can use:

  • the “Variance Groups” system view and

  • the "Variance Groups" predefined filter

  1. Click "Main" and change the reporting view to "By Variance Group"

    The "Main" view is highlighted and an arrow points to the "By Variance Group" view

  2. This groups all items by your Variance Groups. Any items that are not in a Variance Group appear under "Other/Missing"

    The "By Variance Group" view is toggled on

  3. Toggle on the "Variance Groups" predefined filter to only show items that appear in Variance Groups

    "Predefined Filters" is highlighted and an arrow points to the "Variance Groups" option

  4. When using the "Variance Groups" view, it shows each item's sales, consumption and variance by the default reporting unit of measurement. This is because each item in the variance group may not have the same unit of measurement. This makes it easier to see the combined total. If we measured sales in units since the items are 750ml and 1000ml "1 unit" is not the same between them.

    When looking at the Grey Goose Variance Group we can see we:
    ​

    • Sold 299.74 fl oz

    • Consumed 321.23 fl oz

    • with a Variance of -21.49 fl oz (in other words a loss of 21.49 fl oz)
      ​
      ​Sales - Consumption = Variance

    At cost the loss amounts to $25.46 worth of Grey Goose.
    ​
    ​Note: In this case the Variance Retail is a bit high because a 750ml bottle of Grey Goose would normally sell for $200 if sold via bottle service.

Customizing your View

The By Variance Group view display sales, consumption, and variance in the default reporting unit of measurement.
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If you still want to view Variance Groups by units, you can copy the "By Variance Group" view and customize it as needed.
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To learn more, see:

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