In your venue, you may have items that you can purchase from multiple distributors / suppliers.

These items can be the same size, or come in a variety of different purchase formats. However, no matter the size/format they are the same product and can be used interchangeably in your menu items.

The way to handle this is by creating item variations.

You can learn more about item variations here:

For item variations that are the same size, a quick way to order from multiple distributors is to create a copy of an existing item variation and assign it to another distributor.

If you can order an item in the exact same format from more than one distributor, let's say for example, a case of beer with 24 bottles in it, you can clone the existing item variation.

To clone an item variation:

1. On the “Items” page, place your cursor over the item and click the “Edit” button (the pencil icon)

2. Click the “Item Variations” button

3. Click “Clone this item variation”

4. An exact duplicate of the item is added as a variation with “(cloned)” beside it. It has all the same item characteristics, including the cost, barcodes, weights and more. You can make changes to the item variation as needed.

In this example, we’ll click into the “Distributor” field to switch the distributor.

5. Select the new distributor for the item variation

6. You’ll now have two variations of the same item that can be ordered from different distributors / suppliers on the “Prepare Orders” page.

Note: If you don’t enter a cost for the cloned item variation, it will use the cost from the other variation’s most recent invoice.