Products

Products are the individual ingredients you purchase from your suppliers — things like flour, chicken breast, or olive oil. In DigiChef, products are the building blocks of your recipes, and their costs drive your food cost calculations.

In most cases, you won't need to create products manually. When you import an invoice, DigiChef automatically creates products from the line items and keeps their costs updated every time a new invoice arrives.

Navigate to your products at Products Overview.

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What's on the Products page

The Products Overview shows all active products in your account with key information at a glance:

Column	What it shows
Name	The product name as imported from your supplier invoice
Supplier	Which supplier you purchase this product from
Unit	The unit of measurement the product is purchased in (e.g., Case, kg, Each)
Last Cost	The most recent purchase price per unit
Used In	Number of recipes that use this product as an ingredient

Use the search bar to quickly find a product by name.

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Understanding product fields

When you open or edit a product, you'll see several fields that affect how DigiChef calculates costs in your recipes. It's worth understanding what each one means.

Pack & Size (case structure)

Most food products are purchased as a case containing multiple units. DigiChef models this with two fields:

• Pack — how many individual items are in one case (e.g., 4 for a case of 4 × 2L milk cartons)
• Size — the size of each individual item (e.g., 2 litres)
• Unit of Measurement — the unit for the individual item size (e.g., Litre)

DigiChef uses Pack and Size together to calculate the cost per unit of measure — so when you use 500mL of milk in a recipe, it knows exactly what that costs.

TIP

If a product is purchased as a single unit (e.g., a bag of flour purchased per kilogram, not by the case), set Pack to 1 and Size to the weight or volume of the unit.

Yield (%)

Yield is the percentage of a product that is actually usable after preparation. Many raw ingredients lose weight or volume during cooking, trimming, or peeling.

Example: A beef roast that weighs 2kg raw but only 1.8kg after cooking has a yield of 90%. DigiChef uses the yield percentage to adjust the effective cost per usable unit upward — because you're paying for 2kg but only getting 1.8kg of usable product.

Setting an accurate yield ensures your recipe costs reflect reality, not just the invoice price.

INFO

If a product is used as-purchased with no trimming or cooking loss (e.g., a tin of tomatoes), leave yield at 100%.

Product ID

The Product ID is a unique identifier that helps DigiChef match invoice line items to existing products when importing orders. For EDI and PDF imports, this is typically the supplier's own item code.

If your supplier doesn't assign product IDs, you can enter your own — just keep them consistent.

Brand

Assigning a brand to a product lets you group products by manufacturer and track spend or recipe usage at the brand level. See Brands for details.

Category

Assigning a category (e.g., Proteins, Produce, Dairy) enables category-level breakdowns in your inventory count reports. See Categories for details.

Is this a food product?

The Is Food toggle controls whether this product contributes to your food cost calculations. Products marked as non-food (e.g., cleaning supplies, packaging materials) are tracked for purchasing purposes but excluded from recipe costs and food cost percentage.

Purchased by weight

Check Purchased by Weight for products where the invoice charge varies with the actual weight delivered — for example, fresh fish or whole cuts of meat where each delivery is a slightly different weight. DigiChef will factor this in when reconciling invoice costs.

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Viewing a product's detail page

Click any product name to open its detail page. Here you can see:

• Price history — a timeline of every price this product has been purchased at, so you can see trends over time
• Recipes using this product — every plating and prep recipe that includes this product as an ingredient
• Purchase history — a list of all orders in which this product appears

TIP

The price history chart is a great tool when negotiating with your supplier. If prices have crept up over time, you'll have the data to back up the conversation.

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Editing a product

If a product was imported with an incorrect name, unit, or cost, you can edit it directly:

1. Open the product's detail page.
2. Click Edit.
3. Update the relevant fields.
4. Click Save.

WARNING

Changing a product's unit of measurement may affect the accuracy of recipes that use it. Review any recipes using this product after making changes.

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Adding a product manually

While importing invoices is the preferred method, you can create a product manually if needed:

1. Navigate to the Products Overview.
2. Click Create.
3. Enter the product name, supplier, unit of measurement, and cost.
4. Click Save.

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Tracking which recipes use a product

From a product's detail page, the Used In section lists every recipe that includes this product. This is useful when a product is discontinued or you want to understand the impact of a price change before it flows through.

TIP

Before switching to a different brand or supplier for a product, check the Used In section to understand exactly how many recipes and menus will be affected by the change.

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Archiving a product

If a product is discontinued or you no longer purchase it, you can archive it to keep your product list clean without losing historical data. Archived products are hidden from the main product list but their cost history and recipe links are preserved.

1. Open the product's detail page.
2. Click Options > Archive.

To restore an archived product, use the Archived filter on the Products Overview to find it, then click Restore.

INFO

Archiving a product does not remove it from recipes that already use it. The archived product's last known cost is still used in recipe calculations until you update or replace it.

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Exporting products

You can export your full product list to a CSV file for use in spreadsheets or other systems:

1. Navigate to the Products Overview.
2. Click Export.
3. The file will download to your device.