Feature Overview: Managing inventory items with multiple sizes

Feature Overview: Managing inventory items with multiple sizes

 
Items are often purchased, transferred, and sold in different sizes. Yellow Dog supports multiple sizes for a single item so you can track inventory, costs, and usage accurately across all workflows.

 
Configure item sizes in the Inventory Items module.

  
Use multiple sizes whenever an item needs different units for purchasing, transferring, selling, or recipe usage.

 
  1. Most common for food and beverage (F&B)
  2. Also useful for retail clients

  
Base unit

  • When creating an item, set the Base Unit to a universal size for that item (for example, each, ounce, pound, or bottle).

  • Once an item has transaction history, the base unit can’t be changed.

  • The base unit holds the on-hand quantity used in reporting.


Additional sizes

  • Create additional sizes as needed to support purchasing, transfers, recipes or sales.

  • All additional sizes appear on the Child Items tab.

    • F&B clients can create the first additional size on the F&B Details tab.

    • Retail clients create all additional sizes on the Child Items tab.

  • To edit an additional size, select Edit this item on the Child Items tab




Figure: Example of the Edit This Item hyperlink on the child items tab


Size relationships and behaviors

  • Define the relationship between the base unit and additional sizes to ensure accurate on-hand quantities and costs.

  • Sizes can be swapped, but you may need to perform maintenance or manual adjustments to correct on-hand quantities and costs afterward.

  • Use the Size Behaviors tab to include or exclude sizes from specific areas of the system.

 

Vendor pricing

Add a vendor price to every purchasing size, even if sizes are related.

Substitutions

If a usual vendor or size isn’t available:

  • If the item is the same(i.e., chicken breasts) don’t create a new item.

  • If the size exists for another vendor, add a new vendor product for the correct vendor.

  • If the vendor supplies a new size, create it on the Child Items tab and add the vendor part number and price on the Vendor Products tab. 

Recipes

For items used in recipes, especially proteins or items used in partial quantities:

  • Assign a Net Weight or Net Volume to ensure accurate recipe usage.

  • If recipes use a size other than the base unit, assign the net weight or volume to the base unit as well.

  • Temporarily make the base unit available to recipes to assign net weight or volume, then make it unavailable again if needed.