WHY IT'S IMPORTANT
This glossary defines the terms you'll encounter throughout Yellow Dog Inventory. Terms are grouped into four categories so you can find what's relevant to your operation quickly: Universal terms apply to every Yellow Dog client, while the Food & Beverage, Retail, and Concessions sections cover vocabulary specific to each vertical.
Note: A term living in a vertical section doesn't always mean it's exclusive to that vertical — it's grouped where it's most commonly used. When in doubt, check the Universal section first. |
HIGHLIGHTS
• API (Application Programming Interface) — A secure method for exchanging data between Yellow Dog Inventory and external systems such as POS platforms or accounting software. Yellow Dog API access requires internet access.
• Bloodhound — A web-based item lookup tool that lets users quickly view inventory details and availability across stores.
• Build Version — The current version of your Yellow Dog Inventory installation, shown on the bottom task bar.
• Client ID — A unique identifier used to connect mobile applications and web tools to a specific Yellow Dog Inventory system.
• Database — The centralized storage location where all inventory, purchasing, sales, and reporting data is stored.
• Integration — The connection between Yellow Dog Inventory and external systems (such as POS, eCommerce, or accounting platforms) that allows data to flow automatically.
• POS (Point of Sale) — The system used to complete transactions with customers. Sales data from the POS is imported into Yellow Dog to update inventory and generate reporting.
• Server — The system that hosts the Yellow Dog database and processes inventory transactions.
• Hosted Server — a cloud-based server maintained by Yellow Dog, accessed over the internet.
• Local Server — a server supplied by the client and kept on site, accessed over the client's internal network.
• POS Server — the server that hosts the database for the Point-of-Sale system.
• SQL (Structured Query Language) — A language used to view or change data in databases.
• User Interface (UI) — The screens, menus, buttons, and forms that users interact with when using Yellow Dog Inventory.
• Yellow Dog Client — The desktop application installed on an end user's computer, used to access and manage the Yellow Dog Inventory system.
• YD Mobile — Yellow Dog's mobile application used for inventory tasks such as item lookup, barcode scanning, purchase order receiving, transfers, manual adjustments, and counting.
• Count XL — A barcode-based counting application used with Yellow Dog handheld devices during physical inventories.
• Watchdog
(Advisor) — A diagnostic tool that identifies common issues
affecting inventory accuracy, such as unmapped items, missing costs, or
uncommitted documents.
• Attribute — A customizable, user-generated field used to assign additional traits to items, recipes, vendors, or stores for reporting and filtering. Attributes can be text, numbers, multi-select drop-downs, or true/false check boxes.
• Auto Zero Item — An item that is automatically adjusted to zero on-hand nightly via an automated manual adjustment, allowing costs to be tracked without counting.
• Bin — A location identifier that specifies where an item is stored within a stockroom or warehouse.
• Calculated Cost — The system-generated cost of an item based on purchasing history and the chosen cost calculation method. Unless cost is calculated as Default Vendor Price, calculated cost may not reflect the current vendor price. Options include Weighted Average Cost (Per Store / All Stores), Default Vendor Price, Last Vendor Price, Perpetual Weighted Average Cost (Per Store / All Stores), & FIFO.
• Default Vendor — The vendor you primarily purchase an item from. The default vendor displays on the Item Management > Inventory Item screen and in reporting.
• Dimension — A label used as an identifier for groups of items. Yellow Dog supports unlimited dimensions; the first is always used to indicate size, and others may indicate color, wine varietal, book edition, or vintage.
• Flag — A label used to identify the storage location for groups of items (for example, a “Walk-In Cooler” flag). Flags can be used for sorting items in physical inventory counts, among other things.
• Inventory Item — A product that is purchased, stored, sold, and tracked within the inventory system.
• Item List — A saved group of items that can be pulled into various areas of the software, such as manual adjustments or purchasing documents.
• Item Status — A broader term that may include active, inactive, removed, no count, or auto-zero.
• Label Queue — A queue items can be added to so that labels can be printed all at once.
• Level Structure — The hierarchical grouping (Department → Category → Subcategory) used to organize items for reporting, accounting, and item management throughout Yellow Dog.
• Matrices / Matrix — A group of related items created as a set that share a common product but vary by attributes such as size, color, or style — each tracked individually with its own SKU and quantity. Vendor and retail prices can be managed as a set or individually.
• No Count Item — An item that never holds an on-hand quantity and is excluded from physical inventories (often used for complimentary items or supplies).
• Auto Transfer Item — An item automatically moved between stores to reconcile inventory based on sales activity, without manual transfers. Configured on the Interfaces tab of the Item Editor or at the level.
• Production Transfer Item — A product created in one location and transferred to another — depleting the production store's ingredients and moving the finished item into the receiving store's inventory.
• On-Hand Quantity — The current quantity of an item available in a specific store or location.
• Parent — The primary unit for an item. The parent offers more reporting options than the child and always holds the on-hand quantity.
• Child — An additional unit related to the parent via a child count (the number of child items that make one parent). For example, with a case/bottle setup, the case is the parent, the bottle is the child, and the child count is 24.
• SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) — A unique identifier generated automatically and assigned to every item. The generation method can be customized based on department and vendor codes and is configured during implementation.
• UPC — The number associated with the barcode on an item, including all digits beneath the barcode. Frequently attached by the manufacturer and used for barcode scanning.
• Vendor — The company items are purchased from. At least one vendor must be assigned to every item; for items produced in house, the vendor may be “In-House” or the organization's name.
• Vendor Price —
The cost at which an item is purchased from a vendor, used to track expenses
and calculate inventory value and profitability.
• Physical Inventory — The process of reconciling the quantities recorded in Yellow Dog against what is physically on hand. Yellow Dog recommends doing physicals regularly to keep on-hands and costs accurate.
• Count Sheet — A template that determines which items appear during counting. Count sheets can mirror a physical location and be built from levels and/or flags so new items are automatically included.
• Session — A list of items that have been counted. Sessions are created via YD Mobile, Count XL, or manual entry and pulled into physical inventories, manual adjustments, purchasing documents, or item lists.
• Cycle Count — A partial inventory count used in between full physical inventories (not used for end-of-month full physicals).
• Commit — The act of submitting or finalizing. Used in physical inventories and purchasing documents. Once a physical is committed, users with the appropriate permission have 7 days to uncommit in the event of a gross error.
• Effective Date & Time — The date and time that collected counts are applied to the system as new on-hands. Ideally this represents when counts were completed; for month-end it typically aligns with the close of business on the last day of the period.
• Variance — The difference between the expected quantity in the system and the quantity counted during a physical inventory.
• Worksheet
(Physical) — A printout from within a physical used to review counts
and collect recounts.
• Purchasing — Yellow Dog's customizable purchasing module. Purchasing documents include requests, purchase orders, receipts, invoices, transfers, and returns to vendor.
• Request — A document indicating that inventory items need to be ordered or replenished, typically created by store or department staff and reviewed before being converted into a purchase order.
• Purchase Order (PO) — A document used to place an order with a vendor for specific items and quantities. POs can be emailed directly to a vendor.
• Receipt — A document used to receive inventory when product arrives before the final invoice is available. Updates on-hand values.
• Invoice — A purchasing document used to receive inventory and record the cost of purchased products. Updates calculated cost.
• Invoice Expense Accounts — Fields added to invoices to account for additional expenses such as tax, freight, or deposits, which can be distributed across items.
• Return to Vendor — A transaction used to record items returned to a vendor and remove them from inventory. Often used to enter credit memos.
• Return to Vendor Accounts — Fields added to returns to vendor to indicate why an item is being returned (for example, incorrect product, wrong location, or spoilage).
• EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) — A vendor integration that submits invoices directly into Yellow Dog. Requires a contracted EDI integration.
• Transfer — The movement of inventory from one store or location to another within the same organization. Items must be available in both stores.
• Transfer Issuance — The process of sending inventory from one store to another.
• Transfer Acceptance — The confirmation that transferred inventory has been received at the destination store.
• Vendor Part Number (Vendor PN) — The product identifier used by the vendor for a specific item.
• Worksheet (Purchasing) — A feature that lets users fill out one worksheet to generate several other documents, designed to streamline purchasing. (Production worksheets are the exception — they function as prep lists.)
• Par Level — The ideal quantity of an item that should always be kept on hand.
• Re-Order Point —
The on-hand quantity at which an item should be reordered to bring it back up
to par. Ideally an item never dips below this level.
• Manual Adjustment — An adjustment to on-hands made outside the automatic processes, ideal for waste, damages, shrinkage, and production.
• Manual Adjustment Account — An account used to categorize the financial impact of manual adjustments (such as waste, spoilage, or breakage) so out-of-process changes are reflected in financial reporting.
• Manual Sales —
Sales entered directly into Yellow Dog for activity that occurred outside the
POS (for example, sidewalk sales, pop-up stores, catering, employee meals, or
comps).
• Interface Settings — Configuration settings that dictate how an item interacts with the POS — whether it pushes to the POS, which reporting groups and tax it's assigned, and the Inventory and COGS accounts assigned to it. Interfaces can be set by item, level, or system-wide.
• COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) — The direct cost associated with items sold. Accurate COGS depends on complete POS mapping, recipe mapping, invoicing, and physical inventories.
• COGS Account — An accounting account assigned to levels or POS items that determines how costs are categorized in financial reporting.
• GL (General Ledger) — A financial account used to categorize and track all transactions within a company's accounting system.
• Inventory Account — An account used to categorize, organize, and track transactions related to stock. GL account codes are assigned to inventory accounts.
• POS Item Map — The area where created recipes are linked to corresponding buttons in the POS; also where COGS accounts are assigned.
• POS Mapping —
The process of linking POS menu items to inventory items, recipes, and COGS
accounts.
• Reporting — Yellow Dog offers over 300 reports that can be sorted and grouped in many ways, saved as templates to run on demand, or scheduled to email daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.
• Saved Reports — Preconfigured reports saved for quick access or automated delivery.
• Send Saved Report Email — A feature that emails saved reports to selected recipients on a schedule (daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly) as a PDF, CSV, Excel file, or embedded in the email.
• Relative Date Range — A dynamic, custom reporting range (for example, “Last Month” or “This Week”) that reflects a business's periods and updates automatically.
• Extended Retail — Retail Price × Quantity Sold, accounting for discounts.
• Percent Cost — Cost as a percentage of retail: (Cost ÷ Retail) × 100.
• Recipe — A defined combination of ingredient items used to represent a menu item, batch, or produced product. There is one way to create a recipe, but several behaviors determine how it affects inventory.
• Recipe Behavior — The operational designation assigned to a recipe item that determines how inventory is consumed and reported. Behaviors include the types below.
• Batch Recipe — made ahead but not produced in Yellow Dog via manual adjustments. Does not hold its own on-hand; ingredient on-hands are adjusted during physical inventory counts. The most common F&B recipe type.
• Production Recipe — made in house to sell and produced in Yellow Dog through manual adjustments (the only time ingredients are affected). Holds an on-hand and can be counted, but does not bring its ingredients into physicals.
• Production Transfer Recipe — a two-step process where one location produces the item and another sells it. The production store's ingredients deplete on transfer; the receiving store gets an on-hand value for the recipe item, and no ingredients deduct when it's sold.
• Purchasing Kit — lets users receive by the recipe and sell by the ingredient (for example, a mixer assortment). These work only if the item count is consistent for each order.
• Retail Kit — a recipe used in a retail setting, such as a gift basket or bundled product.
• Ingredient Item — An inventory item used as a component within a recipe.
• Recipe Mapping — Linking a recipe to a POS item to enable theoretical usage tracking and Actual vs Theoretical reporting.
• Recipe Type — A user-generated classification used to filter and organize recipes.
• Yield — The total output quantity a recipe produces. Required when recipes are nested or used in other recipes; for batch recipe items, recipe yield must match the item size.
• Reprocess Sales —
A function used after mapping or updating recipes to retroactively apply recipe
depletion to previously imported sales.
• Base Unit — The on-hand (parent) unit of measure for an item. It should be a universal size such as ounce, pound, each, or gram. All purchasing, counting, reporting, and recipe usage calculations convert back to the base unit. It cannot be changed once an item has transactional history.
• Catch Weight Item — An item sold by weight (commonly meats and cheeses) whose base unit is typically Pound and is also marked as the purchasing size.
• Expiration Days — The number of days from when an item is received or produced until it expires — useful for managing perishable goods.
• Size Behavior — System rules that determine how an item's sizes function within purchasing, counting, and reporting workflows. Set on the Size Behavior tab of the Item Editor.
• Size Abbreviation
Mapping — The process of matching abbreviated size values from
external sources (vendor invoices, EDI files, invoice scanning, or POS data) to
the full Size and Unit of Measure defined on an item.
• Invoice Staging — A temporary holding state for invoices that have been scanned or imported (often via EDI or Retriever) but not yet reviewed or committed. Staged invoices don't affect inventory or financials until committed.
• Staged Invoice — An invoice that exists in Yellow Dog but requires user review to match items, verify quantities and pricing, and confirm totals.
• Invoice Scanning — The process of uploading a digital copy of a vendor invoice to assist with entry or automated processing.
• Retriever — A subscription service allowing invoice uploads via mobile, email, or direct system upload.
• Order Desk
Worksheet — A worksheet that streamlines creating multiple purchase
orders from requests, selecting the best vendor products based on a bid
selection method.
• Actual vs Theoretical (AvT) — A comparison between what Yellow Dog expects you to have on hand (based on sales and recipe mappings) and what you actually counted. Requires recipes mapped to POS items.
• Actual Usage — The true amount of inventory consumed over a period, as confirmed by the physical count.
• Theoretical Usage — The expected amount of inventory that should have been used based on sales data and recipe mappings.
• COGS Reporting — Tracks the cost of inventory items sold during a period, providing insight into profitability by comparing cost of goods against sales revenue.
• Product Mix —
A report showing the quantity and sales of each menu item over a period, used
to identify top- and low-performing items.
• Food Cost — The total cost of ingredients used to produce items sold during a period, typically expressed as a percentage of sales: Food Cost % = Cost of Ingredients Used ÷ Revenue × 100.
• COGS Formula — Cost of goods sold for a period: Beginning Inventory + Purchases − Ending Inventory. In Yellow Dog, beginning and ending inventory values come from committed physical inventories and purchases from committed invoices.
• Current Cost Percentage — The actual food cost of a recipe based on the current cost of its ingredient items.
• Target Cost
Percentage — The ideal food cost percentage a company sets for a
recipe as a benchmark for profitability and pricing decisions.
• Margin / Margin Percent — Profit as a percentage of the selling price: (Retail − Cost) ÷ Retail × 100. Example: an item costing $10 and selling for $20 has a 50% margin.
• Markup / Markup Percent — The increase over cost as a percentage of the cost: (Retail − Cost) ÷ Cost × 100. Example: an item costing $10 and selling for $20 has a 100% markup.
• Scheduled Retail — Lets users schedule updates to retail prices for a future time. Designed with permanent price changes in mind.
• POS Sync — The program Yellow Dog uses to push item data into the POS while pulling sales data from the POS into Yellow Dog's database. Generally applies to retail customers, not F&B.
• Approved Item — An item whose edit ability is restricted to protect data integrity, controlling who can make changes on a per-item basis.
• Stand — A store configured for the stands workflow — a point-of-sale location within a venue, such as a concession stand, kiosk, or bar. Each stand maintains its own on-hand inventory.
• Hawker / Vendor Stand — A mobile or temporary stand operated by a vendor or hawker, typically carrying limited inventory. These locations transfer remaining product back to the issuing/warehouse location at the end of an event.
• Event — A scheduled occurrence where inventory activity (sales, transfers, and counts) is tracked. Events are created based on an event type, which determines the stands and items involved.
• Event Type — A predefined template that categorizes events (for example, football game, concert, or festival) and standardizes which stands and items are used, along with par/re-order points and pricing per event type.
• Period — A defined date range used to organize events and indicate when sales occurred during an event; allows grouping multiple events for analysis and financial review.
• Groups — Organizations or teams assigned to operate stands during events, often associated with staffing, accountability, and commission structures.
• Group Commissions — Configured commission structures that determine how revenue or profit is shared with groups operating stands during events.
• Auto-Restock — A process that automatically generates picklists to replenish warehouses and stands before an event, based on par levels, sales, or event needs.
• Picklist — A document showing which items and quantities to pull from a source location (typically a warehouse) to restock stands. Picklists can be generated via auto-restock, manually, or sent from Stand Dog as an in-event restock.
• Counting In / Counting Out — Recording inventory quantities at the beginning (counting in) and end (counting out) of an event. During count out, users can enter waste/comp values. If Stand Dog or Wi-Fi is unavailable, values can be tracked on stand printouts and entered manually into the stand reconciliation.
• Stand Reconciliation — The tool used to review, validate, and finalize stand activity — inventory counts, sales, and variances — at the end of an event before final reporting.
• Stand Profiling — Configuring stand-specific settings such as item availability, par levels, and pricing to match expected demand.
• Stand Dog — The mobile application used with the stands workflow to capture count-in/count-out quantities, transfer product to other stands, submit restock requests to the warehouse, and capture waste/comp values.
Last reviewed: June 2026 · Applies to: Yellow Dog Inventory 2026