Ingredient detail
Manage an ingredient's price: five pricing strategies, purchase history, yield loss, and manual records.
What it is
The detail screen is where you manage the cost of a specific ingredient: you choose the strategy that calculates its current price, you log its purchases and manual references, and you apply the yield loss that raises the effective price.
On screen, this view appears as Cost detail (with the breadcrumb Costs → Cost detail) and its subtitle is "Strategy + full purchase history.". Here we call it Ingredient detail as a descriptive name.
How to get there
- Path:
https://app.areacacao.com/costs/ingredients/[id] - How to get there: from Ingredient prices, click Detail in the ingredient's row. You return to the list with the Back to the list link.
What you see
Header and KPIs
At the top you see the ingredient's icon, name, identifier, and category, next to the Add record button. Below, four indicators:
- Current price — the active price based on the active strategy, with its unit (for example
/g). - Weighted average — the average of the prices in your history, weighted by the quantity purchased.
- Records — how many entries the history has.
- Last purchase — the date of the most recent purchase record.
Tabs
Two tabs: Pricing strategy and History.
Pricing strategies
An ingredient's current price isn't a fixed number: it's determined by the strategy you choose. The Pricing strategy tab has five cards:
| Strategy | What it does |
|---|---|
| Last purchase | Uses the price from the most recent purchase record. Reflects your current acquisition cost. |
| Highest price | Uses the highest price in your history. Conservative for budgeting: it protects margins against price increases. |
| Weighted average | Weighted average by quantity purchased. Smooths out one-off fluctuations. |
| Manual | You enter the price and the yield loss by hand. Useful when there are no logged purchases or you want to set a reference. |
| Specific record | You pick a specific record from your history as the current price. |
The first three (Last purchase, Highest price, Weighted average) apply instantly: you click the card and it becomes active.
The other two open a contextual form:
- Manual — Base price (before yield loss) and Yield loss (%) fields. The screen calculates and shows the Final price after yield loss. Click Apply.
- Specific record — a selector with the records from your history (format date · supplier · final price). If the record has no supplier you'll see No supplier instead, and manual records add the (manual) suffix at the end. Pick one and click Apply this record. If there's no history, you'll see "There are no records in the history. Add at least one to use this strategy."
Yield loss
Yield loss is the portion of the ingredient that's lost in the process (shells, trimmings, evaporation, adjustment). It raises the effective cost, because to get a usable quantity you need to buy more.
AreaCacao applies it with this formula on the base price:
final price = base price / (1 - loss/100)For example, with a base price of 10 €/kg and a yield loss of 20%, the final price is 10 / (1 - 0.20) = 12.50 €/kg.
Logging a purchase or reference
Click Add record (or First record / Add your first record if the history is empty). The New price record modal opens, with the subtitle "A real purchase or a manual reference for the ingredient's price."
Choose the record type
A toggle between Real purchase and Manual reference. A real purchase reflects a specific acquisition; a manual reference is an indicative price for when you didn't buy.
Fill in the data
- Date (required).
- Supplier — selector; you can leave — no supplier —.
- Unit price (required).
- Unit (required):
€/g,€/kg,€/ml,€/L, or€/unit. - Quantity purchased — real purchase only.
- Loss % — if you enter it, the modal shows a notice with the Final price after yield loss.
- Notes — optional.
Save
Click Save record (or Cancel to discard). The record enters the history and the current price is recalculated based on the active strategy.
If you enter an invalid unit price, the modal warns with "Enter a valid unit price".
The history
The History tab lists all the records with the columns Date, Type, Supplier, Quantity, Price before loss, Loss %, Final price, and Actions.
- The Type can be Purchase (real purchase) or Manual (reference).
- Under Supplier, records that came from a recipe's Costs tab appear as From recipe; when you hover over them, a notice shows Set from recipe [recipe id].
- To delete a record, use its delete action; the app asks for confirmation: "Delete this record? The active price will be recalculated."
If the history is empty you'll see "No records yet. Add real purchases or manual price references to calculate this ingredient's cost in your recipes."
Plan availability
Available on all plans.