Costs Tab

What it is

The Costs tab of the editor works out the true cost of a recipe end to end — ingredients, labor, equipment, and overhead — and turns it into suggested selling prices per channel. It lives in the right-hand sidebar of the recipe view: open it from the Costs tab, alongside Nutrition and Validation.

Everything recalculates live as you edit: change a few labor hours, add a piece of equipment, or drag the target margin, and the KPIs, breakdown, and prices update instantly. Changes autosave; there's no Save button.

How to get there

• Path: https://app.areacacao.com/reciview?id=<id> → sidebar → Costs tab.
• How to reach it: open any recipe from /recipes and, in the charts panel, pick Costs.

KPIs

At the top you see four cards:

• Total cost — the fully loaded batch cost (ingredients + labor + equipment + overhead).
• Cost / unit — cost per sellable unit, with a note of how many sellable units come out.
• Cost / 100g — cost per 100 grams of product.
• Coverage — how many ingredients have a cost assigned versus the total (e.g. 8 / 10).

Health indicator (food cost)

Below the KPIs, a health strip appears once there's a selling price. It compares the ingredient cost per unit against the suggested price and flags it against the healthy 25-35% band:

• In band (green): Food cost X% — within the healthy range (25-35%).
• Out of band (amber): Food cost X% — outside the healthy 25-35% range.

Total cost breakdown

A card splits the total cost into its lines with their percentage: Ingredients, Labor, Equipment, and Overhead. If the recipe uses supplies (boxes, cup liners, labels) with a cost, a Supplies line also appears, 100% variable. See Supplies in the cost.

Collapsible sections

Each block opens and closes independently. Ingredient cost and Selling prices are open by default.

Ingredient cost

A horizontal bar chart with the top 10 ingredients by absolute cost. If no costs are set yet, it links you to Costs / Ingredients to assign them.

Labor (multi-role)

Add as many rows as there are roles involved with Add role. Each row has:

• Role — picked from your rates (it shows the €/h next to the name).
• Hours — hours of that role in the recipe.
• Type — Active or Passive (equipment only).

Equipment (multi-item)

With Add equipment you add machines. Depending on how the item is defined in your rates, the row asks for Hours (machine-hour cost with depreciation) or Uses (per-use cost).

Yield

Set how many Units per batch come out and the Waste (%). The app shows the resulting Sellable units, which is the basis for the cost per unit. If you leave units per batch at zero, it falls back to the servings from the Yield tab.

Overhead cost

Allocates fixed business costs to the recipe. You pick the Allocation method from five options:

• % of direct cost — a percentage of ingredients + labor.
• Fixed amount — a fixed amount per unit.
• Hourly rate — a €/hour applied to active labor hours.
• % of business sales — a share of monthly costs split across units/month.
• Cost centers — select specific cost centers and sum their amounts.

The block shows your Monthly business costs and links to Costs / Business to edit them.

Selling prices (multi-channel)

A global Target margin (%) slider drives every channel. Out of the box you get cards per channel: Direct (DTC), Wholesale, and Retail. Use Add channel to create more. Each card shows:

• Suggested price — computed from the cost per unit and the margin.
• A channel-specific Target margin (overrides the global one) and an optional Manual price.
• An optional VAT (%), which adds With VAT: X €.
• Equiv. markup, Contribution margin/unit, and Break-even in units/month.

Available actions

• View cost sheet (PDF) — opens the printable cost sheet for the recipe. See Cost sheet PDF.
• Analyze with AI — launches the AI Cost Assistant, which generates a report with a summary, cost drivers, and recommendations.

Hybrid navigation

The Configure rates and Manage equipment links open a drawer without leaving the recipe: you edit rates or equipment in place and, when you close it, the panel recomputes with the new values. That way you never lose the context of the cost you're tuning.

Plan availability

Available on all plans.

Next steps