Inventory Restaurants: Smart Category Creation in RME – Fourth & HotSchedules Customer Success Portal

Overview

Smart Categories are set against Ingredients, Batch Recipes and Recipes within Recipe Menu & Engineering (RME). These categories link through to the inventory solution and can be used as filters within certain reports that allow criteria selection in both solutions.

As well as categorising data within RME, the category structure is also used for financial exports within the Inventory system. Nominal codes can be entered within Inventory against the Ingredient category levels and can be exported on a number of different system exports.

Types of Categories

There are two types of Smart Categories that can be created within RME. These are:

Cost Centre - categories that have Ingredient and Batch Recipes assigned
Menu Items - categories that have Recipes assigned

When assigning categories to any of these types listed, only the structure relating to the item will be visible. Only one category can be added to an Ingredient, Batch or Recipe.

For example, red chillis created as an Ingredient can only be assigned to one sub-category built as a Cost Centre smart category.

Cost Centre categories will be automatically generated within the RME after the initial data upload during Fourth's Implementations Readiness Phase.

Menu categories can be created after RME admin training with a Fourth Solution Consultant.

Set up – Creating an Ingredient Based Smart Category

To create a new Smart Category within the RME solution, navigate to Admin > Search > Categories > New
Select the New button under Category Details
Populate the new Smart Category with the desired cost centre name
Smart Categories can be identified in the system by the globe icon located to the left of the category name – see Fig.1

Fig.1.png Fig.1 – Creating a new Smart Category and globe icons next to Smart Categories

Use the Smart Category Type drop-down box and select the top Cost Centre option

Fig.2.png Fig.2 - Selecting Cost Centre Category Type

Select the tick box next to Ingredient and the tick box next to Recipe, producing a drop-down box populated with a Batch option
Save the new category

Fig.3.png Fig.3 - Selecting the Ingredient & Recipe boxes to enable 'Batch' product type

Select the Categories tab within the new Smart Category
Select add main category
Input the main Category Name > Save

Fig.4.png Fig.4 Adding a Main Category

Select add sub category > enter the name > Save

Fig.5.png Fig.5 Adding a sub-category

The 'Mop Head' sub-category is the lowest level of sub-category that can be added into RME. If another sub-category is added below this, e.g. 'Yellow Mop Heads', this category would not be used within the Inventory system.

Fig.6.png

Fig.6 Adding a sub-category to a sub-category

To add more main categories and sub-categories, repeat the steps above

Fig.7.png

Fig.7 Adding more main and sub-categories

Setup – Creating a Menu Based Smart Category

To create a new Smart Category within the RME solution, follow the steps as above, navigate to Admin > Search > Categories > New
As before, select the New button under Category Details, and populate the category name with the Menu Group name that’s being created
Select the Smart Category drop-down box and select the Menu Group option and tick the box next to Recipe

Fig.8.png Fig.8 Selecting Menu Category Type

Save the new category
Select the Categories tab within the new Smart Category
Select add main category
Input the main Category Name and Save
Create a sub-category(s) that sit within the Main Category

Fig.9.png Fig.9 Adding a Main and sub-category

Overview

Types of Categories

Set up – Creating an Ingredient Based Smart Category

Setup – Creating a Menu Based Smart Category

Related articles