Keeping receipts and purchase records that are useful

A purchase record is useful when it tells you what you paid per kilo, litre or unit for each ingredient, where and when. To get there, record the date, place, item, quantity with its unit, total paid and price per base unit for every purchase, and keep a photo of the receipt or the shelf tag. With that you can keep your costs current, compare suppliers and spot price rises that a receipt in a drawer will never show you.

What to record for every purchase

Each line in your record is one item bought, not one receipt. A cash and carry receipt with twelve items is twelve lines.

• Date. So you can see when a price moves.
• Place or supplier. The wholesaler, the supermarket, the stall at the farmers market, the company that delivers your jars.
• Item, always with the same name. If one day you write "oats" and another "rolled oats 5 kg", you will not be able to compare them.
• Quantity and unit as bought. One 3 kg tub, two 1 kg bags, a case of 24, a dozen.
• Total paid.
• Price per base unit. Total ÷ quantity in kilos, litres or units. This is the number you cost with. For dozens, bunches and packs, the guide on units and conversions for costing has the equivalents.
• Payment method. Card, cash, bank transfer. It helps you reconcile your money later.
• Notes. Brand, quality, anything missing, a late delivery.

That last field looks optional, but over time it is what tells you which supplier delivers and which does not. When you have to decide which suppliers to rely on, you will have data instead of memories.

Photos of receipts and shelf tags

Your phone does half the work.

• Photograph the receipt as soon as you pay. Thermal receipts fade and paper gets lost. The photo stays.
• Photograph the shelf tag. Supermarket tags often show the price per kilo or per litre. They help you compare pack sizes and track prices of things you did not buy that day but want to watch.
• Photo or note at the market. If the stall does not give receipts, write it down there and then. If they will, ask them to scribble the total on a slip and photograph it.

Keep the photos in one album per month. Once a week, in fifteen minutes, copy the new ones into your record. If you leave it to the end of the month, it piles up and you stop doing it.

Worked example: granola and a rise nobody announced

You sell 500 g jars of granola. This is part of your record for the first half of October:

On 16 October you go back to the wholesaler and pay $13.90 for the kilo of almonds and $29.40 for the tub of honey, which is $9.80 per kg. At the till you hardly notice: it is "the usual, a bit dearer". In the record you do.

Each jar uses 70 g of almonds and 60 g of honey.

• Almonds before: 0.07 × 11.80 = $0.826. Now: 0.07 × 13.90 = $0.973. Difference: $0.147 per jar.
• Honey before: 0.06 × 9.00 = $0.540. Now: 0.06 × 9.80 = $0.588. Difference: $0.048 per jar.
• Total: 0.147 + 0.048 = $0.195 more per jar.

If a jar had a loaded cost of $4.80, it is now about $5.00 ($4.995). At 60 jars a month that is $11.70 less profit every month, without you changing anything. Spotted in time, the decision is yours: absorb it, buy elsewhere or adjust the price.

Now picture the same month recorded as "Wholesaler $48.30" and "Wholesaler $53.80". You know you spent more, but not on what, or whether you bought more or prices went up. That record works for your bank balance, not for your costs.

What records give you over time

A well-kept record answers questions you would otherwise answer by guesswork:

• Are my costs still true? Compare today's price per kilo with the one you costed with.
• Where should I buy each item? With prices per base unit from several places, the comparison is direct.
• When does each ingredient get expensive? A year of data gives you your own seasonal price calendar.
• How much do I use each week? Adding up what you bought tells you your real usage, which is the basis for planning purchases from your production plan.

The guide on how to buy ingredients for a small food business shows where the record fits in the whole buying routine.

Receipts, tax and your accountant

The record you keep for costing and the documents you keep for tax overlap, but they are not the same thing. For costing, writing things down properly is enough. For tax, which documents you need, how long to keep them and how to record them depends on where you are and how your business is registered. Check your local tax rules or ask an accountant instead of assuming.

What you can do now: keep every receipt filed by month, and separate business purchases from personal ones. If one receipt mixes both, record only the business items. The guide on bookkeeping basics for food entrepreneurs covers the minimum records worth keeping alongside your purchase log.

Do it with the calculator

When your record shows a new price, put your recipe into the food cost calculator with that price; it shows the new loaded cost per unit and whether your selling price still gives you the margin you want.