Top 5 Websites to Download Your Free Restaurant Inventory Form

What is a Restaurant Inventory Form?

Inventory tracking is an important function of inventory management. An inventory form is a spreadsheet used in the restaurant business to make and maintain a manual inventory list and track inventory turnover. It tracks information about items available, and items required by a restaurant. Purchase dates, costs, sell-by dates, frequency of orders, bestselling menu items, slow-moving ingredientsall this is available to the restaurant owner or manager on a restaurant inventory form.


Inventory forms are an economical and convenient tool that assist with inventory control . The restaurant inventory spreadsheet helps calculate restaurant spend. This way, it helps an establishment gain deeper insight into its bottomline. An inventory form is an affordable means by which a restaurant can manage its overall costs.

How to Use a Restaurant Inventory Form

A key function of a foodservice business is to track its inventory turnover and maintain a record of its food stock. An inventory form (also called an inventory template or an inventory spreadsheet ) helps organize this data. Several websites offer free inventory forms and templates for download. If you're new to the restaurant business and need to know how to do inventory with the help of a restaurant inventory form, these are the steps to follow-

• Start by downloading a spreadsheet from Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel or any other preferred free inventory sheet template provider online.
• Once you've downloaded the document, create new sheets within the same inventory template for each category you want to inventory, like food items, kitchen supplies, beverages, crockery, and so on.
• Enter the items to be inventoried for each category in its corresponding sheet. For example, under Dairy, you may want to add cheese, milk, yogurt, and so on, with added. Note item type and brand names in rows, and manufacturer, vendor, quantity, count, sell-by date, cost, and other details in columns. End with a total for each item, and a grand total for the category. You have your starting inventory.
• Create a separate column on each tab for received inventory for items received during the inventory period.
• Mark items used on a daily basis.
• At the time of ending inventory calculate total usage by multiplying item count with item price. Do this both, for each item and each category.
• Print the copy of this spreadsheet to count your inventory manually if needed.

Don’t let inventory management take all the fun out of running your restaurant.

A great tool to help you organize your ingredients and supplies is the restaurant inventory form. We’ll tell you all about it.

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A Restaurant Inventory Form Can Help Control Costs! How?

A restaurant that has total control over its inventory is one that is likely to trim its losses and increase profits. A well-maintained inventory form helps a restaurant keep track of its food and beverage stock, helping it adjust for increased demand or shortfall. By monitoring purchase, consumption, and wastage every day, it alerts a restaurant to the changes it needs to make to supply orders.


For a better handle on its balance sheet, a restaurant needs to calculate its Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). The is what a restaurant spends on every item purchased to make the dishes on a menu. COGS is calculated with this formula-


Beginning Inventory (the inventory you have at the start of your inventory period) + Received Inventory (items bought in the interim)
Ending Inventory (what you're left with at the end of the inventory period) =
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS)


Cost of goods sold helps a restaurant price its menu items optimally and is instrumental in calculating profit margin. Generally, around one-third of a restaurant's gross revenue covers cost of goods sold . COGS is never static. The cost of the goods you buy changes with the season, or of account of logistical issues, or other factors. This alters the COGS too, requiring menu prices to be updated as well.

A restaurant inventory sheet is central to this math. It doesn't only help to calculate cost of goods sold but also points out ways to reduce it. Lower the cost of goods sold higher the profit margin. By indicating usage, an inventory spreadsheet highlights items that can be bought in bulk at a lower cost. In the same way it helps reduce wastage by pointing out slow-moving goods. A restaurant can also better calibrate its menu pricing with its costs when it has easy access to the numbers.


Practised regularly, restaurant inventory can help a restaurant stem loss-making purchases and make the changes it needs to drive up profits.

Top 5 Websites to Download Your Free Restaurant Inventory Form

Top 5 websites to download your free restaurant inventory form-


1. Jotform- Jotform is an all-in-one free inventory workflow sheet that combines spreadsheets, team collaboration, and data analysis tools. You can add as many columns and rows as you want to track inventory, and can conceal columns you don't wish to share with employees in group discussions. You can even share your inventory data with others via a dedicated link or email. The inventory template can be downloaded from www.Jotform.com.


2. Micheal Hartzell- Micheal Hartzell is a marketing coach who finds low-cost ways to grow a business. His website www.michealhartzell.com offers a free inventory template download to manage food cost and practice optimal inventory tracking.


3. Spreadsheet123- Being the largest provider of the inventory spreadsheet template for Microsoft Excel , Google Sheets and Openoffice.org, Spreadsheet 123 provides easy-to-use templates. Stock keeping, food costs, invoices, payroll, and time management tools can all be found here, at www.spreadsheet123.com.


4. Get.apicbase- The free restaurant inventory spreadsheet this company provides can help you manage multi-unit restaurant operations. Its free inventory list contains all the stock counting formulas needed for full inventory control of food stocks, liquors, and beverages.


5. Template.net- This template website offers a range of beautifully designed spreadsheets that can be used across functions and businesses. You can choose between paid and free options. Their restaurant inventory templates can be downloaded as Word documents, Apple Pages or Google Docs from www.template.net.



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Drawbacks of a Restaurant Inventory Form

Managing inventory is one of the most loathed jobs at a restaurant. It is tedious, complicated, repetitive, and boring. And those are just complaints from restaurant staff forced to take inventory . On the other side sit restaurant owners and managers who complain of errors and fudged data from poor inventory management . Not to mention wasted labor hours.


The inventory spreadsheet bless its soul was the restaurant's only alternative all this time, and it did the job best it could. Yet, the restaurant inventory form, whether online or in print, can become a confusing document, tougher to handle as inventory grows. You may decide to add, say, an equipment inventory sheet or a cutlery inventory sheet to your restaurant inventory form. Large inventories require multiple spreadsheets and maintaining each one can be a chore.

The spreadsheet is limited by its format. It is a manual form that requires someone to enter inventory details into the document by hand. Calculations for food cost, CoGS, stock usage and other metrics have to be done manually. Moreover, the inventory form can only tabulate data. It lacks the intelligence to process it in detail and offer actionable advice.

Mismanaged inventory is a surefire way to endanger your business and lose money.

But with a restaurant inventory form, you’ll be in total control of your stocks. Here’s where to find the best forms online.

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Is the Restaurant Inventory Form the Best Inventory Tool?

A restaurant inventory form is a cost-effective way to manage restaurant inventory but it's far from the best tool available today. The restaurant business is evolving like never before, and it's due in large part to technology. Software systems have become a key driver of restaurant management solutions, bringing a level of precision and automation never before encountered by the industry. This has lead to expanded markets and new potential for growth.


Inventory software is one of the tools of modern restaurant management . It brings transparency, accuracy and speed to restaurant inventory unlike any other inventory tool used before. The technology works in collaboration with a slew of productsincluding Bluetooth and Wifi-enabled barcode scanners and weighing scalesto accurately and automatically record inventory data. Stored on the cloud, the data can be accessed anywhere, anytime.


Inventory software can also be integrated with a restaurant's other automated systems, like its pos system to generate reports on vendor management, food costing, budgeting and order optimization. If you want to grow and streamline your restaurant business, you need to automate your processes, and that is only possible with restaurant management software.

Who Should Use a Restaurant Inventory Form?

A restaurant inventory form is a great way of keeping keep track of your inventory and its supply chain when you're on a budget. With free inventory templates, there's no cheaper way to keep your business in order and up to date. If you have just ventured into the food business and have a limited cash flow, the restaurant inventory form is your best bet to track stocks and supplies.


But once you start to make profits and you want to scale up, you'll have to move to something more professional. The same goes for a business that wants to open new outlets. Or a restaurant that wants to track its inventory across kitchens. Or a business that's adding more inventory. The only system that gives you complete inventory control today is inventory software. Inventory management just doesn't get better than this. But that's a story for another page.

The least glamorous part about running a business is managing inventory.

With a restaurant inventory form, the job can be handled quickly and efficiently. Get your form right here.

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