Welcome to Garde! Our goal is to help you maximize profitability while minimizing manual data entry.
How do we do this? We receive your invoices and process them, pull in your sales data daily, and use AI to accelerate your setup. Then with the data collected, we help track purchasing, transfer payables into accounting, update inventory and recipe prices, and give you real-time cost analysis.Below is a bird’s-eye view of the Garde platform.
We’re going to zoom through these, but we’ve included links to more detailed articles for you to dig deeper!Home Dashboard
When any user logs into Garde, they land on the Home dashboard. Sales numbers, a purchasing wheel, and price alerts are all on display. Every single user in Garde has access to the homepage. Note — Depending on your user role, you may see fewer items in your navigation bar. See all user permissions here.Orders
In the Orders screen, you can see all of your invoices, place orders, upload invoices, and approve invoices. Here’s an overview of what we will (and will not) process for you!Performance Reporting
The Performance menu is where all of your reporting lives. Key reports include:- Category Report — All invoices within a selectable date range, showing category distribution and totals.
- Controllable P&L — Summary of revenues, costs, and expenses for a specified period.
- Usage Report — Look at any date range between two inventories to see how purchases and inventory adjustments contributed to your cost of goods sold. Exportable as CSV!
- Sales — View your 21-day moving sales average over time.
- Sales Forecasting — AI-powered sales forecasts to help you plan ahead.
- Price Alerts — Track pricing on specific items so you’re alerted when costs change.
- Price Movers — Track price changes across vendors so you know if you’re overpaying.
- Theoretical Usage — Compare your theoretical food cost (from POS product mix data) against actual food cost (from inventories and purchases). Requires recipes, PMIX mapping, and at least two inventories.
AI Features
Garde includes powerful AI capabilities to save you time:- AI Chat — Ask questions and get instant answers about your data.
- AI Insights — Get proactive suggestions based on your purchasing and cost patterns.
- AI Onboarding — Accelerate setup with AI-assisted recipe entry, unit conversions, and vendor configuration.
- Task Queue — Manage and prioritize operational tasks across your team.
Vendors
Edit vendors, see orders by vendor, set up order guides, and view vendor item history.- Vendors — See a list of vendors, view invoices by vendor, and edit their settings. For each vendor, you can lock payment accounts and set miscellaneous charges & category restrictions.
- Vendor Items — See all vendor items gathered from invoices sent to Garde and which product they are associated with.
Products
In the Products screen you can see all products in Garde, as well as add and edit a product’s category, unit of measure, or vendor item association.- New Item Review — Newly created items appear here for you to review, check categorization, and make changes as needed. Don’t miss this one!
Recipes
The Recipes section provides access to a powerful recipe management system for recipe organization, centralized staff instructions, dynamic recipe pricing, and scalable batch displays for your kitchen.- Menu Items — Build your completed entree and track the margin % on every plate.
- Prepared Items — Batch recipes made in your kitchen that are used in a final dish.
- Bar Items — Recipes for cocktails or drink bases.
- Menu Analysis — See how each menu item contributes to the bottom line.
- Recipe Viewer — View or print recipes from a mounted display for your team to reference.
Inventory
Create, organize, and print count sheets. Enter counts directly as you take inventory in the restaurant.- Inventory Summary — Your change in inventory value between selected dates, with category totals. Also where you post inventory to accounting.
- Inventories — Where you enter counts in Garde.
- Count Sheets — Customized lists of products/recipes for counting.
- Products — See which products are flagged for inventory but aren’t yet on a count sheet.
Labor
Garde automatically collects labor data from your POS system so you can see wage data on your P&L. You can also add salaried employee data for a more complete picture of labor costs.- Labor Summary — Labor costs broken out by category, employee, or job title.
- Shifts — Punch data from the POS.
- Employees — Full employee list from your POS, plus salaried employees.
Purchase Orders
Create and manage purchase orders directly in Garde to streamline your vendor ordering workflow.PnL Release
Review and release your P&L data with confidence using Garde’s PnL Release workflow.Accounting
- Export — See the status for processed invoices and daily sales regarding whether they have been exported to your accounting system (QuickBooks Online or Desktop).
- Sales Entries — View and export all sales entries by period, and provide manual entries.
- Inventory Entries — View and export inventory entries by period.
- Categories — Configure how purchases are categorized, appear in reporting, and map to your accounting system.
- Sales Mapping — Map your sales to your accounting system accounts.
- Vendor Mapping — Map your Garde vendors to vendors in your accounting system.
- PMIX Mapping — Associate your POS buttons with products or recipes in Garde.
- Payment Accounts — Indicate how an invoice is paid (check, credit card, petty cash, etc.) and whether payment info is sent to accounting.
- Close Books — Set a Close Books date to align with your accounting periods.
Setup
- Subscription Details — Manage your Garde subscription.
- Users — View, add, and remove users for your unit.
- Integrations — Where your accounting system (QuickBooks) and POS (Toast, Square, Clover, ChowBus) are connected.
- Notifications — Select which users and roles receive notification emails.