If you want every location counting the same products, you can request the Inventory Lock feature. It lets you decide which products and recipes get inventoried — and prevents individual location managers from overriding those decisions.
To be clear: you’re standardizing what gets counted, not how it gets counted. Each location still manages its own count sheets and can organize them however they like. The lock just makes sure nobody skips a product you’ve said needs to be counted.
When does standardization make sense? If your locations run the same concept with the same (or very similar) menus, locking inventory is a no-brainer. It keeps everyone consistent and makes cross-location comparisons meaningful. But if your locations have very different menus — say a pizza concept and a sushi concept under the same group — forcing identical inventory lists will just create noise. In that case, use “Open” mode (described below) so you can lock the overlapping items and let each location manage the rest.
Getting started
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Confirm your units share a Company-Concept in Garde. Units within the same Company-Concept share product lists and recipes, so this is a prerequisite.
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Choose your mode. The Inventory Lock feature has two modes:
- Locked — All inventory settings are standard across every unit. If you say “Avocados” must be counted, every location counts avocados. If you say “Mops” are not counted, nobody counts mops. No exceptions.
- Open — You can lock some products and leave others flexible. For example, you might lock “Avocados” so every location counts them, but leave “Mops” unlocked so each location can decide for itself.
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Email contact@garde.app to request that the Inventory Lock feature be enabled, and let them know which mode you want.
Operating in “Locked” mode
In Locked mode, all decisions about what to inventory are made at the group level. Nothing is decided at the individual unit level.
To change whether a product or recipe should be inventoried, you’ll need Restaurant Admin privileges. Go to the product’s Edit Product screen (or the recipe’s Edit Recipe screen) from any location in Garde. Check or uncheck the “Product should be inventoried” option (or “Recipe should be inventoried”).
That’s it. Once you check the box, that setting applies everywhere. Uncheck it, and the product gets removed from count sheets in every unit.
You’ll also see a checkbox for “Lock inventory setting across all units” — in Locked mode, this will already be checked and disabled since everything is locked by default.
Operating in “Open” mode
Open mode gives you more flexibility. You can lock specific products so they’re required everywhere, and leave others up to each location.
1. Require all units to inventory a product (or recipe)
Go to the product’s Edit Product screen (or the recipe’s Edit Recipe screen) from any location. Check “Product should be inventoried” (or “Recipe should be inventoried”).
Then check “Lock inventory setting across all units.” This locks the setting so no individual location can change it.
2. Let units decide for themselves
To make a product optional, go to its Edit Product page (or the recipe’s Edit Recipe page) and uncheck “Lock inventory setting across all units.” With the lock off, each location can add or remove the product from their count sheets as they see fit. 
