Keeping a waste log helps your team control costs by spotting supply chain, process, or portioning issues with your products and recipes. Whether something spoiled, got burnt, or mysteriously disappeared — log it. If you’re on the fence about whether it’s worth the effort, this article might convince you.
Why tracking waste matters. Waste directly affects the gap between your theoretical food cost and your actual food cost. If your actuals are consistently higher than your theoreticals and you’re not logging waste, you’re flying blind. A solid waste log helps you pinpoint where the dollars are going — spoilage, over-portioning, training gaps — so you can actually fix the problem instead of guessing.
Page layout
You can record waste on an item-by-item basis, selecting either products or recipes. And you can do it from the web app or your phone.
- Location dropdown to select which location you are viewing
- Date range picker with a “compared to” prior period for trend analysis
- + New Adjustment button to record a new waste entry, refund, or transfer
After you’ve logged your first entry, you can also “Print Waste Log” if you want a paper option for staff to use.
2) A box will pop up with several fields. The required ones are:
- Choose any date needed
- Search for and select any product or recipe from your unit’s database
- Choose a reason from the dropdown menu or enter your own under “Other”
(the preset reasons aren’t editable)
- Enter a quantity and a unit of measure
PRO TIP: The unit list matches what you’ve set up for counting inventory. Want more options? Learn how to add multiple count-by units.
- Total Waste shows the dollar value and event count for the selected period, along with a comparison to the prior period.
- Waste Rate displays your waste as a percentage of purchases or usage.
A bar chart ranks the items with the highest waste. Use the Raw / Normalized toggle to switch between raw dollar amounts and normalized values that account for volume differences across items.
- Reporter defaults to whoever is logged in, but you can change it to anyone
- Wasted by — enter the name of the person responsible (the, ahem, culprit)
- Notes — add any context that might be useful for tracking or training
- Click + New Adjustment and select Waste as the adjustment type.
- Fill in the required fields:
- Date for the waste event
- Product or recipe from your location’s database
- Reason from the dropdown (Spoiled, Burnt, Overproduction, etc.) or provide your own under “Other”
- Quantity and unit of measure (the unit list matches your count-by units; see Adding Multiple Count-By Units for Inventory to add more options)
- Optionally update the Reporter, enter a Wasted by name, and add Notes.
- Click Save and Close, or Save and Add Another to keep going.
Click “Save and Close” if you’re finished, or “Save and Add Another” if you’ve got more to log.
Recording waste on your phone
At the end of each record row, you’ll see two icons. Click the pen/paper icon on the left to edit, and the trashcan on the right (it turns red when you hover) to delete.
When editing, you can change the “Reported/Wasted by,” “Reason,” and “Notes” fields. If the product or quantity needs to change, delete the record and re-enter a new one. Like elsewhere in Garde, the price is locked to the most recent purchase price.
Transfers tab
Same process, same fields — just on a smaller screen.
To get there, tap More in the bottom right corner of the mobile app, then tap Waste Log.
From this screen you can see past waste records. Details are hidden by default, but you can tap to expand individual items or expand all of them. You can also filter by waste reason.
Tap Record Waste to enter a new item.
If you have multiple items to log, use Save and add another. When you’re done, tap Done.
Viewing your Waste
From Inventory > Waste Log, you can see all items summarized by date with the wasted value totaled for each day.
Click the small ”+” on the left to expand and see all details for a given day.
From Inventory > Waste Summary, you can dig deeper.
The first chart shows your top waste reasons. The second shows the top offenders by dollar value. Use the date picker on the lower chart to control the date range.
You can filter by reason, use the search bar to find specific items, and export as CSV or PDF for review in other tools.
The waste log data isn’t directly factored into your inventory calculations. When you take inventory, any waste is inherently accounted for because those items won’t be on the shelf to count. The waste log exists for your reference — to help you spot trends and catch problems. The data shows up on two reports in the system for easy comparison.
The Usage Report displays waste data, and so does the Theoretical Usage Report. Within the Theoretical Usage Report, the “Theoretical On-hand” view is the one place where waste log data is actually used in a calculation. Here’s the breakdown:
Usage Report
On the Usage Report, three columns on the right side show waste reported within the selected inventory dates. These don’t impact other numbers on the report — your ending inventory already accounts for the waste. This is supplementary info shown for your convenience.
The waste numbers are calculated as shown below.
Theoretical Usage
On your Actual vs. Theoretical report (the default Theoretical Usage view), you’ll see the same three waste columns on the right. Same deal — supplementary info that doesn’t directly impact other numbers.
The calculations work the same way as the Usage Report.
Theoretical On-hand
This is where waste data makes a direct difference. When you switch to the Theoretical On-hand view, Garde uses a starting inventory and factors in waste alongside your purchases and sales to estimate what you should have on hand.
Expand any row to see the full breakdown including waste. 
