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Who: owner or chef — whoever answers for food cost. When: right after each monthly count, while memories are fresh. AvT compares what you actually used (counts + purchases) with what you should have used (recipes × sales). The gap is your missing margin.

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Run the report

  1. Go to Inventory → Reports → AvT Variance.
  2. Pick the count sheet, then a Start Count Date and End Count Date — you need at least two completed counts.
  3. Calculate Variance.
The AvT variance report

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Read it

  • Total Variance — negative means you used more than expected (losses); positive means less (savings).
  • Biggest Losses — waste, spillage, over-portioning candidates. The top three lines usually explain most of the gap.
  • Biggest Savings — sustained “savings” on an item often means the recipe overstates quantities. Fix the recipe.
  • Breakdown by Category — per-item actual vs theoretical, in dollars and percent.
If a number looks absurd (10× or 1000× off), it’s data, not theft: a wrong unit conversion, a duplicate item, or unmapped sales. See Items, units & count sizes — fix the data, then re-read the report.