About manufacture quantities
Learn how to set actual and expected quantities on your manufactures
Every manufacture tracks two separate quantities, Planned Quantity and Actual Quantity, and your recipe adds a third number of its own: its batch size. Mixing these three up is the most common source of confusion with manufactures, so this article untangles them before covering where to change each one.
Material stock is deducted, and product stock is increased, based on these quantities, not on a rough count of what you physically made.
In this article:
- Recipe batch size vs Planned Quantity
- Handling manufactures with less than expected yield
- Changing the quantity of a manufacture
- Comparing planned and actual quantities
- FAQ
Recipe batch size vs Planned Quantity
Your recipe's batch size is how many finished units one production run yields: 12 bars, 24 cupcakes, however many your recipe is built to make. Planned Quantity on a manufacture is a different number: it's how many times you're running that recipe, not how many units you're making.
Multiply the two together to get the total units a manufacture will produce, and that's exactly what Stocksmith does: materials are deducted for that total, not just for the number you enter in Planned Quantity.
Example: A soapmaker's recipe has a batch size of 12, so each run of the recipe makes 12 bars. If they enter 14 as the Planned Quantity, Stocksmith reads that as 14 batches of the recipe: 14 × 12 = 168 bars, and materials are deducted for 168 bars' worth of ingredients, not 14.
If your recipe only ever makes one item per run, keep its batch size at 1 and use Planned Quantity to record the number of units you made. If your recipe makes a batch of several units at once, set the batch size to match that yield, and use Planned Quantity to record how many times you ran it.
Handling manufactures with less than expected yield
If a batch made less than expected using the same materials as a usual batch, you can set the Actual Quantity of a manufacture to reflect the amount actually made.
This ensures materials are deducted as per a regular batch, but your product stock will only increase by the amount you enter as the actual quantity.
Example: A soapmaker produces batches of soap bars. Each batch is supposed to ideally make 12 bars from the ingredients, but occasionally the batch will end up producing 10, 11 or even 13 bars. As the recipe's batch size is usually 12, the recipe for this product would be configured to 12. For my Planned Quantity, I would enter 1 as I have made a single batch of 12 bars. This would set my Actual Quantity made to 12, and my materials would update with their usage automatically. From here, I would then change the Actual Quantity to 13 to represent the amount of stock I want to increase my stock by. Changing the Actual Quantity doesn't update any material stock levels, so they will remain exactly as they were for the 12 bar quantity.
Changing the quantity of a manufacture
To change the quantity of a manufacture:
1. Go to the edit manufacture page.
2. In the row starting with Start Date, use the Planned Quantity field to change the number of batches made in this manufacture. Planned Quantity renders as a live calculator, showing the recipe's batch size and the total units it multiplies out to as you type. For example, entering 4 with a 12-cupcake recipe shows "4 × 12 cupcakes = 48 cupcakes".
Actual Quantity only appears, next to Planned Quantity, once the manufacture's status is Completed. On a Not started or Work in progress manufacture, there is nothing to edit here yet; mark the manufacture Completed first. If the batch made a different total than planned, edit the Actual Quantity field and enter the total units actually produced. This is the only field that changes your product's on-hand stock.
Using the Mark as Completed action from a manufacture's row menu on the Manufactures list sets Actual Quantity equal to Planned Quantity, not Planned Quantity multiplied by the recipe's batch size. If your recipe's batch size is more than 1, open the manufacture afterwards and check Actual Quantity: it may need to be updated to the total units you actually produced.
3. Click the Save button at the bottom of the form to commit the changes.
Comparing planned and actual quantities
The Manufactures list doesn't have a column for Planned Quantity, and its Qty column shows the actual quantity, populated only once a manufacture is marked Completed. That means you can't compare planned and actual quantities side by side from the list.
If you need to check this across many manufactures at once, export your manufactures instead. The CSV export includes Quantity (Planned Quantity), Batch Quantity (the recipe's batch size), and Actual Quantity as separate columns, so you can compare all three at once.
FAQ
Is Planned Quantity the number of bars I made, or the number of batches?
Batches. Planned Quantity is how many times you're running the recipe, not how many finished units you made. Stocksmith multiplies Planned Quantity by the recipe's batch size to work out the total units produced and the materials to deduct.
Should a recipe's batch size be one item, or the expected yield?
The expected yield: the total number of sellable units one run of the recipe produces. That's a property of the recipe, set once. Planned Quantity, on the manufacture, is how many times you run it, and is set separately for every production run.
Why does my product show only one item made when I made 14 and put that number on the manufacture?
This usually happens after using the Mark as Completed action from the Manufactures list, which sets Actual Quantity equal to Planned Quantity rather than Planned Quantity multiplied by the recipe's batch size. If your recipe's batch size is 14 and Planned Quantity was 1 (one batch of 14), completing it this way sets Actual Quantity to 1, not 14, so your product stock only increases by 1.
Open the manufacture and correct Actual Quantity to the total units you actually produced. See Changing the quantity of a manufacture above.
Can I see planned and actual quantities together without opening each manufacture?
Not from the Manufactures list. See Comparing planned and actual quantities above for the export option.
How many decimal places can I use for a material quantity?
Material quantities support up to five decimal places, whether you're entering them on a recipe's material lines or editing the materials used on a manufacture. The field won't stop you typing more digits, but anything past five decimal places is rounded off when you save, and this precision can't be increased.
Need Help?
Still have questions about manufacture quantities? Please get in touch, and we'll be happy to help.