Glossary
Restaurant ERP terms, in plain words
The words that come up when restaurants talk about books, stock, vendors and cameras.
- A
- Aggregator
- An online platform such as Swiggy or Zomato that lists restaurants and delivers orders, paying the restaurant after deducting commission and charges.
- AMC
- Annual maintenance contract. An agreement with a service vendor to maintain equipment for a year.
- Batch costing
- Working out the cost of one production batch from the ingredients used and the yield achieved.
- Blind count
- A stock count where staff don't see the system quantity, so they count what's actually there.
- BOM
- Bill of materials. In restaurants, a recipe expressed as ingredients and quantities per portion.
- Central kitchen
- A kitchen that prepares food or semi-finished items for several outlets. Also called a base or commissary kitchen.
- Contribution margin
- Selling price minus variable costs such as ingredients and packaging.
- Cost centre
- A unit, such as an outlet, used to group income and costs in the books.
- Covers
- The number of guests served.
- Credit note
- A document that reduces the amount of an earlier invoice, used for refunds and corrections.
- Cycle count
- Counting a small group of items often, instead of everything at once.
- Day-end close
- Closing the day's sales and cash at an outlet, comparing system totals with money in hand.
- Detection zone
- The area of a camera view where computer vision looks for a specific event.
- DPDP Act
- India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, which governs how personal data, including face data, is collected and used.
- e-Invoice
- A B2B invoice reported to the GST invoice registration portal, required above a turnover threshold.
- Edge device
- A small computer at the outlet that processes camera video locally.
- Food cost %
- Ingredient cost as a percentage of food sales.
- Footfall conversion
- The share of visitors who become paying customers: bills divided by footfall.
- FSSAI
- Food Safety and Standards Authority of India, which licenses food businesses and sets hygiene standards.
- GRN
- Goods received note. The record of what was actually delivered against a purchase order.
- GSTR-1
- The GST return that reports outward supplies.
- Indent
- An internal request for stock, from an outlet to a store, central kitchen or purchase team.
- Input tax credit
- GST paid on purchases that can be offset against GST collected on sales, where eligible.
- KOT
- Kitchen order ticket. The order sent from the POS to the kitchen.
- Labour cost %
- Staff cost as a percentage of sales.
- MDR
- Merchant discount rate. The fee charged on card payments.
- NC bill
- A no-charge or complimentary bill.
- Par level
- The stock level an outlet should hold of an item before reordering.
- Payout statement
- The aggregator's report of orders, deductions and the net amount paid for a period.
- Pour variance
- The difference between liquor expected to be used from sales and liquor actually used.
- Prime cost
- Food cost plus labour cost, the two largest controllable costs in a restaurant.
- Purchase order
- A document sent to a vendor confirming what to supply, at what price and when.
- Rate contract
- An agreed price for an item from a vendor for a period.
- Section 9(5)
- The GST provision under which e-commerce operators pay GST on restaurant services supplied through them.
- Specified premises
- Hotels whose room tariff crosses the GST threshold, where restaurant services are taxed at 18% with input tax credit.
- Table turn
- The time from one party being seated to the next party being seated at the same table.
- TDS u/s 194-O
- Tax deducted at source by e-commerce operators on payments to sellers, including restaurants.
- Theoretical consumption
- The ingredients that should have been used, calculated as items sold × recipe quantities.
- Three-way match
- Checking a vendor bill against the purchase order and the goods receipt before payment.
- Transfer
- Stock moved between locations, such as central kitchen to outlet.
- Variance
- The difference between actual and theoretical consumption.
- Void
- A bill or item cancelled in the POS.
- Wastage
- Food or stock discarded, recorded with a reason.
- Yield
- The usable quantity after preparation, as a share of the raw quantity.
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