- What is a Quantified Grocery List?
- Generating a Quantified Grocery List
- Printing the Grocery List
- Tutorial Video - Quantified Grocery List (5:37)
- FAQs
What is a Quantified Grocery List?
A quantified grocery list contains the food items and quantities you need to procure without the need to manage vendor products.
A quantified grocery list is generated from the production amounts of a selected date range, meal periods/snack times, and menu service location (a menu service location connects a menu with a dining area). The system calculates the food items you need to purchase in real-time so that new diet orders, census changes, special event menus, menu changes etc., are always accurately reflected and can take advantage of the forecasting calculations to generate results for orders to be placed in the future.
Once a quantified grocery list is generated, you can then use it to go shopping for products or placing orders in vendor site(s).
Generating a Quantified Grocery List
To generate a quantified grocery list, complete the following steps.
- From the left navigation sidebar, select Procurement > Purchase Orders. The Purchase Orders Listing screen appears.
- Click the New Cart button. A new shopping cart record is created in the system, and the Populate Cart screen opens (screenshot below).
- Click the Add New button and select From Production. The Add Items From Production pop-up appears (second screenshot below).
- In the Date Range fields, select the date range from which to pull items. For example, if you receive your food delivery each Wednesday a week, that delivery will need to cover foods required from the Thursday day after delivery to the following Wednesday when the next delivery arrives.
- In the Meals & Snacks field, select the meal periods and snack times from which to pull items.
- From the Menu Service Locations field, select the menu service locations from which to generate reports. Note that a menu service location connects a menu with a dining area. The dining areas in turn determine the diet order census based off people profiles assigned to the dining areas, or a dining area set up with a manual census.
- From the Production Area drop-down, you have the option of filtering the items returned by their assigned production area.
- From the Stock Item Category drop-down, you have option of filtering the items returned by their assigned stock item category.
- For those residents with the advanced ordering (AO) service type, the following options are available to determine the items and their serving numbers when populating a shopping cart.
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Use Forecast - This option is only available if the AO census is configured to be included in forecasting (click here to learn how to include the AO census in forecasting and why you would want to). The Use Forecast option functions as follows:
- For residents with the AO service type, the report will include items and their serving numbers pulled from the forecasting worksheets associated with the selected days and meal periods/snack times. As such, for orders that have been placed already by residents with the AO service type, these placed orders will be ignored (i.e., not included in the production report).
- Note that as per standard AO item selection logic, for residents with the AO service type who have not placed an order, the worksheet includes items that are automatically selected based on the AO item selection logic, and as such these items are included on the production report.
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Use Orders - If the AO census is not configured to be included in forecasting, then the Use Forecast option is not available and as such the Use Orders option is automatically selected by default. If the AO census is configured to be included in forecasting then either the Use Forecast option (explained above) or Use Orders option is available to be selected. The Use Orders option functions as follows:
- For orders that have been placed already by residents with the AO service type, these placed orders will be included in the production report.
- Note that as per standard AO item selection logic, for residents with the AO service type who have not placed an order, the production report will include items that are automatically selected based on the AO item selection logic. However, if you did not want the report to include items for those resident/patients who have not placed an order, then such items can be excluded by selecting the Exclude AO People who have not placed an order option.
Note: The Use Orders option is associated with the advanced ordering (AO) service only (as indicated by appearing in the Advance Ordering section). Regardless if forecasting is applied to the menu or not, the option will remain available for use.
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Use Forecast - This option is only available if the AO census is configured to be included in forecasting (click here to learn how to include the AO census in forecasting and why you would want to). The Use Forecast option functions as follows:
- Regarding the Use Auto-Generated Forecasting check box (screenshot below), some overview is first required, explained as follows: if forecasting is configured and applied to your menus, the cart will automatically include the serving numbers from the menu's associated forecasting worksheets. When a forecasting worksheet is locked, then the report will pull those numbers from the locked forecasting worksheet.
However, If you do not want to pull serving numbers from a locked forecasting worksheet, and instead pull from the latest auto-calculated forecasting results generated by the system (i.e., locked forecasting worksheet is ignored), then you can do so by selecting the Use Auto-Generated Forecasting check box.
Using auto-generated forecasting results rather than the results from the locked forecasting worksheet provides you with the most up-to-date information based upon your current census and menu edits. It is also a useful function to compare forecasting numbers that you may have manually adjusted on the forecasting worksheet as opposed to what the system auto-calculates.
- Click the Add to Cart button. You are presented with a message stating that you can use other areas of the software while your the cart generates (first screenshot below). If you click Yes, Notify Me When Ready, the system will notify you when the cart is ready (second screenshot below), allowing you to click the View Cart button to open the cart (i.e., grocery list). In addition, a message appears on the Notifications and Alerts section on the home page when the cart is ready for viewing (third screenshot below), allowing you to click the link to open the cart (i.e., grocery list).
- When you open the cart, you will see that the system populated the cart with items that match the selected date range and meals/snacks, listing the quantity needed for each item (i.e., quantified grocery list).
- To set the columns you want displayed onscreen, click the Set Columns button (for more information, see Setting Columns on a Cart or PO Screen). To filter items onscreen, click the Filters tool at the top right (for more information, see Filtering Items in a Cart or PO).
Note 1: As you noticed from the steps above, a quantified grocery list is created via the PO functionality in the system. As such, the grocery list is represented as an Open Cart on the Purchase Orders Listing screen.
Note 2: If your account uses vendor products to link to food items, then you can create purchase order(s) from the open cart. For more information, see Creating Purchase Orders from a Shopping Cart.
Printing the Grocery List
You have two options to print the grocery list:
Exporting Grocery List as Excel® File
To export the grocery list as an an Excel® file, click the Export button. An Excel file is downloaded and formatted with the columns that were set onscreen and containing the onscreen items that were selected via the filters. Use the file to go shopping for products or placing orders in vendor site(s).
Printing Grocery List as a PDF
To print the grocery list as a PDF, click the PO Worksheet button, and select from one of the following options:
- Alpha - lists items alphabetically.
- Storage Location - lists items according to their assigned storage areas.
- Stock Item Category - lists items according to their stock item categories.
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Category - lists items according to their food categories.
A PDF of the grocery list is generated in a new browser tab (screenshot below). Print it and use the available columns to mark existing inventory (via Inventory column) and order quantity (via Order Qty column). Then use the worksheet to go shopping for products or placing orders in vendor site(s).
Note that if your account uses vendor products to link to food items, those products are displayed with their associated items (i.e. Product ID, Suggested Qty and Pack Size columns are populated).
Tutorial Video - Quantified Grocery List (5:37)
FAQs
I attempt to populate my shopping cart (i.e. purchase order) from production to create a grocery list, but I get a "No Data" message?
If attempting to populate a shopping cart from production, and a "No Data" message is returned, it indicates that the menu for the selected menu service location (MSL) is not scheduled. Because you are populating a shopping cart from production amounts, the menu must be scheduled. See Scheduling a Menu (aka Activating a Menu).
Can I create a grocery list for a menu that is not yet scheduled?
No. Because your are populating a shopping cart/grocery list from production amounts, the menu must be scheduled.
If the menu is not scheduled, an alternative to create your grocery list is to use the Vendor Product Selection screen (aka Buying Preferences), to generate a list for a week and export that list to the Excel® file. See Generating and Exporting Vendor Product Selection List (aka Buying Preferences).