Order Guide Builder
Free, in-browser. Build one order guide per vendor: cutoff, delivery days, and minimum in the header; pars and on-hand counts per line; order quantities and totals computed for you. Download the CSV, print the count sheet, or copy the finished order as a ready-to-send message. Nothing leaves your machine.
| Item | SKU | Pack | $ / Pack | Par | On Hand | Order | Est. Cost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | $77.00 | |||||||
| 2 | $62.00 | |||||||
| 0 | ||||||||
| 1 | $14.00 |
What a working order guide contains
An order guide is the list you order from: every item you buy from one vendor, in the order you walk your storage, with the pack size, the last price you paid, and a par. The math is deliberately simple — order = par − on hand, rounded up to whole packs — because the count happens standing in a walk-in at 10 PM. The vendor header matters as much as the lines: the cutoff time, delivery days, order minimum, and how the vendor takes orders are the institutional knowledge that otherwise lives in one person's head. The full method, including how to set pars per delivery day, is in How to Build a Restaurant Order Guide.
How to use this
- Fill in the vendor header — name, cutoff, delivery days, minimum, and how they take orders.
- Add your items in shelf order — the sequence you physically walk your walk-in, freezer, and dry storage — not alphabetically.
- Set pars in vendor packs. If you want computed pars instead of gut numbers, run your top items through the par level calculator first.
- On count day: print the sheet, walk the storage, fill in on-hand, and the order column is your order. Copy it as a message and send it before the cutoff.
- Repeat per vendor — one guide each. Keep prices current from invoices so price creep stays visible.
This tool is the paper workflow, digitized. The next step up is when the pars recompute themselves from your POS sales, the counts become orders sent per vendor, and vendor replies update the order — that's what LineNow does. Free for 90 days, $100/month after.