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Zotaki Platform · Material & StoresMaterial & Store Management
The full purchase cycle — requisition, approval, purchase order, goods receipt and department issue — across every store you run. With vendor rate history, reorder alerts, and kitchen consumption linked to what your restaurant actually sold.
Why this matters
The second biggest cost in your hotel, run on a notebook
After salaries, purchasing is where most of your money goes — and in the majority of Indian properties it is managed by a storekeeper with a register, a chef who phones a vendor directly, and an owner who finds out the total when the bills arrive at month end.
Nobody in that chain is dishonest. But there is no record of what was asked for, who approved it, what rate was agreed, what actually arrived, or where it went afterwards. Without those five facts, no cost control is possible.
- Purchases made without anybody approving them
- Rates that crept up over a year and nobody noticed
- Goods signed for without checking against the order
- Stock issued to a department with no record it left
The purchase cycle
Five steps, each with a name and a time on it
Requisition
A department asks for what it needs. Kitchen, housekeeping, bar or engineering.
Approval
By value and by role. Small items clear fast; large ones need the owner.
Purchase order
Issued to the vendor at an agreed rate, with quantity and delivery date.
Goods receipt
What actually arrived, checked against the order at the gate.
Issue
Out of the store to the department, on the record, against a signature.
You can run all five, or start with just receipts and issues. Most properties add approval once they have seen a month of what is actually being bought.
What it holds
The detail that makes the numbers trustworthy
Vendor rate history
What you paid for that item last month, last quarter and from which supplier. Price creep becomes visible instead of invisible.
Approval limits
By value and by role, so routine buying does not need the owner and large buying cannot avoid them.
Short and damaged receipts
The GRN records what arrived, not what was ordered — rejections and rate differences captured at the gate.
Separate stores
Main, kitchen, bar, housekeeping and engineering, each with its own stock, and transfers between them recorded.
Reorder levels & lead time
Anything at or below its level appears on a reorder list, so you find out on a Wednesday and not at 8pm on a Saturday.
Physical stock take
Count against book stock, see the variance item by item with a value on it, and log every adjustment with a reason.
Batch & expiry
For perishables, with near-expiry stock flagged so it gets used rather than discovered during a count.
Department-wise issues
Every issue attributed, so you can finally say what housekeeping costs you against what the kitchen costs you.
Across properties
Compare what each hotel pays for the same item, and see stock across locations before reordering.
Where stores meets the kitchen
The store knows what the restaurant sold
This is the join that most hotels never make. Define what goes into each dish once, and every plate sold in the restaurant POS deducts its ingredients from the kitchen store automatically.
Now you have two numbers that should match — what your recipes say the kitchen used, and what the store actually issued. They never match exactly, and they are not supposed to. But the size of the gap is the single most useful figure in your F&B operation.
- Raw material deducted the moment a dish is billed
- Theoretical consumption against actual issues
- Gap visible per item, not just as a total
- Wastage recorded deliberately, with a reason
Rice and chicken are within tolerance. Paneer and oil are worth a conversation with the chef.
Run your own numbers
What is sitting on your shelves, and what is leaking off them?
Two separate problems that both come from the same missing records — money tied up in stock you did not need to buy yet, and stock that left without being sold.
Recoverable from stock control, a year
₹2,04,000
at your own estimate of what is genuinely fixable.
- Working capital tied up in stock
- ₹5,10,000
- Unexplained variance a month
- ₹34,000
- Purchase spend a year
- ₹1,02,00,000
- Variance a year
- ₹4,08,000
Some variance is legitimate — trim, spillage, staff meals, breakage. It should never be zero. The point is that without records you cannot separate the legitimate part from the rest, so the whole figure stays a mystery.
Reporting
Six reports that change a purchase conversation
Stock in handBy item and by store, with a valuation.Vendor rate comparisonSame item, different suppliers, over time.Department consumptionWhat each department really costs you a month.Stock varianceBook against physical, valued, item by item.Reorder listWhat to buy this week, before you run out.
Purchase & payablesWhat you bought, from whom, and what is still owed.Every GRN creates the vendor liability and the purchase entry in hotel accounting — nothing is typed twice.
Worth saying plainly
Three things to be realistic about
This one needs discipline at the gate
Of everything in Zotaki, stores demands the most from your team. If goods are received without a GRN and issued without a record, the reports will be confidently wrong. It is a habit, not a setting.
Recipes take real effort
Every dish, every ingredient, every quantity. Budget a few days with your chef. Nothing on the consumption side works properly until this is done, and half-done recipes are worse than none.
Somebody must count
Software cannot tell you what is physically on the shelf. A monthly count is still a monthly count — what changes is that you now have a book figure to compare it against.
Frequently asked questions
What is the purchase cycle in Zotaki?
A department raises a requisition, an authorised person approves it, a purchase order goes to the vendor, goods are received against it as a GRN, and stock is issued to the department. Every step carries a user and a time.
Can I run separate stores?
Yes — main, kitchen, bar, housekeeping and engineering, each holding its own stock, with transfers between them recorded rather than assumed.
Does it stop purchases being made without approval?
It can. Approval limits are set by value and by role, and nothing becomes a purchase order until it is approved.
Can I compare vendor rates?
Yes. Every item keeps rate history by vendor and date, so price creep over a year becomes visible.
What happens if goods arrive short or damaged?
The GRN records what actually arrived. Short receipts, rejections and rate differences against the order are captured at the gate, while somebody still remembers the detail.
How does kitchen consumption work?
Recipes link dishes to raw materials, so a dish sold in the POS deducts its ingredients. Theoretical consumption can then be compared with what the store actually issued.
Does it warn me before I run out?
Yes. Each item carries a reorder level and lead time, and anything at or below it appears on a reorder list.
Can it handle perishables and expiry?
Yes — batch and expiry tracking for items that need it, with near-expiry stock flagged so it gets used.
How is physical stock reconciled?
A stock take is entered against book stock and the variance shown item by item with a value. Adjustments need a reason and are logged.
Does purchase data reach the accounts?
Yes. A GRN creates the vendor liability and purchase entry, so payables and stock valuation come from your storekeeper's own records. See hotel accounting.
See a purchase run from ask to shelf
Thirty minutes. We set up one of your real stores and a handful of items, then raise a requisition, approve it, issue a purchase order, receive it short on purpose, and show you what the variance report says at the end.