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Shopping list - not very useful

N

NZHomebrewer

Hello Beersmith team,

first of all thank you for this brilliant software.

I am sorry that I also have one point of criticism already: The Shopping list.

Let me give you an example.

Lets say I want to brew a beer using 2 kg Pale Ale and 2.250 kg Wheat. Hop is 40gm Tettnang and 20 gm Pearle.

In my inventory I have 0.750 kg Pale Ale, 1.1 kg Wheat, no Tettnang and a full 100gm pack Pearle.

I add the Recipe to the shopping list. I increased the amount of Wheat to 2.5 kg since my shop is selling 500gm packs only. The first thing I realised, it isn't really a shopping list. A shopping list should show me what I have to buy. But this list just shows me, how much I have in my inventory and what I need for the recipe. Yes, I know, it is easy to calculate the difference, but why? The data is there, so why not show the real shopping list. And why can I increase the ingredients I need in the recipe? It doesn't make sense. I think this function is there, to allow me to adjust to the pack size of my home brew shop. But lets look at i.e. the Wheat Malt I need. The recipe requires 2.250 kg. I have 1.1 kg. So I am 1.150 kg short. This is the value which should show on the shopping list! I should be able to increase this to 1.5 kg. Beersmith only provides a way to incrase the 2.250 kg to 2.5 kg. Doesn't make sense at all, since 2.5 minus 1.1 is 1.4 and I can't buy 1.4 kg!

Ok, so I calculated what I need, wrote a real shopping list and go shopping. When I come back I click on "Add to Inventory". Disaster! It completely stuffed up my Inventory. Because it doesn't add the amounts I actually bought! It added the total volumes I need for the recipes!!!!. So my inventory never gets decreased in this case! Based on the example above, I had 1.1kg of Wheat malt, I needed 2.25 kg for my recipe, I increased this to 2.5 kg and added 2.5 kg to the inventory and ended up with 3.6 kg of Wheat malt in the inventory. In reality, I went and bought 1.5 kg and really have 2,6 kg!

Does this make sense? I did a search in the forum and couldn't find a post about this. So I wonder if other people have the same problems or if I am just too stupid to understand the concept behind the shopping list.  :-[

Cheers

Peter
 
Peter,
 I think I can fix the first problem.  Go to the shopping view, then select the "Customize columns" from the "View" menu.  Add the colum that says "Needed" and it will show what you need (i.e. the difference between what you have and what is in inventory).

 The second problem you mention will require a change to the software.  By default it only adds what you have in the "amount" column to the inventory when it should probably add the "Needed" column to the inventory.  I will add it to my "to do" list.

Cheers!
Brad
 
Hey Brad,

thanks for your reply! Cool, I added the column and this is much better. And thank you very much for taking my comments into consideration.

As I said, you program is very cool and I like it very much! I am a developer myself and I am impressed with the functionality!

Cheers

Peter
 
In the shopping list view you can also click the "round up selected amount" button to round up your "needed" ingredients to the nearest round figure ie. 1.5 kilo to 2 kilo. ect.

Cheers
Andrew
 
In the shopping list view you can also click the "round up selected amount" button to round up your "needed" ingredients to the nearest round figure ie. 1.5 kilo to 2 kilo. ect.

Cheers
Andrew


Sorry but if I click on "Round up Selected Amounts" it increases only the Amount column. But it should round up the Needed column since this is the amount I will have to buy!

Cheers

Peter
 
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