Quick answers to the most frequently asked questions.
For restaurant-focused customers exploring Toast IQ Inventory through the Test Kitchen beta program. You are looking for an all-in-one POS+Inventory solution that helps you keep stock of ingredients that are linked to menu item sales through recipes.
Toast currently offers three inventory products:
Customers on all three products move to Toast IQ Inventory over time, and each has a different path.
You are not moved off a product you are actively using before Toast IQ Inventory is proven for your operation.
Migration tooling available today:
In most cases your Toast onboarding consultant will run the import for you rather than you doing it yourself.
New Test Kitchen sign-ups are no longer being accepted — that program has been superseded by the Open Beta above. To find out whether Toast IQ Inventory is available for purchase in your district, or to get set up as part of the Open Beta, talk to your sales rep, or email [email protected].
If you are already a Test Kitchen member, your access is unaffected. The Getting Access tutorials cover where to find Toast IQ Inventory in the shared sandbox and on your own account, and existing members can still use the access acknowledgement form to request a specific environment. You'll receive a confirmation email once access has been granted.
This is almost always a configuration step that hasn't been completed yet — not a problem with your account.
Today you have to tell us which menus you want to manage in this ecosystem. Go to the Categories section and check the boxes for the menus you want to bring in. Once you do, your menu items will appear.
We try to complete this step for everyone when access is granted, so if items are missing it may simply have been missed.
If you've checked Categories and items still aren't appearing, reach out and we'll take a look together.
No — you do not need to purchase the Toast Retail module to use Toast IQ Inventory.
Right now, accessing the features does require navigating to the Toast Retail section of the navigation. The navigation is changing to reorganize this into a single, dedicated place to manage your items and inventory — see the next question for details.
Use the product feedback form to send feedback directly to the product team. This is the best route for feature requests, rough edges, and anything that isn't working the way you'd expect.
Toast IQ Inventory is in active development, so feedback given while decisions are still open shapes what gets built. Several capabilities on the roadmap today exist because a Test Kitchen customer asked for them.
If you'd rather talk it through, or you're hitting something that looks like a bug, email us directly.
Inventory updates from invoices, with some manual work at the start. Invoice ingestion updates inventory with minimal manual intervention, though mapping between purchases and products is still necessary initially.
No — you can manually enter a plate cost that gets applied to sales to determine margin, even without recipes existing against those sellable items. This manual plate cost can be updated up to 30 days in the past.
Recipes are also flexible after the fact:
Batch production is supported, and it is manual today. We're figuring out what level of automation makes sense to keep batch production maintainable without a lot of human intervention.
Not available in the current release. This is a high-priority area of feedback we're tracking closely.
When you add an item, you'll be able to choose from four types:
If you always create the same type of item, you can set a default so the selection prompt stops appearing. You can remove that default later from the edit view, and you can still create other item types through the secondary dropdown.
Yes, in the calculations. If an item is $10 at one location and $12 at another, all margin and reporting calculations use the correct location's price. Nothing is lost.
What's missing is the ability to edit it in the new interface. This is a UI gap, not a data gap — continue setting location-based pricing where you do today and it will be honored.
No. The recipe lives on the menu item itself, so it inherits whatever target and owner that menu item already has. If a menu item is targeted at 18 locations, the recipe applies at all 18.
You do not copy recipes, you do not re-add buttons per location, and you do not manage parallel copies. If you change the recipe, it changes everywhere the item is served.
This is a meaningful change from how many customers work today, and it may cause some growing pains — if the model creates a problem for your operation, we want to hear about it.
All of them — Point of Sale, online ordering, kiosk, and catering & events. Depletion is real time, so a sale through any channel is reflected in stock on hand immediately.
You can also see which channel a given sale came through in the detailed activity view for an item.
No, and this is one of the more useful aspects of the system. You choose which items to stock track and leave the rest alone. Plenty of customers care about margin and food cost without wanting to count everything.
One thing to know: if you count stock against an item during an inventory count, we'll automatically enable stock tracking for it and store that amount.
On a first-in, first-out (FIFO) basis. If you receive tomatoes at $2 each and later receive more at $2.50, the system consumes all of the $2 tomatoes before it starts consuming the more expensive ones.
This is fully traceable: you can follow cost of goods down to each individual sale and see which receive it drew from. Most of the time you won't need this level of detail, but it's there when a number doesn't look right and you want to verify the calculation yourself.
Conversions are stored on the ingredient itself. When you tell us that one each of something is equivalent to a pound, we store that on the item and apply it everywhere that ingredient is used, so you can review conversions in one place rather than hunting through recipes.
Unit conversions are the single most common source of error in theoretical inventory calculations. A mistyped conversion quietly corrupts actual-versus-theoretical numbers downstream, which is why we surface them for review.
Yes. Audit tracking is built into the core of the product rather than bolted on. For a given item you can see who made a change, when they made it, and which surface it came from — for example a change made from the web item library versus one made on mobile.
This directly addresses the most common question we got in xtraChef: who changed what, when, and why is this number not what I expected? It won't be perfect at first — there may be user actions we haven't captured yet — so tell us if you find a gap.
Yes. Waste logged through the waste tracking module flows directly into the item's recent activity view, labeled as a POS waste adjustment, so you can account for waste alongside sales depletion.
You'll need to have waste reasons configured before you can log waste.
The goal is that damage, expiry, loss, and similar adjustments are the main reasons you come in to touch quantities manually — everything else should be handled by receiving and sales.
Not available. The current release uses two decimal places for everything.
We've heard clearly that this isn't right for everyone — if you're counting whole units, extra decimal places make routine data entry slower and more error-prone.
Yes. The item library supports both inline editing and bulk editing, and it covers merchandising and inventory fields together — including par min and par max — so you don't have to open individual item screens to make routine updates.
You can select many items at once and set values in bulk. Combined with custom attributes, this lets you slice your catalog however makes sense for your business and then edit the resulting set.
Inventory settings will not be added to the legacy Advanced Settings bulk management screen. The item library is intended to replace that need entirely. It's designed to work for someone brand new to inventory while still supporting power users making large numbers of changes quickly.
Yes — you can create custom attributes on items and use them however you need. One customer doing wholesale work on the side uses them to record the most recent lot number for an item.
Custom attributes can be printed on labels, and they're useful for slicing and filtering your catalog so you can make targeted bulk edits.
Not available yet. This is on the roadmap in two parts:
The KDS piece takes longer because it requires two very different platforms to communicate, so there's some plumbing to put in place first.
Eventually, yes — with alerts first, then recommendations, then optional automation. We expect this to evolve over time, not all at once.
Partly today. Par-based workflows are supported for sellable items. Support for ingredients and supplies is not available yet.
You can set par min and par max values, including inline and in bulk from the item library.
Automated restock-to-par is not available. This is one of our most requested capabilities — for example, transferring a set quantity to a food truck every morning, or assuming a standard daily production run at a bakery. If this is important to your operation, let your Toast representative know — it's actively shaping the design.
Yes — especially based on ingredient stock. We'll also offer capabilities for setting manual availability that is independent of stock levels.
This is an active area of research. Barcode scanning is included, as well as barcode label generation and printing.
Yes. Sales, payroll, and accounts payable invoice data all integrate with QuickBooks Online today in the US. For all other accounting systems, there is a CSV export available now.
Not yet available: Xero support for international markets, and country-specific QuickBooks Online implementations.
The last piece we're buttoning up is posting cost of goods from your inventory counts through to your accounting system.
Yes. We're building EDI integration through a third party called Orderful, which is a different approach than xtraChef took.
The advantage is that we don't have to build and maintain each distributor connection ourselves. Once a supplier is integrated with Orderful, every customer benefits — including suppliers whose invoices have historically been painful to capture accurately because the receipts are hard to read.
Southern Glazer's is the initial rollout partner, with additional distributors added over time. As each one becomes available, we'll announce it by email to the Test Kitchen and post it here.
There are three ways, and you can mix them depending on the supplier:
This is broadly similar to how xtraChef works today, with receive-via-email being the notable addition.
You can assign a barcode to any item — useful if you package something for grab-and-go and want it scannable. The system generates the barcode for you and lets you design and print labels.
Labels are fully customizable: choose which fields appear (including custom attributes), set the width and height for whatever label stock you use, and print individually or in bulk across many items. Most label printers are supported. This capability comes from building on top of the retail product.
Prep labels are not supported yet. There's more work needed before we'd recommend the tool for prep labeling specifically.
Yes, you can tag items with allergens — but the allergen list itself is not customizable. Allergen labeling is legally regulated, so the list is fixed and maintained by a dedicated Toast team that stays on top of the regulations.
The list changes by country. If your account is configured for the US, Canada, or the UK, you'll see the allergens appropriate to that market's requirements.
Allergens are saved and surfaced in your online ordering and Point of Sale. Support for third-party ordering systems is not available yet.
Not available yet. Today, you tag allergens on the finished item.
The goal is that you tag allergens once at the ingredient level and they automatically roll up to every recipe that uses that ingredient, rather than tagging each finished item by hand.
We took a different approach to reporting in this product than xtraChef did. There are three core reports, designed to bring sales and inventory data together in one place rather than giving you a large catalog of overlapping reports to navigate:
See the Tutorials section for walkthroughs of these reports.
Yes — because Toast IQ Inventory is built directly on top of the Point of Sale, you get the benefit of ToastIQ integration. You can ask questions in plain language instead of building a report, for example:
Toast IQ Inventory opened for Open Beta on September 8, 2026 — live in the UK & Ireland, Canada, and Australia for both new and existing customers, and available for purchase in select U.S. districts. General availability is targeted for early 2027.
Because we're in active development, the more customers testing and giving feedback along the way, the better the product gets. Whether the beta is right for you depends on which capabilities your business depends on — contact your Toast representative to discuss your use case and readiness.
Yes — a shared sandbox account is available today, and it's the best place to start. Request it on the access acknowledgement form by indicating you'd like sandbox access.
Even if you plan to test on your own production account, we recommend requesting sandbox access as well. The sandbox always receives new features first — production accounts wait until features clear a higher bar for quality and validation testing. That means the sandbox is where you'll see what's coming, and it's also where things will occasionally look like a work in progress.
Yes — Toast IQ Inventory is already live outside the U.S. as part of the Open Beta in the UK & Ireland, Canada, and Australia, for both new and existing customers. It will continue to roll out to additional countries where Toast is sold over time.
Yes — Toast IQ Inventory is a paid addition to your Toast subscription. Final pricing is still being set. Head to Toast Shop for more information and product availability, or ask your Toast representative.
We haven't fully considered catering-specific operations yet, but a lot of great suggestions came up in the webinar. If a significant portion of your orders are catering-based, please reach out — we'd love to learn more about your use case.
Modifier support for recipes is not available yet. Modifiers are configurations that can be set on sellable items at the time of checkout — for example, adding a topping, swapping a size, or removing an ingredient. Some of these modifications have inventory implications, where ingredients or packaging are added to or removed from the core sellable item's recipe.
When it arrives, it covers three modifier types: Add, Remove, and Size.
Substitute modifiers follow later.
When you configure a modifier recipe, we'll tell you how many menu items share that modifier. By default the recipe is shared across all of them, so changing it in one place changes it everywhere. If you'd rather the recipe apply only to a single item — say the oat milk in a cortado specifically — you can scope it to that item instead.
Inventory is decremented at the moment the order fires to the kitchen — not when the order is placed.
For future orders, that generally means the future order date has to arrive, then any prep time you've configured is applied, and the order fires at the end of that. Because Toast has several settings that control fire timing — including an option not to fire until payment is received — the exact behavior depends on how your account is configured. If you're purchasing the product, work through this with your onboarding consultant.
This mostly matters if you do a meaningful volume of future or catering orders.
It follows the standard rules of Toast:
If you want to refund a guest without returning stock — for example the food was made and thrown away — return the money to the payment method rather than voiding the order. Voiding is the action that restocks.
We know this distinction is confusing, and we're working on the usability of it.
This isn't solved today. Because inventory decrements at fire time, preordered quantities aren't reflected in your on-hand count until the day the order fires — so you don't currently have a clear picture of what's already promised.
Visibility into committed stock — what is on hand, what is committed to future orders, and what is in transit between locations — is not available yet.
We're deliberately landing the core system first — accurate data, correct reports — before layering this kind of sophistication on top.
This is one of the areas we're focused on most, precisely because xtraChef handled it poorly. Pizza, coffee, and build-your-own are our explicit focus cohorts.
The honest answer: the more configuration and customization you offer guests, the more you have to tell us about the inventory impact of those choices. There's no way around that fundamental tradeoff. What we can do is make it far less painful to set up and maintain — and because the recipe sits on top of the modifiers you've already built, there's no mapping step and no parallel system to keep in sync.
For businesses with pre-modifiers and many modifier combinations, the modifier configuration screen will look dense. We'll provide a power user flow for that, which most customers won't need to touch.
If your base recipe is nearly empty and almost all of your cost sits in modifiers, we'd genuinely like to talk to you — reach out and we'll walk through your setup together.
Not as a multiplier, and that's deliberate. The default multiplier in xtraChef caused more problems than it solved, so we moved away from it.
Two capabilities replace it. Size modifiers let each size have its own recipe with independently adjustable quantities. Shared inventory — planned, not yet built — lets you link items that draw from common stock using a ratio, without building a recipe at all. See the shared inventory question above for how that works.
Neither is available yet.
The mix-and-match capability itself — sometimes called special combos, where a guest picks one entree, one side, and one drink at a set price — is being built by a separate Toast team, and there may be a Test Kitchen you can join for it.
From the inventory side: once modifier support ships, selections made in the checkout flow will correctly decrement the underlying inventory. So combos and inventory will work together, with the combo functionality itself on its own timeline.
For customers who are actively paying for Toast Retail today. You will be migrated to Toast IQ Inventory over time. Some customers will be able to migrate earlier depending on which features they are utilizing the most.
Toast IQ Inventory is the new name for the inventory management capabilities that are part of Toast Retail today. It includes core inventory tools such as purchasing and receiving, cycle counts, a centralized catalog, and reporting that brings together sales and inventory data in a single view.
As Toast expands to serve a broader range of businesses — including restaurants, convenience stores, gas stations, retail, and hybrid operations — we're evolving our inventory solution to support more product types and operational needs. Toast IQ Inventory provides a simple starting point for businesses just getting started with inventory management while offering the advanced capabilities needed as operations grow in complexity.
Existing Toast Retail customers will continue to have access to their inventory features, now under the Toast IQ Inventory name. This change reflects the broader scope of the product rather than a change to the core inventory functionality customers rely on.
Advanced Inventory is currently in beta and will become Toast IQ Inventory. While it's actively being enhanced, there are a few feature gaps to consider before upgrading.
You won't be able to upgrade yet if you:
You can upgrade, but should be aware that:
If these limitations don't affect your operation, you're a great candidate for the beta and can take advantage of the latest inventory capabilities today.