Profit Guardian Overview

Overview

Profit Guardian is Formuley's cost monitoring and margin protection system. It continuously tracks ingredient prices, calculates formula costs, and alerts you when changes in your supply costs threaten your profit margins. Profit Guardian is available on the Pro tier and above.

Accessing Profit Guardian

Navigate to Profit Guardian in the sidebar under Business Intelligence, or go directly to /profit-guardian. A summary card also appears on your main Dashboard, providing a weekly snapshot of your margin health.

What Profit Guardian Monitors

Profit Guardian watches three key areas of your business:

Formula Costs

Every formula in your library has a calculated cost based on the ingredients it contains, their percentages, and the batch size. When any ingredient's price changes, Profit Guardian recalculates the affected formulas and flags any that have moved outside your acceptable margin range.

Ingredient Price Trends

Profit Guardian tracks the historical cost of each ingredient over time. The cost trend analysis shows you 30-day and 90-day price movements, so you can spot rising costs early -- before they erode your margins significantly.

Profit Margins

For each formula, Profit Guardian compares your cost of goods to your selling price and calculates the margin. When that margin drops below your configured threshold, the system generates an alert. You can set thresholds globally or customize them per formula.

Key Features

Cost Alert System

Profit Guardian generates alerts when ingredient cost changes impact your formula margins. Alerts are categorized by severity -- info, warning, error, and critical -- so you can prioritize which formulas need attention first. See Understanding Margin Alerts for full details on how alerts work.

At-Risk Formulas

The At-Risk Formulas section on the Profit Guardian dashboard lists every formula whose margin has dropped below your threshold. Each entry shows the formula name, current margin, previous margin, and the change amount, making it easy to identify which products need price adjustments or ingredient substitutions.

Weekly Summary

A Weekly Summary card appears on your main dashboard, giving you a quick overview of:

• Number of new cost alerts this week
• Formulas with declining margins
• Average margin across all active formulas
• Top cost increases by ingredient

What-If Scenarios

The What-If tool lets you simulate price changes before they happen. Enter a hypothetical cost increase for an ingredient, and Profit Guardian shows you which formulas would be affected and by how much. This is valuable for planning ahead when a supplier announces upcoming price changes.

Margin Threshold Configuration

You can configure margin thresholds in Profit Guardian Settings:

1. Open Profit Guardian and click Settings.
2. Set your global minimum margin (the default threshold for all formulas).
3. Optionally, override the threshold for individual formulas that have different pricing strategies.
4. Choose which alert severity levels trigger email notifications.

Getting Started with Profit Guardian

1. Set up cost tracking for your ingredients. Profit Guardian relies on accurate ingredient costs to calculate margins. See Cost Tracking Setup for instructions.
2. Enter selling prices on your formulas so Profit Guardian can calculate margins.
3. Configure your margin thresholds in Profit Guardian Settings.
4. Review alerts regularly on the Profit Guardian dashboard or your main dashboard.

Tips

• Check the weekly summary card on your dashboard every time you log in. It surfaces the most important cost changes so you can act quickly.
• Use What-If scenarios when negotiating with suppliers. Knowing exactly how a price change affects your bottom line gives you leverage.
• Set per-formula thresholds for premium products that have higher margins and can tolerate more cost fluctuation without concern.