Import your recipes: photos, PDFs and spreadsheets

You don't have to type your recipe book in. Menu Costing → Import recipes accepts photos, PDFs, text files, pasted text and spreadsheets (CSV, XLSX and older XLS) — as many at once as you like. Open Pantry reads them and turns each one into a real recipe.

Imported recipes arrive as drafts

Within about a minute of uploading, each recipe appears directly on your Menu Costing board as a tile badged "Draft · needs linking". A draft is a normal recipe in every way except one: some of its ingredients haven't yet been linked to a real product with a real price. Until every ingredient is resolved, the recipe is deliberately left out of your menu averages, cost history and reports — so a half-priced dish never quietly drags your numbers down.

Linking the ingredients

Open the draft and an amber banner tells you how many ingredients still need linking. Matched ingredients appear as normal costed rows; each unmatched one has a Link button with your options:

• Looks right — accept the suggested product match.
• Search — pick a different product from your catalogue.
• Manual price — type a price if the product isn't in your catalogue.
• Keep with no cost, or remove the line entirely.

As you resolve lines the count drops, and the moment the last one is done the draft badge disappears on its own — no separate confirm step — and the recipe starts counting everywhere.

Spreadsheet tips

• No template needed — Open Pantry reads the spreadsheet you already keep. One recipe per tab works best; several recipes stacked on one sheet separated by blank rows also works.
• Non-recipe tabs (like a price list) are recognised and ignored, and a cost/total column in your sheet won't be mistaken for a quantity.
• Units are kept exactly as you wrote them — "bunch", "each", "tablespoon" all survive the import.
• A very long recipe book on a single sheet (roughly 25+ recipes on one tab) may be too much to read in one go — split it into tabs or a few smaller files.
• Word documents aren't supported yet — use PDF, photo, spreadsheet or paste instead.