Yield

Yield is the share of what goes into a batch that comes out as product. Put 21.7 kg of ingredients in the kettle, bottle 20 kg of sauce, and your yield is 92%. The missing 8% went up as steam, stayed on the sides of the pot, or was trimmed away. Every process loses something; yield is how BatchDash accounts for it instead of pretending it didn’t happen.

Expected yield sizes the plan

Each formula version carries an expected yield. When you plan a run, BatchDash works backwards from the target output through it:

• Target: 20 L of habanero sauce (density 1.0, so 20 kg out)
• Expected yield: 92%
• Input needed: 20 ÷ 0.92 ≈ 21.7 kg

The bill of materials, the shopping list and the recipe sheet are all sized from that 21.7 kg, split across the lines by their percentages. Plan at 100% when your process really loses 8% and every batch comes up short on output, and short on jars.

(Volume targets convert to mass through the output density first; see mass-based formulas.)

Yield sets the real unit cost

The ingredients are paid for whether or not they end up in the jar, so the batch cost divides over what actually comes out:

• 21.7 kg of input costing €65.00
• At 100% yield: 21.7 L out, €65.00 ÷ 21.7 = €3.00/L
• At 92% yield: 20 L out, €65.00 ÷ 20 = €3.25/L

Same recipe, same prices, 8% more cost per liter. A yield estimate that’s off by a few points quietly distorts every margin downstream, which is why it’s worth measuring rather than guessing.

Expected versus actual

Expected yield is a planning number you set on the version. Actual yield is measured: on the bench, weighing the finished batch computes it from your real amounts, and completing a run compares observed output against input. When actuals keep landing at 90% against an expected 94%, update the version (or promote the run’s numbers into a new one) and your next plan starts honest.

Multi-step recipes can carry the idea per step: a reduction step that halves its mass has a step yield of 50%, and the recipe sheet shows the expected output of each step so you can catch drift mid-batch rather than at bottling.

More on setting it per formula in yield and batch size, and on recording actuals in completing a run.