Practical guide / Meal Planning & Grocery Workbook 1.2
What do we need to buy for the meals we actually planned?
Use the fictional example to change six servings to ten, then review pantry stock and whole packs to buy. Keep advanced lot reservations for a later session.
Your first useful result: Change one meal. See the shopping change. Follow the first task
First, try one serving change
In the supplied example copy change Meal Plan!E8 from 6 to 10.
The existing recipe-to-demand calculation feeds Grocery; no additional meal entry or shopping engine is introduced.
Review: Whole-pack purchase estimate changes from EUR 3.60 to EUR 4.80. Review Week view, then restore Meal Plan!E8 to 6 before following the original six-plus-two-serving example below.
Set up one recipe
Give each ingredient a stable text ID, a pack size in g, ml or each and its actual pack price. Link recipe lines using explicit units. Unit factors are visible and editable.
In Recipes, R-01 makes four servings. Recipe Lines uses 300 g rice, 400 g beans and 20 ml oil. The supplied unit factors convert 0.3 kg rice to 300 g.
Review: Open Recipe Lines and follow R-01 into the reviewed quantities. Resolve input checks before shopping.
Choose meals and servings
After restoring Meal Plan!E8 to 6, follow the original example: six servings of MP-01 and two of MP-02. Only Planned meals inside the selected period contribute to Grocery.
Meal Plan requests six and two servings of R-01: 600 g rice, 800 g beans and 40 ml oil in total. Pantry has usable 200 g rice, 400 g beans and 100 ml oil.
Review: Open Pantry and follow R-01 into the reviewed quantities. Resolve input checks before shopping.
Check stock before shopping
Enter usable pantry quantities in each ingredient base unit. Stock expiring before the end of the period is excluded. Grocery rounds the shortfall up to whole purchase packs. Review expiry, availability and prices yourself.
Grocery has a 400 g shortfall for rice and a 400 g shortfall for beans; oil has no shortfall. One 1 kg rice pack at EUR 2.40 plus one 400 g beans pack at EUR 1.20 costs EUR 3.60. Consumed ingredients cost EUR 4.32 (including EUR 0.48 oil already in the pantry); purchase cost and recipe cost answer different questions.
Review: Open Grocery and follow R-01 into the reviewed quantities. Resolve input checks before shopping.
Review the list
Resolve every input warning, then use the Grocery filter to show Needed (keep source row order). Estimated cost is for whole packs, not the fraction used in the meals. Nothing purchases or reserves stock.
Grocery has a 400 g shortfall for rice and a 400 g shortfall for beans; oil has no shortfall. One 1 kg rice pack at EUR 2.40 plus one 400 g beans pack at EUR 1.20 costs EUR 3.60. Consumed ingredients cost EUR 4.32 (including EUR 0.48 oil already in the pantry); purchase cost and recipe cost answer different questions.
Review: Open Grocery and follow R-01 into the reviewed quantities. Resolve input checks before shopping.
Use a dated early lot before buying more
In Pantry use, save a valid lot/meal allocation in base units. Keep the selected period and review date current.
Purchase review combines disjoint stock pools. Reservations are capped by the lot and meal ingredient demand. Any filled invalid reservation blocks the new estimate.
Review: Inspect the reviewed packs. Confirm actual food suitability and update pantry quantities yourself after use.
Check the assumptions.
- 100 ingredients; 12 unit definitions; 60 recipes; 300 recipe lines; 84 meal entries; 200 pantry lots. Fixed capacities.
- Metric base units: g, ml and each. US volume defaults are explicitly labelled. No volume-to-weight, ingredient density or nutrition conversion.
- One currency. Pack prices are manual estimates; shopping costs and stock are not synced. No allergy, food safety, dietary or health advice.
- Grocery excludes lots expiring before period end. Purchase review can use explicit eligible early-lot reservations. No automatic consumption, actual waste ledger, food-safety assessment or substitution engine.
- Native Excel compatibility remains unverified.
- Reservations require Planned meals within the period, on or after review and no later than lot expiry. The dated lot must expire before period end. Quantities use up to six decimals. Never add the two shopping lists together.
Keep a copy you can return to.
Keep the supplied clean and example files unchanged. Save your own working file with a useful name, such as meal-grocery-2027-home.xlsx, and keep a dated backup before a large edit. A purchased ZIP is the blank source, not a backup of your entries.
If an input or formula is replaced
Undo the edit while it is still available, or return to a known good backup. If you need a fresh clean file, transfer only your records into its marked input cells and follow the setup guide again. Do not paste whole sheets over the supplied formulas, validations or reference lists. Check IDs, units, dates and linked results against the example before relying on the copy.
When the supplied rows are full
100 ingredients · 12 unit definitions · 60 recipes · 300 recipe lines · 84 meal entries · 200 pantry lots · 400 early-lot allocation records. Calculation ranges and validations have fixed capacities. A new row below a table does not prove that every linked result includes it.
For a separate period, project or volume, preserve the old workbook and start a named clean copy. If records must carry forward, record exactly which inputs you transfer, preserve their references and compare the opening and closing figures. Avoid copying historical activity as both an opening amount and a new movement. There is no automatic migration between files.
Inspect the workbook before you choose.
View its real sheets and a fictional calculation example.
Explore Meal Planning & Grocery WorkbookWritten for version 1.2. Examples describe the supplied workflow; they are not customer results.