Group Cooking – Keeping Track of Cost

On February 25, 2014 by Kim

In order to ensure fairness when it comes to cost, you should maintain good records of who cooks which recipes, how many recipes they receive, and how much they paid for ingredients and supplies. For example, someone in your group might only order 2 servings while someone else orders 6, or they may want to skip a recipe altogether. One member may be assigned to cook a meat heavy entree, while another might be assigned an inexpensive breakfast dish. We have developed a Cost Analysis Worksheet to help you through this process. Follow these instructions to determine how much each member owes to or is owed by the group. Fill in the worksheet using the information you gathered from your Survey.

1. Open the Cost Analysis Worksheet (Google document).
2. Select the File tab and select “Make a Copy.” Rename your document as desired.
3. Fill in the name of each cook in Column A (shaded light green). To add extra rows place your cursor in the last name space and click the Insert tab. Then select “row below.” Repeat as needed.
4. Fill in the title of each recipe in Row 1 (shaded light blue). To add extra columns place your cursor in the last title space and click the Insert tab. Then select “column right.” Repeat as needed.
5. Go down the list in each recipe column and fill in the number of servings that each cook has ordered for that particular recipe.
6. After everyone has cooked, they should report their total spending to the administrator or banker. You can also share this document with everyone in the group for easy recipe assignment and reporting.
7. The document will then calculate the cost per person per recipe, the total bill for each cook, the total number of servings each cook receives, and the amount each cook owes to or is owed by the group (based on spending).

As I mentioned, you may consider sharing this document with everyone in the group. At least print a copy for each member. This way everyone can easily see which recipe they have been assigned and how many servings they need to cook and package for each member. Please see this video on how to fill out the Cost Analysis Worksheet if you need more details.